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| Our Friend in Valencia |
#1. The People We’ve Met
Hands down, the best experience of our six months in Europe is all the amazing and wonderful people we met. We’ve said before that our philosophy is that a great life is made up of wonderful experiences and wonderful relationships. This past six months, we were great enriched in both regards.
There were the new friends we made on our Turkish cruise, especially Brian and Debbie from Scotland and Karsten and Lune from Denmark. There were the people whose homes and pets we took care of, including Pam and Jan from Manchester (and Mishka, Jake, and Ravi), Glyn and Jay from Nottinghamshire (and Dag and Spottie), and Mr. Michael Rose (Jellicle, aka “Puss-Puss”) in Cumbria in the English countryside.
There was Hugh and Jane in Portugal, who gave us such a great experience at their Quinta to get our full-time travels started. There was Adje in Italy, who shared her beautiful corner of Umbria, Italy with us. And there were fellow travelers, like Jeff and Erin from Michigan, who we suspect will be traveling much more than the gap year they’re enjoying now. And there was Michael, the best street performer in Valencia, perhaps all of Spain, who it was our great fortune to keep running into when we’d go out to eat.
And there were also all the super AirBnB hosts we met along the way, including Tom and Faye in London; Carmen, who owned the apartment we rented in Valencia for all of July, and who brought us refreshing cucumber soup and gazpacho from time to time to beat the summer heat; Mike in York; Paul, who owned the splendid apartments in Silvermines, Ireland; Miriam and John, who hosted us in their converted rail house in Southern Ireland; and Irene, our host for our week-long return to London in November. And there was Jess and her beautiful two little girls, who hosted us in their house in Bodrum.
But we never learned the name of the most memorable person we met during our 2014 travels. He was the older gentleman we kept seeing at the cafe in Valencia. And though we don’t speak much Spanish and he didn’t speak much English, we discovered that a compliment (Chuck complimented him on his hat) and a smile are really about all you need to communicate. We will one day soon return to Valencia, and we hope to see our friend again: I’ve got more hats to show off to him.
