I’ve been in Ireland without leaving since March of 2020. I got back from a trip to Mexico and then the world went mad…
Over the past 18 months things have changed quite a bit for everyone. Personally I’ve now got greenhouses and barbecues, as well as a load of other bits and pieces. When you’re stuck at home most of the time it’s hard not to start messing about with the house and garden!
Spending all this time in Ireland and most of it at home hasn’t been entirely negative. In fact I’ve come to actually enjoy it. A lot of my friends assumed that as soon as the government lifted the travel restrictions that I’d be jumping on a plane. However in reality that just hasn’t happened. I don’t have a burning desire to travel just for the sake of travel. I want to be able to enjoy travel, both the getting there and the being there. And with so many restrictions in place both here and in most other countries it hasn’t been that attractive to me to travel. I dropped a relative up to Dublin airport a couple of days ago and the place looked decidedly odd. Am I ready to travel again? Maybe, but I’ll need good reasons to do it and I don’t see many of those on my horizon right now. I suspect that a lot of us will be going back on the road towards the end of this year and the beginning of next year, but I also suspect we’ll all be a lot more selective about which trips we go on and which events we attend.
But I’ve now started planning travel again. As of right now I’ve got three trips planned and they’re all concerts!
One of the things I decided a couple of years ago was that I needed to do more “fun” stuff like going to concerts and other things. I’m a big fan of film soundtracks so back at the end of 2019 I spent a few days in Madrid so I could go to the World of Hans Zimmer concert. What a great show!
In 2020 I was meant to be going to the Eric Serra Le Grand Bleu concert, but of course that got postponed several times and is now scheduled for May of next year. I booked my flights this afternoon using the voucher that Air France / KLM sent me last year when the flights were cancelled due to the plague.
The World of Hans Zimmer featured some incredibly talented musicians from around the world, but Hans Zimmer himself wasn’t on the tour (though apparently he made at least one appearance – just not in Madrid!). He was meant to be touring this year, but of course that got punted to next year and I’ve got tickets for a couple of the concerts!
So far for 2022 I’ve got trips planned to Berlin and Paris. I might head to Krakow as well, as it’s a good excuse to go to Poland. I’ll be keeping an eye out for other “excuses” to travel for fun around Europe!
I don’t see myself heading to the US for the next while, as it’s essentially closed to Europeans and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. It’s unfortunate as many of the saner routes to Latin America are via the US.
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