Jessie: Surprised to realize that the month is drawing so rapidly to a close!
For our last surprisingly good topic of the month, I wanted to discuss experiences. Wickeds, tell us about an experience you have had that turned out to be far better than you might have anticipated!
Sherry: Most trips to the dentist. I dread going, but it usually isn’t as bad as anticipated.
Julie: I went to Egypt several years ago. I’d always wanted to go, and had done a ton of research. And as much as I anticipated the trip, being there was better than I could have imagined. What an amazing country.
Edith: On my trip to Japan last spring, after a morning in a port, my traveling companion wanted to go back to the ship for lunch. I wanted to immerse myself in Japan as much as possible, so I went wandering in search of a place to eat. I happened into a bustling little hole in the wall with all the doors open. I grabbed a seat at the counter, ordered a liter of beer, and tried to read the menu (even Google Translate barely helped). A cheery man and woman next to me greeted me (they might have been on their third beers), and we proceeded to talk in Japanese and a little English and toast each other for the next couple of hours. What could have been a slightly lonely solo fueling stop turned into one of the highlights of the trip.
Barb: Julie and Edith, you have put the idea of trips that turned out surprisingly better than I anticipated. In 2019, Bill tagged a trip to Montauro, the mountain village in Calabria that his father’s parents emigrated from in 1921, onto a visit to Rome. I was skeptical to put it mildly. We were looking for a second cousin Bill had been in contact with on Facebook but who had sort of disappeared. We were staying in a newly built AirBnB that wasn’t quite finished when we made the reservation. Our trip was before the season really started on the Ionian Sea and it wasn’t clear if restaurants, etc., would be open. And, we’d be driving a rental car on twisty mountain roads. As you’ve anticipated from the theme of this post,it turned out to be a fantastic trip. We did meet with family, saw the village (and met practically everyone in it) and regained an important bit of family history that had been lost. You can read about it here and here.
Jessie: I love reading about all of these, but especially Sherry’s encounters with the dentist! I am going to mention swimming off the coast of Maine in the off-season. I’ve gone both early in the year and late as well and all the experiences have turned out to be exhilarating rather than brutal. I had expected to be a bit miserable, but splashing about in the chilly water, okay, frigid, was remarkably enlivening!
Readers, how about you? Have you had an experience that you enjoyed much more than you would have expected?