The Bright Now: Monstermoon Dispatch #1: Bey-Jay, Man Purses, and Taciturn Turks

Unsurprisingly, we underestimated the impact of getting married, wrapping up work, and packing backpacks for four months of living on four continents in at least as many climates. We finished packing and without a moment to process, turned our place over to a kind couple from Minnesota and their dog Milo who will be filling in for Tulsa as chief couch warmer and house protector. We scrambled to a waiting Lyft and a waiting flight to Paris. On the plane, after a flurry of activity, we began to process the whirlwind that was our last month in SF.

We are now 2 weeks into the trip and we are still processing things like: our wedding (verdict: a tornado of fun and friends); final work items (not as fun, but satisfying to wrap up); and the stark transition from real life to Monstermoon (which we'll give more airtime to in the pages of this very blog).

But, this is a travel blog. And, we don't have much time before our flight to Madrid from Turkey's Turquoise Coast, so a quick travel summary, with an anticlimactic Beyonce anecdote, is in order.

The city of light... in the dark

We landed in Paris to a light rain and an AirBnb host who hadn't left the key at the restaurant downstairs as promised. Luckily, Carson's friends Celine and Renaud swooped us off to dinner and tracked down our hosts.

Paris was just a stopover but thanks to friends Whitney, Matt, Bri, Carlos, and Mados, our second night in Paris was the classiest and tastiest of our trip. Huge thanks for the 9 course meal at Verjus! Haven't heard of Verjus? Imagine you are Beyonce and Jay-Z and your mom comes to town to watch Blue Ivy so you can sneak away to Paris for a night. Where do you get dinner? Verjus (click here). Unfortunately Bey-Jay visited the night after we devoured hors de oeuvres in the same seats.

In Paris, we invented a game to keep ourselves both occupied and observant of our surroundings. The game is a modified version of slug-a-bug (the game where you hit the person you are with if see a VW bug). In each country, we pick a unique "thing" that seems like it will be rare, but not too rare that the game will be boring.... and then we slug each other lovingly when we see it.

In Paris we played slug-a-baguette whenever we saw a frenchman or woman fulfilling our Parisian stereotype by bustling somewhere with a baguette. A baguette with a bite out of it was worth two slugs.

Your view from work, if you were an archer
for the city of Dubrovnik

From Paris we flew to Dubrovnik Croatia where there is an apparent national obsession with topiary which we slugged each other for as we biked around small islands in the Adriatic Sea. Topiary slugging lasted until we got to Montenegro and quickly identified the Montenegrin affection for the Murse. Montenegrins have a warlike reputation but that doesn't stop most men from proudly sporting man-purses which we slugged each other for in as warlike a manner as we could muster.

From Montenegro we flew to Istanbul where we walked around bazaars, mosques, Turkish bath houses, random suburbs, just for fun. We played slug-a-ruin which caused a proliferation of slugging because the Romans, Greeks, and Ottomans loved building things so their distant descendants would have interesting decaying buildings to one day wander around. These descendants return on busses to photograph themselves in front ruins with iphones extended on little poles which we are calling selfie-sticks. Of course, we are also playing slug-a-selfie-stick.

From Istanbul, we flew to Fethiye on the Mediterranean for a 3 day Gulet trip. Gulet is the Turkish word for 'locally made slightly janky sailboat sailed by a taciturn Turkish man who refuses to use the sail and instead motors around and complains of the high cost of diesel." Basically, we went Yachting in the Turkish Agean Sea and it was amazing.

From here on, expect more frequent blog updates as we walk the Camino de Santiago in Spain.