Beds of 2012

How many beds will we sleep in during 2012? I’m guessing 48. Anyone else care to wager?

1. January 1st, woke up at Eric & Rhonda’s house in their guest/kid’s bed. That’s lucky since that’s where we meant to wake up.

2. January 2 – 3. Denise and Michael’s house at Two-Acre Wood in Sebastopol. We house sat for them from Dec. 28 – Jan. 4th. (Thanks! It was lovely.)

3. Jan. 4-8 and 12-17. The home of Moira and Clare on Volkerts Road in Sebastopol, next door to our dear friends, Mike & Pat Hayes. (Thanks Moira & Clare!)

4. Jan. 9th, Harbin Hot Springs. A wonderful trip with our friend, Glenn, to soak and relax before our trip.

5. Jan. 10 – 11. Our home at Lake Tahoe, CA where we spent a couple nights preparing the place for vacation rentals. We shall miss you, Lake Tahoe.

6. Jan. 19 – April 30. This is the bed at our apartment in Florence.

7. February 16th – Venice, Hotel Ateneo.

8. Feb. 17 – Ferrara, Italy. Hotel Orologio. Nice place and we appreciated being able to use the bicycles for free.

9. March 2nd and 3rd. We stayed at a small little agriturismo (working farm) in the Tuscan countryside for my birthday. This was actually two twin beds pushed together into one and held together by a king sized sheet. Very common in Europe. Not our favorite bed, but a beautiful place to spend a few days.

10. March 9-12. Hotel Park in Rovinj, Croatia. Nice hotel with a gorgeous view of the Adriatic and the town of Rovinj. Actual twin beds pushed close together without even a king sized sheet holding them together. We cuddled into one bed most of the time.

11. March 12 – 15. Nice little one-bedroom apartment at Villa Haya on the southern coast of the island of Krk, Croatia. Great bed.

12. March 15 – 18. Rooms Vuk at Plitvicka Lakes National Park in Croatia.

13. March 29 – April 1. Paris. Grand Hotel Leveque on Rue Cler on the Left Bank. It’s a small, boutique hotel on a charming street with lovely and helpful staff.

14. April 10 – 14. LOIS ONLY. Hotel Nettuno, Bardolino, Italy (on the shores of Lake Garda). For 5 lonely nights, Lois slept in this bed while George was at home in Florence. This was for the choral festival that Lois was attending with the California Redwood Chorale.

15. April 20 – 21. Torino. We had the wonderful good fortune to spend a few days with some friends of friends in Torino. Our friend, Diana, invited us to go with her to visit her friends Fabrizio and Gabrielle. Gabrielle let us sleep in his flat for the weekend. Lovely bed. Lovely family. Lovely time.

16. May 1 – 5. Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, England. We stayed with our friends Pat & Paul, and their two lovely boys, Ethan and Ellis. They just finished getting their loft room together, so we were the first in the new bed!

17. May 6 – 7. London, England. The Wellington Hotel near Victoria Station. We didn’t like this place, but it’s one redeeming quality was this very comfortable bed.

18. May 8 – 28. Chellaston, Derbyshire, England. We are enjoying a 3 week stay in a country manor house near the town of Derby in central England. The house is fantastic, the gardens stunning, and the weather is so very, very English. Although there are 3 lovely beds to choose from, this is the one we’ve temporarily made our own.

19. May 23 – 24. Badger’s Wood B&B in Keswick, Lake District National Park. This was a fantastic base of operations for seeing the National Park for a few days. I highly recommend it. Anne and Andrew were wonderful hosts and the breakfasts were great. We actually got to have a full English breakfast (with veggie bacon and sausage.) Delicious.

20. May 29 – May 31. Abbott Lodge Guesthouse, Dublin, Ireland. This place was tiny and funky. I probably wouldn’t stay here again, but the price was right for this quite expensive city.

21. June 1 – 4. Fruit Hill Cottages, New Ross, Ireland. This little cottage was absolutely fantastic. Our hosts, Susan and Richard, were so warm and helpful and really made us feel like extended family. I would go back here in a heartbeat and spend a lot more time.

22. June 5 – 6. The home of Nicholas and Siobhan. This was our first Servas visit. Servas is a worldwide, non-governmental, multicultural organization promoting peace through interactions between travelers and hosts. This year we are travelers. Some year, we hope to be hosts. Nicholas and Siobhan have been absolutely wonderful and we hope to have them visit us someday.

23. June 7 – 14. Danny and Marian Smith’s home in County Cork on Toe Head peninsula. This is Danny & Marian’s first home exchange experience. We absolutely love it here. This 3 bedroom house has been lovingly updated and remodeled over the last two years. The setting couldn’t be more beautiful.

24. June 15th. An Towerin Tra B&B on the Dingle Peninsula. This lovely B&B had a fantastic view of Ventry Bay, just outside Dingle Town. It would have been lovely to spend another night or two here.

25. June 16 – 28. This was only one of 5 beds in the home we stayed in just outside Galway, near the town of Athenry, though we only slept in the one bed.

26. June 19. We went to the Aran Islands for a night and stayed at Clai Ban B&B.

27. June 28. We stayed at a hotel near the Dublin airport because we had an early flight the next morning. This was a big, practical hotel that happened to be hosting lots of Germans that night. We watched the Euro 2012 soccer semi-finals between Germany and Italy, after which there were a lot of depressed Germans in the lobby.

28. June 29 – July 13. We stayed in a great little community called Zaton Mali, just north of Dubrovnik. The house was funky, but the location was spectacular. We’re trying to get used to the two single beds pushed together into one bed, but we still prefer the one mattress arrangement. This is the two bedroom house we shared with our good friends, Shaun and John, when they came to visit.

29. July 14 – 16. Hotel Family Glumac in Plitvice Lakes National Park. Beautiful setting. They even gave us a new room when I asked for a true double bed.

30. July 17. Cavtat, a little community near the Dubrovnik airport, is a very touristy resort area, which usually isn’t our style. We did have a fantastic meal, though, at a restaurant called Buganvila, and we enjoyed a spectacular sunset there.

31. July 18 – 24. Perast, Montenegro. This little town on Kotor Bay really feels like old-world Europe. Our apartment has a lovely view and this place has 3 double beds to choose from!

32. July 25 – 31. We have a sweet room at a hotel called Garni Hotel Rute in the Julian Alps of Slovenia. The room has a magnificent view from our balcony.

33. August 1-2. Back in Florence for 2 nights to take care of some stuff (haircuts, cell phone, mobile internet, etc.) and meet up with friends. We stayed at the unremarkable Hotel Victoria.

34. August 3. Staying at our friend Emanuela’s castle in the Tuscan countryside near Volterra.

35. August 4-5. Our first sofa bed. This is in a studio apartment near Pisa that was very cute, even though the bed wasn’t all that cute.

36. Aug. 6 – Sept. 4. We have the most amazing view of Lake Como from this bed. There are tiny little playboy bunny icons all over the bedspread. We LOVE this apartment in Lezzeno.

37. Sept. 2. We spent one night at B&B Leoni 2 in the little town of Torri del Benaco at Lake Como. We went from here to see an opera in the Roman Amphitheater of Verona. This was a really lovely spot.

38. September 4th. I’m not sure if this one really counts. We took the night train from Milan to Bari, so we spent the night on the train. Here’s our compartment, with one of our “bunk mates”.

39. Sept. 5 – 8. After arrival in Bari, we rented a car and drove to the little town of Marina di Pulsano, right on the Ionian coast just south of Taranto. We stayed at Hotel Sud overlooking a wonderful white-sand beach.

40. Sept. 8 – 11. We thought we were going to spend the whole month of September in Puglia, but then we heard about Italy’s largest national park – Parco Nationale del Pollino, on the border of Basilicata and Calabria. We stayed in a very funky little cabin at a place called Papa Village, near the town of Mormanno.

41. Sept. 12 – 14. I know it looks like I’m just repeating bed number 39, but I’m not. After our 4 nights in Pollino National Park we returned to Hotel Sud. We were in room 205 this time, rather than 201, but the bed felt identical, which is to say a little hard and uncomfortable, but you can’t beat having a balcony overlooking a white sand beach for under $20 per night for 2 people including breakfast!

42. Sept. 15 – 21. We stayed in a little apartment on the Adriatic Sea, very near to the town of Vieste in the Gargano Peninsula. This is the “spur” of the heel of the boot of Italy, at the northern end of the Puglia region.

43. Sept. 22-24. We drove up to Umbria to visit our friend Ben, whom we met on our last trip to Italy. We got to meet his parents, Pete and Joan, on this trip. We had a lovely time with them and we got a chance to remember just how beautiful this region of Umbria really is!

44. Sept. 25. Back down to Puglia. We stayed one night in a cute little resort called L’isola Felice (Happy Island) in the town of Castellana Grotte, famous for its stunning caves.

45. Sept. 26. Another “one night stand”. We stayed one night near the town of Ostuni, the “white city”. It is on a hill overlooking the Adriatic and the buildings reminded us a little of Greece.

46. Sept. 27 – Oct. 1. This is the most adorable apartment we’ve had so far. It is in the town of Salve, almost at the very tip of the boot, in the Salento part of Puglia. It is hot and dry down here, but the sea is gorgeous and warm.

47. October 2nd. Milan. This is just an overnighter in order to catch our flight to Barcelona tomorrow morning. We stayed at a seriously overpriced hotel near the airport called Hotel Bernina. I don’t recommend it. We survived though and breakfast was pretty good.

48. October 3 – 8. Barcelona. We found a little apartment through Airbnb. It was in a sweet little neighborhood, out of the tourist hubbub, yet near to a metro stop. We loved the view out over the city.

49. October 9. We stayed with our friends Diane and Pete for one night before taking a flight back to Milan. This bed in their lovely little 2-bedroom flat in Barri El Gotic was much nicer than this photo makes it look.

50. October 10. Another overnight near the airport at Hotel Ibis Milano Malpensa. Very nice! Much cheaper than the train station area, too.

Note: October 11 was our flight from Milan to Bali. 

51. October 12 – Nov 10. Our fabulous little bungalow in Abiansemal, Bali at Cozy Wayan Sueta B&B, which we found on Airbnb.

52. October 27. We took an overnight trip up to the northwest part of Bali to see the West Bali National Park. The snorkeling at Menjangan Island was fantastic. We stayed at a little hotel in the town of Pemuteran.

53. Oct. 31. We took another trip to Amed, Bali, on the eastern side of the island and stayed at Bali Amed Hotel. We had a stunning view of the sea from our balcony.

54. Nov 1-2. We took a ferry from Amed to the Gili Islands, just off the coast of Lombok. We stayed at Good Heart Bungalows on the island of Gili Meno. The accommodations were basic, but the white sand beach was to die for. Great snorkeling just in front of the hotel, too.

55. Nov. 11 – Nov. 30. We flew from Bali to Cairns, Australia and stayed at a home in Lake Placid on the outskirts of Cairns. This was a fantastic home exchange for us.

56. Dec. 1 – 17. Buderim, Australia. This was a home exchange on the Sunshine Coast with a fantastic view and a lovely little pomeranian to keep us company.

PHOTO PENDING

57. Dec. 18. Downtown Backpacker Hotel in Wellington. Crappy little room and way too expensive for what we got, but at least it was only one night. Very convenient to the train station.

58. Dec. 19 – 26. Lovely little house a few blocks from the beach, north of Wellington in the town of Otaki (pronounced O-tacky).

59. Dec. 23 – Camping at Pipiriki in the Whanganui National Park. Beautiful spot.

60. Dec. 27 – Jan. 6. Absolutely stunning home in Redcliffs (a suburb of Christchurch, NZ). This home had the most spectacular view of anyplace we stayed.

FINAL TALLY = 60 BEDS IN 2012!

Notes: We had 20 “one night stands”, places where we spent only one night. I counted one night on an overnight train, but I didn’t count our overnight flight from Milan to Bali.

Adjustments: Since we slept in 5 beds before leaving the U.S., if we wanted to see how many beds we slept in during our “round the world” adventure year, we would subtract those 5 and add the following: