1)      No matter how much you take out of your suitcase and leave behind, the bag’s weight will always stay the same. It’s as if there is a balance inside that resets to the original “too heavy to carry” weight.

2)      Someone will always carry your bag up the stairs if you stand at the bottom, sigh heavily, and wait long enough (especially if you block the access to the staircase).

3)      Take a taxi from the rail station to your hotel, but learn the subway or bus system for the ride back to the station.

4)      Remember that if you can’t read your handwriting, the ticket agent has no chance.

5)      Non-refundable and non-flexible train tickets mean just that. And sometimes you just get lucky and someone bends a rule – sort-of.

6)      Learn medical terms in the language of the country you are visiting, because as soon as you leave an English-speaking (or your native) country, you will get sick enough to need help. I found out I can conjugate every tense of the verb “etre”, but I couldn’t remember important body parts like ears, nose, and throat. And I certainly wasn’t prepared in my much-anticipated croissant baking class with an actual French pastry chef, to say, “Excusez-moi, but I’m about to do a face plant in my croissant dough if someone doesn’t help me to a chair.” Luckily one of the receptionists at the school is British and she brought me sugar tea, the best-ever cure for everything.

7)      You will have to wear those emergency glasses you packed. You know the ones – dorky-looking style with even dorkier-looking clip-on sun shades. You will leave your prescription sun glasses in a Paris taxi with a driver who is tired of making sure you are at the right address. He will throw all your luggage on the sidewalk, demand his payment, and leave before you realize what has happened. You will have to wear these glasses in Milan, the fashion capital of the world.

8)      If you are traveling alone and book a single room in a B&B, it will be at the top of four flights of stairs. If you opt to share a bathroom, you will be in the attic room and the bathroom will be down two flights of stairs.

9)      You will wish for English porridge after a few days of outstanding French and Italian pastries.

10)   The only way I will ever have a tan is from a bottle or if all my freckles join together.

11)   No weight lost after traveling for three months will come off the thighs. This is as true as the suitcase principle explained above.

12)   Do not ask anyone in a shop how to find a major street. They have no idea how they traveled to work.

13)   Most Americans seem to spend the Fourth of July in Paris. (including me, as it turns out).

*** Most Important Travel Tip***

This world is full of caring, interesting people who smile as they help you find your way through the labyrinth of unfamiliar places and languages. My experiences with Airbnb, B&B’s, and hotels has been extraordinary. Every day is stimulating whether it’s raining in Geneva or I’m sick in bed in a Paris apartment watching the pigeons and listening to the music outside. Even if I’m stuck on a train with every Paris child headed to summer camp, their laughter is intoxicating, because I remember my children on a train from Paris to London. Today, I’m writing this on a balcony overlooking a courtyard in an ordinary neighborhood in Milan. I can just see the spire of the Duomo above the buildings. I think of my niece and her family who were here a couple of weeks before me. We’re all connected, even when we are apart. Even when language differences make conversation difficult, we communicate by smiling and finding common words

Traveling this way and staying with people in their homes has enriched my life so much more than isolating myself in hotels. Hotels are a great retreat, though, for regrouping and meditating after a lot of stimulation. And while it is sometimes hard to pack the suitcase again or look for another train, it’s all been worth it.