E18 – Let’s Talk Paris Planning and Travel Journals
In today’s episode I talk about our upcoming trip to Paris and how I am getting into travel journals. If you journal for personal or travel, I would love to hear from you.
Transcript
Here is a transcript of the podcast. Please keep in mind this was done via AI, so there are typos and mistakes. I tried to catch as much as I can, but it is definitely not perfect.
Beth 0:04
Welcome to the roaming Yeti podcast where we share stories and tips to inspire you to roam your neighborhood and the world. I’m your host and head Yeti Beth Schillaci. I’m gonna preface to his episode with I am getting over one of the worst sinus infections I’ve ever had in my life. So my voice is still a little a little scratchy and I apologize for that. But today I wanted to talk to you about our upcoming trip to Paris. Yay, we’re finally getting to Paris. And also talk to you about my foray into journaling and specifically travel journaling. So as some of you know, we were supposed to travel to London in Paris last summer to celebrate Julia’s graduation however, we had to cancel last minute due to some family emergencies. And so, you know, thank goodness for travel insurance. It did take us seven months and a whole lot of hoops to jump through to get our money back but we did. So that that was really positive.
We knew we wanted to reschedule the Paris portion especially because that’s where Julio really really wanted to get to for graduation so we considered going in December after first semester but there was still just a lot of things in the air still up in the air and we just weren’t we didn’t want to take another chance of having to cancel so we decided to aim for May after Julia’s spring semester ends and hopefully before the summer rush we don’t know we’ll see fingers crossed but it just seemed like a good time to to go so in the spirit though of being completely honest with you, that’s a commitment I made to myself when starting this is you know I have to show warts and all I you know, I’m sort of at the height of where I I had my usual pre trip anxiety but I have to say this trip isn’t as bad as usual. So I’m very happy about that and honestly so is my family that they don’t have to John and Julia and anyone else who talks to me does not have to deal with my my acute anxiety when when traveling I love to travel I love it I love when we get there it’s it’s just the planning and the logistics really throw me off. And when we travel internationally there’s two other things that that stresses me out more than any other kind of travel once the language I don’t want to be you know that the rude American who can’t speak any of the language but I just have the worst time picking up other languages. I don’t know why. But I’ve been working through Duolingo for a while I just I just still don’t feel like I’m I’m comfortable enough. Because I have to say you know, I don’t know that you learn the word you’re supposed to supposed to know when you go to another country for traveling. But that owl that owl of Duolingo duo, he has prepared me for the word cat so shot so unshot so hopefully I will see at least one cat so I can point it out in French because comes up in a lot of the Duolingo exercises. And it just cracks me up. I understand that people there will speak much better English than I speak French but I just I hate being appearing rude. From what I understand now the magic word is Bonjour. C’est Bon jour and at least that you know people will hopefully help you from there. So all I have to say is thank goodness for Google Translate. And also for a husband that is much better at learning languages then I am a second source of stress. And especially international again is what to pack and where I am not a fashionista. I am often most comfortable in jeans a t shirt and you know a cardigan but I you know I thankfully over spring break had my little personal stylist along with me and we went on a little shopping trip and she helped me pick out a few few nice and comfortable button down shirts. So now I’m not as worried about you know what I’m going to pack I am worried about layers. I’m looking at the temperature it’s that 5060 degree temperature weather and man I don’t what do you wear for that? I have trouble here in Maryland of what to wear and in that it you know it can be a warm 60 Because of the Sun it can be a cold 60 So I really really am working on not overpacking thinking So we have an Airbnb with a washer and dryer, or so, you know, if I need to wash something, we’re in good shape. But I really, this packing outfits and stuff is a stress for me. When we went to China four years ago, not gonna lie, I actually had a spreadsheet of what I was going to wear daily because we knew the we knew the activities. And therefore, based on the activities, I knew what I wasn’t aware, and I did I had a spreadsheet, I will admit, you can laugh at me, I’m fine with that. This time, I don’t have a spreadsheet, I’m good. But I you know, I am still worried about the labor situation and room in my suitcase. But as I said before, I really feel like my anxiety is under control. This time, I think my excitement is outweighing the anxiety, which is great. So now I just I need to get those flights to be on time we have a really, really short layover window. And if if one flight is late, we’re in trouble. So please, cross your fingers for us. We say a little prayer to the travel gods. That all of us everyone traveling this summer. It looks like it could be another crazy summer traveling. So let’s all all get where we need to be safely and on time for sure. So I am definitely the list banker, the planner and over analyzer of the family. So this trip, I’ve done a lot of research and legwork. I had a time. The trip last summer was a group trip. And everything was planned out for us restaurants, activities, everything. It was Adventures by Disney. It was going to do London and then down to Paris. And then we had added on Disneyland Paris stop. The nice thing about Disney Adventures by Disney trips is there’s only two trips that actually go to Disney parks. And that’s the Southern California one and there China one. Everything else can be an add on. So we added on. But we knew everything was planned. I didn’t really have to do any, any homework, any planning, which was great. Because last May we were in the middle of school plays at our school musicals, dance recitals graduation. I had no time. This time, I had a lot more time, free time to do research. Plus, hey, now travel research is part of my job. So I mean, that’s a win, right. So this time, I really, I really well one, I went back and listened to Amy’s podcast. Amy has great information. If you have not listened to Amy’s podcast on Paris, please go do it. And but I also hit up YouTube, some podcast as well as a lot of searching on Google. And a lot of Google Maps research to see how far things were away from each other. So what we could get to. I’ve watched and listened to earful tower, and Jay Swanson and I found both of them super informative, really fun. I highly recommend them on YouTube, and earful towers podcast. Because Paris is broken up into 20 neighborhoods, called I’m gonna butcher every French. We’ve already established My French is terrible. So I run a rotters mints. I don’t know I’m going to call them neighborhoods. We were able to watch videos for each neighborhood to see what things we may want to check out. And we each made separate lists and then we we carried we compare notes to sort of create our must see list. So when we initially did this two items were totally we knew was going to happen. We want to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. So we booked tours for both of them through Vader and I’m gonna say the only I’m not a great person with heights. And so I was like, I just want to see the Eiffel Tower. I don’t have to go up in the Eiffel Tower. But we’re going up in the Eiffel Tower. how high the tour is a little wasn’t wasn’t 100% Clear on on what’s involved in that. So we’ll figure that out. See how busy the elevators are and we’ll go from there. But we’ll definitely see the Eiffel Tower and Louvre. I would like to see the Eiffel Tower both in the day and nighttime I want to see the lights. So those were you know those those we knew we’re doing so what else were we Thinking about doing.
Like I said, Live In Eiffel Tower. Were a must. And then there were some other items we’ve put on our list. So one is Museo de arts friends. It’s the Museum of fairground arts, it’s seems very much in our, in our wheelhouse. As a family it’s seen it’s a lot of carnival rides, you know in pieces from carousels and, and it just looks like a really cool Museum. My husband said it was John Cena was on amazing race one time. So we just thought it looked really cool. Now the tour is in French, and apparently they hand you sort of like a paper English paper guide in English. So we did decide that we were, we really wanted to do that we’ve purchased tickets. You know, I’m hoping at least one of these rides has some kind of cat in it. So I’ll know. I will know at that point, what they’re talking about on the tour. So I’m looking forward to that. It’ll be interesting. I definitely will report back on that one for you guys will be in the Latin Quarter, just to sort of hang out and shop. Julie’s looking for some comic books, she would love some French language, comic books, hopefully Marvel and some vintage shops. And just sort of wandering around. I think that’s one of you’ll hear here though. We just wander wander around a lot. the Picasso Museum, John and I went to the one in Barcelona in 2000. And so we thought if we have time, and we’re close by that will definitely stop into this one if possible. There’s Victor Hugo’s mansion, which is a museum but it was the mansion he lived in from 1832 to 1848. And then I want to check out the Lombardi era, which is a British Pub Pub. So here is the moment that I confess to watching and enjoying Emily in Paris. And this is the location where Alfie gets the takeaway better beers for Emily and himself. So yes, I’m Team Alfie bring up season four and let Alfie have a good ending, please. We are going to walk by notre Dom, we want to see how the you know structure and progress and reconstruction. There’s the promenade plan T, again, butchering names, sorry. It’s a green space above the street that you can walk. It’s what the New York City Highline it’s based upon. So it looks really cool. And a fun, fun place. I guess a lot of these things will be dependent on weather. I’m hoping for not a lot of rain, but but we’ll see we’ll make the best of it. We want to go check out the village of Montmarte. And hang out there. And then you know, I said I’m not much of a fashionista. But I do like a good department store. So there’s two department stores on my list, the BH V in Morales, and last summer at 10 off so sorry, which has been renovated recently and it just looks amazing. Like I they both look cool. And I’m hoping to find some, some fun souvenirs there. So like I said, I’m really hoping we do just a lot of roaming through the different neighborhoods, I’m probably going to eat as many pastries as humanly possible. And us being us we actually found a brewery that we’re hoping to check out called pawn, pawn MA or Per Name, Brewing Company. So, you know, there’s a lot, I hope we can hit it in the, I think we’re there in in the city five days. So, you know, again, we’re gonna wander around, do what we can try not to push so much that we, you know, don’t, don’t get that chance to relax. And of course, I know, we’re gonna go out and visit Disneyland Paris for a few days. John and I have been there before. This will be Julius first time. It is such a gorgeous park. And I can’t wait to see the improvements and the additions that have been made since we were there five years ago. And they have a version of haunted mansion that’s called Phantom Manor. And it was closed on our last visit and I’m very much looking forward to riding it. It’s a little darker than than our haunted mansions here. So that’s up on the top, top of my ride list for sure for that, that part of the trip. So I’m sure you’ll get all the details to both parts of our trip and future episodes. A tune but and if you aren’t following us on Instagram or Facebook booked, please do because I’m going to try to post pictures as I go or at least when we’re done. But you know, that’s that’s sort of what our plan is at this point. And on this episode, there’s something else I wanted to talk about journaling, where are my journal errs? Like I want to know if you guys are Journalers hit me up and let me know this year is I had decided I wanted to journal both personally and in travel related. When we went to China four years ago, I took a notebook with me. And when we were on flights between cities, I would write down what we did. And it was just a great exercise and kept me busy on the flights. And when we got home, I sort of just put the notebook on my shelf. And I didn’t, I was like, I need to go back and fill in the stories and put more information and put tickets and stuff. I just never, I never did. And I was like, I really need to be better about this. So yeah, of course, roaming Yeti is sort of a journal. And, but I also thought both for the for the blog and the podcast. But just for myself, I really want to get better at keeping track of some of the more of the details of the trip of where we eat and what we did funny stories while it happened. And just other things. So I have been sort of going through this exercise of creating my own approach, approach to journaling, plus, I want to improve my writing skills. I’ve always written for business. And so my writing is always to the point. And it’s not. It’s not as descriptive as I would like to be. Because when you’re doing marketing writing, you don’t need it to be super descriptive. So I’m using the journals to improve prove my writing and, and you know, hopefully, you guys will all see the results of that. But me being me, I couldn’t just get started with a journal, I had to do a little research and learn about different options, styles, motivations, you name it, I went down the rabbit hole. First, I began journaling earlier this year, just for myself to help manage, manage stress. And especially in the winter, I think I’ve been officially diagnosed. But I really think this seasonal seasons really affected me more than I thought. So I really love to journaling and to sort of help manage this. And I try to read a page every day. And some days, it’s really easy. And some days, it’s difficult for me. But if nothing else, I always have two lines on my journal page. And one line is a simple joy. And this is something that made me happy for the day. It could have been small, it could have been big. It’s just something that really just, you know, brought me a little bit of sunshine, a little bit of joy for that day. And then a little victory that I could celebrate. I love celebrating little victories. I you know, we can all wait for big ones, but we need to celebrate the little ones in between. So ending my day with these two positive thoughts of a simple joy and a little victory really has helped tremendously. I feel more positive going into the day and into the evening. And it’s it’s just I know a lot of people do gratitude journals. So this was just sort of my version of of a gratitude journal. When I bought my my personal journal, I also bought a travel journal, a second journal to use for travel. So I’m not sure at this point, if this is going to record multiple trips or just Paris, I guess it depends how much I fill it up here in the next few weeks. So when I said I did a little research, what I should have said is I took a bit of a deep dive into journaling. I watched a lot of videos, I read a lot of articles. And I also read the book writing away by Lavina. Spalding. It’s a very good very interesting book on on journaling, and specifically travel journaling. I will say my biggest takeaway was that I’m a pretty vanilla traveler. She discusses all these amazing trips that have taken her all over the world and all these amazing experiences.
And I’m like, Oh, I’m just here preparing to record my thoughts on croissants that one of the most visited places in the world. But that’s okay. I can live with that. But in all seriousness, I did find her book very helpful and interesting. In my biggest takeaway actually was that there’s no wrong way to journal just just write, you can use prompts. You can have other people collaborate by writing in your journal, you can just flow with your thoughts for the day, you can bullet point. It’s yours, it’s your journal. So do do what you want. But I really did find some, some good points from her that really helped me start figuring out what I want to, you know, what I want to do with my journal. So my personal goal is not only to record what we do, and where we visit, but I really want to tune into all five senses. And notice what’s going on around me the smells and the sounds, and you know, what are people doing and just more of that, that local flavor of a place. And not just what we did. So that’s really one of my goals on this trip with this journal is to, to really tune in to all those. So I also, I also had to write down some prompts, just to help me so if I am stuck on get a little writer’s block, it’s, it’s there to remind me sort of things to write about. And also, for this journal, I’m using it as part of our planning tool as well. I’ve added reminders into it, places that we want to try to get to, things to look for. And I even added some notes on settings for my camera, because I tend to forget them. And instead of having to look it up all the time, I just jotted it on a page of the journal along with like things I want to take pictures of. So I’m really sort of using it not just a real record, but just for the sort of the whole trip. I also bought a little Field Notes notebook that just sort of pops into my day pack so I can record names of restaurants and stores and, and other quick notes that then I can put that information into the larger journal. Hopefully every night or in the morning over coffee. We’ll see. I’m hoping to do it every day. Who knows? Again, I’m crossing a lot of fingers for this trip. And then once I get home, I will probably rewrite some pages add tickets photos and other ephemera and and you know, make it into you know, sort of that that diary of the trip. So here’s my question. If you guys are interested in personal travel journaling, please let me know. I would love to hear from people that are that do journal and you know what you do and what your travel journal looks like, or your personal journal. And if you’re you aren’t journaling yet, like, hey, let’s let’s learn together and share some experiences. If you’re you’re interested. Maybe I can find an expert like Lavina to come on and share with us. Just let me know, you know, hit me up on social media or fill out the contact form on on the website. So with that, you are now up to speed on our upcoming trip. It’s been a long time coming and I can’t wait to get there and roam the city of lights. So I hope these episodes inspire you to get out and roam even in your own neighborhood. So please subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes. And if you like what we’re doing here, please leave a review and a rating also to support us. Please head to Yeti to shop.com to pick up some roaming Yeti merch and sign up for our newsletters to join us in our monthly bingo challenge. Talk to you soon and keep roaming
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
