2022 Travels

 

We live in Algeria now and Google Maps doesn't fully work here. This yearly recap comes from my Google Maps timeline, which relies on the tracking function to make the dots. Unfortunately the tracking function stops soon after arriving at the airport, so all I'll ever see is a dot at the airport and nothing else in this country. It does show that we traveled around the DC area and that we visited Rome and Cairo from Algeria, so that's what's on the map.

The first half of the year had us living in DC (really Arlington VA). I had 6 months of language training, during which I couldn't take vacation. We did some short road trips on the holiday weekends to get away and decompress. We went south to Virginia Beach VA, north to Lancaster PA, and east to Ocean City MD. We only went as far west as the Shenandoah National Park on a regular weekend. It was a very American first half of the year.

Finally we moved to Algiers, Algeria and the foreign travel experiences began again. We've been on road trips to Tipaza and Constantine as well as a train trip to Oran in Algeria, but they don't show on my Google Maps timeline. There's plenty to see and do here, so we wanted to experience a good bit of it in the beginning in case there's another pandemic situation. 

We met my wife's kids in Rome as a repeat vacation for me. It's an interesting city and we saw some different things from the first time I was there. Sometimes a vacation is just about getting away and hanging out with people you know in a place you already know instead of exploring something completely new.

I saved up so much leave in DC that I needed to take another week off before the end of the year or I'd lose it. I went back to my usual methodology of checking the direct flights for something interesting. Cairo immediately popped to the top of the list because we've both wanted to see the pyramids from a very young age. It was about a 4 hour flight and not very expensive, so it was an easy pick.

Cairo was a great week of experiences with cool things to see. I hoped the new Great Egyptian Museum would be open, but it wasn't quite ready. We may have to go back again during our time in Algeria just to visit the museum and add in some other Egyptian cities.

2022 was another good year for our travels. Hopefully the viruses of the world will behave and we can travel some more next year!