THINGS WE HAVE LEARNT !!!

Travelling with my 'bestie' is great fun and sharing our interests, passions, curiosities and somewhat 'take it as it comes' attitude is enriching to our lives, our relationship and our appreciation of God's amazing world.
Reading back over this blog at a distance of time I am again overwhelmed by how incredibly lucky we are and how fortunate to have shared all these experiences.
Enduring 'take-aways' would include; meeting such amazing people, eating such wonderful food, and appreciating the story of struggle so many people have had to overcome and their consequent resilience, perseverance and resoluteness.
We navigated seven different underground rail systems, seven different currencies 14 different languages using Google interpreter, we travelled on four planes, seven trains, three ferries, we hired three cars, trams and walked and walked (often because we were lost), we climbed more staircases than I thought possible yet benefited from the amazing vistas that these climbs afforded us. We also lost 3 credit cards (near catastrophe) we nearly missed trains OR arrived hours too early because we were not acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of Russian timetabling. Precise directions are never precise!!! Assurances that a local knows exactly where something can be found are not to be relied on, international SIM cards do not work, (for me anyway) BUT we navigated our way through all of this without ever having phone contact with each other, not bad considering that we loose each other in a shopping centre and have to ring up to find each other again.
Things to remember; be flexible, expect to be ripped off at times, take risks, try new things, make an effort to meet with locals, smile, learn a few simple words in each language (where possible) and don't think that you know it all, listen to their story..