It is our last Travel Tuesday of January and this week you can write a post, link up, and share with us all about your Travel Misadventures. Have you ever had a trip where everything went wrong, a trip that you looked forward to but was an epic failure, or a trip that was great except that one crazy mishap? =

Things are bound to go wrong. One such memory I have is on the tail end of my several week long solo adventure in Australia. I was coming home and was on one of a few planes to get me to my final destination. I was coming home with many great memories and momentos from the weeks that had passed. Up until this trip Australia had been my numero uno place to visit and I had greeted it like an excited school girl. That summer of 2002 after my first year of Uni under my belt, had been everything I had hoped it would be.

That is when I am on the plane and I have a flight attendant come up to me and talk to me about my bags. This is after we have experienced a delay due to something about luggage. I can already feel the heat rushing to my face. One of my souveniors is a huge size bottle of cordial, a syrupy substance you dilute heavily with water to make a sweet drink. Apparently it had exploded or at least the plastic bottle had cracked open. It sounded like it had made quite a mess and now I was quite embarrassed. When I finally got to my destination and picked up my luggage I was saddened to find out that not only had it gotten over pretty much the majority of my things but it had ruined a few of them too. A souvenior Aussie rules football magazine from the game I went too that I got for my then boyfriend (my now husband of 11.5 years) was pretty much a goner. Word to the wise watch what you decide to take home with you.

In more recent travels it makes me think about what happened when I took my husband home to Naples, Italy with me. It was a much anticiapted trip as he had heard me talking about my years growing up in bella Italia since 2001 and it was now 2012. You can read all about it in my night in an Italian Jail.

Stay tuned for next week when I will announce the new Travel Tuesday co-hosts for next week and with a final goodbye to our current hosts on next week’s post!

If you could return to a place you have traveled before, where would you go?  This is just about as easy as a question for me to answer as is “Where would you go that you have never been before?”  For me I am personally fueled to return to places so that my family can experience it with me too.  Most of the travels I have done have been before or without my husband and kids.  In fact my children have yet to step forth on mainland Europe and I am so eager to take them to all the places I visited and lived growing up as an Air Force child.  Some of the places on my list are:

 1. Germany/Austria/Switzerland: I have lumped all these countries together because it is apart of Europe that I really love so much. I hold fond memories of summers and winters spent across that region with my dad as a young girl and teenager. I want to go camping and hiking in the mountains, to go snowboarding, eat germknodel, and experience a German Christmas. Really I could list a whole blog of reasons for each country but to suffice to say that I cannot wait to return there with my familia.

2. Italy. I have since moving back to Europe have returned here with my husband. However my kids have yet to taste ‘real’ pizza and visit a gelataria. I cannot wait to take them home to Napoli so they can meet my Italian familia.

3. Norway/Sweden/Denmark. We traveled here as a young girl with my family and I really want to return and also to add Finland to the mix.

Those are my top three places and I kinda cheated a bit by lumping several places all together. But when you have let places touch your heart like I have it is hard to leave anything out. Speaking of which I cannot wait to return to Cambodia & Thailand, Japan (and see more than just the airport), Australia (and then see New Zealand) and will have to return home to Hawaii nei one day too. Travel anyone?

Q: Where would you return to and why? Or better yet link up with a blog post about travel for the link up!

Music seems to be synonymous with travel.  I love especially how songs can be tied to memories and all it takes is listening to a piece of music to take you back to a precious trip.  It can be the best way to travel vicariously when you are currently having a staycation.  As a fan of Spotify I have been looking at different music that reminds me of places and trips around the world.  As I was looking up some of the most popular travel songs while updating my growing list of spotify playlists I found some good travel related songs.  Many of which I am still a huge fan of like:

 Peter, Paul and Mary: ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ (1967)
Bruce Springsteen: ‘Born to Run’ (1975)
Willie Nelson: ‘On the Road Again’ (1980)
Simon and Garfunkel: ‘Homeward Bound’ (1966)
The Go-Go’s: ‘Vacation’ (1982)
Iggy Pop: ‘The Passenger’ (1977)

But now I need your help! What other great songs should I add to the travel playlist?