On Monday night, Jose and I bought two tickets to Rome for the end of next month. We’ll be spending our first anniversary on an airplane, but I figure that’s ok since we’ll have 8 days to celebrate in a foreign country. I’ve been to Italy once before, in the middle of the month-long post-college graduation backpacking trip I took with a bunch of friends in 2001. But it’s been long enough that I’ve forgotten some of the sights, and I’m looking forward to seeing everything again — and this time with Jose, who has never been to Europe at all! We know we’ll spend a few days in Rome, and a few in Florence. We’re still debating whether we’ll try to go anywhere else, or just concentrate on those two cities.
After we booked the tickets, I off-handedly wondered about the current location of my passport. Jose remembered where I’d stored it, and pulled it out. It’s a good thing we happened to look at it, because I opened it up and immediately realized that I never got it updated with my married name. (When we went to Belize for our honeymoon, it was of course immediately after the wedding, so I hadn’t changed anything yet and booked the plane tickets accordingly. But now my passport no longer matches my driver’s license or plane ticket. Oops!)
Since it was due to expire in January anyway, I went to the post office at lunch today to send it off for both expedited renewal and a name change at the same time. You have to send in your old passport when you renew it, and I don’t know if I’ll get it back or not — some people have said yes, but others say no. (I also had to send in our original marriage license, which they do return.) Just in case I never see it again, I took photos to “save” all my stamps for posterity. Man, I have taken a lot of fun trips since 2001! I took a little trip down memory lane, and here it is:
Page 8, top left: My first trip abroad! A large group of friends and I planned a month-long backpacking trip across Europe, leaving only a couple days after we all graduated from Georgia Tech in 2001. We began in London (the stamp is from Gatwick airport) and ended in Amsterdam after a large circle that spanned the London and Stratford-upon-Avon in the UK; Paris!; Heidelberg and Munich, Germany; Montreaux, Switzerland; Venice, Florence and Rome; an overnight stop in southern France; Barcelona; and the Netherlands. I pulled out my scrapbook the other day and laughed at all my pictures.
Page 8, top right: Returning from a visit to see Karen in 2002 when she was living in Britain on some kind of prestigious scholarship. (I am totally blanking on the name. Truman?) We took her little purple car and drove all over Scotland and had a fun time.
Page 8, bottom left; Page 8, bottom right; Page 9, top left: Arriving in Paris at Charles de Gaulle airport on the same big Europe trip in 2001. (After a few days in London, we flew to Paris and then spent the next 3 weeks traveling by train.) Then leaving Amsterdam almost a month later. Then returning to Atlanta to finish off the backpacking extravaganza.
Page 9, top right: Arriving in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2006 to begin our AWESOME adventure in Patagonia.
Page 9, bottom left and bottom right: Arriving and leaving the airport in Frankfurt, Germany in 2003 — which was actually only a layover on the way to a week in Greece with Becca and Karen. My passport shows no trace of me ever being in Greece, because the Athens airport had basically zero security. After we picked up our bags, there were two doors to go through. One said “EU citizens” and one said “all others,” so we diligently headed to the second door. We walked through and found ourselves staring at taxis outside the airport. No one checked our passports, and no one checked our bags. This was less than 1 year before the Athens Olympics, and we were appalled at the lack of security. Oh well!
Page 10, top left: Arriving in Peru in 2004 to hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. We spent a few days in Cusco before we began the trail, which was fun. But the trail itself? It was spectacular! It was so cool to get to spend three days making our way through the stunning Andes mountains towards the ruins. We had a fun group of people, an awesome guide, and had a lot of fun “posh camping.”
Page 10, bottom left: Leaving Marseille, France in early 2003 after visiting my friend Nick, who was living in Aix-en-Provence for the year.
Page 10, bottom right: Leaving Chile at the end of our 2006 Patagonian adventure.
Page 11, top left: Leaving Argentina on our way into Chile halfway through our Patagonia trip!
Page 11, top right: Arriving at Heathrow airport in London when we went to visit Karen.
Page 11, bottom plus strip of paper stapled to the page: JAPAN! Japan, Japan, JAPAN! Oh man that trip was so awesome, and that’s not even counting the fact that it’s where Jose and I got engaged. The sticker was basically a 3 month visa, and the stamp indicates that we did indeed leave the country before it expired.
Page 12: In Patagonia, we crossed the border from Argentina into Chile by car but they still checked all our bags and stamped our passports. If I remember correctly, one guy drove us to the border, and another guy picked us up on the other side. We had so many random “some guy will pick us up” style plans on that trip, and amazingly, everything went exactly according to those sketchy-sounding plans.
Page 13, top: Coming back from Patagonia in 2006. I guess we arrived in Atlanta. Huh. I didn’t remember that.
Page 13, bottom: Arriving for our honeymoon in Belize! This vacation was totally different than any other for multiple reasons. 1) Honeymoon! Duh. 2) Extremely posh lodging. 3) Slow, even lazy schedule because we just wanted to relax. And it was a fabulous week.
Page 19: Arriving in Marseille in 2003 for the previously mentioned trip to visit my friend Nick. This stamp randomly ended up in the back of my passport. I guess the guy just stamped the first page he opened to!
I just clicked on your links. I totally forgot about the crazy singing potter in Scotland. Ha ha ha…
when i renewed my passport like 4 years ago, they did send my old one back with a hole in it.
Wow, you are my travel hero. I want to travel like you when I grow up. All that in 9 years!
I also got my old passport back so there is hope. Can’t wait to follow along your adventures in Rome!
I’ve had a lot of people now saying they got theirs back, which is awesome!
Becca, in searching for the old blog entries, I discovered that I totally did not do any of our trips justice on the blog. I have no idea why, but I never really wrote in-depth reports for anything but Belize! That and my visit to see Nick, since he had internet access at his place.
I hope you get yours back. I was so happy when I got mine back.
Let me add my name to the list of people who received theirs back. So, a pretty good chance, I’d say. For Italy, Cinque Terre is not that far from Rome (if you take the A1, which we didn’t, but still made it there in half a day). When we first arrived, we weren’t all that impressed – a series of five sleepy sea towns – but after having the best pizza ever, appreciating the amazing views, eating sun-kissed blackberries on the side of the road, and hiking (you can hike between all five towns, or come & go on the trail as you like), we were hooked. We stayed an extra day, even, and then had to book it to Rome. Also, we went to Pisa, but didn’t get to climb the tower because we only had an hour. I’d really like to do it. Don’t know anything of Florence, and only saw the outside of St. Peter’s in Rome.
Have fun, though! Very jealous.
I liked Sienna too. You can go there as a day trip from Florence.
Speaking of the A1 are you driving or training? I actually have the hankering to have a rental car the next time I go to Italy – mostly because I am not super interested in staying in the big cities and the countryside is so beautiful.