A Terrible Gap: Jackson Mississippi and More

0

Blues time in Jackson Mississippi with Lynn Brown and Yolanda Clay-Moore of the tourism board.
Blues time in Jackson Mississippi with Lynn Brown and Yolanda Clay-Moore of the tourism board.

Jackson was my first visit to Mississippi, and I had a blast!

Oh Jeez. I hate this. I am seeing now that I’ve left a long gap in between my blog posts here, and that always just bugs the heck out of me. I used to be so regular, I had so much to share, I would post every day.  Now I’ve been traveling and instead of staying up late in my hotel room banging ou blog posts as I once did, I fall fast asleep too soon or have my nose in Reddit. Oh well.

I took a fun trip last weekend, I flew to Jackson, Mississippi, and got a chance to hang out with many interesting African-American women, who in my very white like in New England, seems like a rarity. This is really one of the biggest reasons I so enjoy my traveling life, to get a chance to learn about other cultures and spend time with people who don’t look just like me and my friends. Mississippi is surely nothing like my small New England village, not at all.

NEOM
NEOM is an amazing planned city in NW Saudi Arabia to open over the next few years. It will be the size of Belgium.

Having a big dinner surrounded by travel writers and travelers like these women really is what I most enjoy doing. Learning about where they’ve been, finding out about the destination, and having interesting and different foods, really gets me jazzed up. I can’t wait to travel again.

And I have a great slate of trips on the docket. Next up is Saudi Arabia, where I am going in mid-May to meet with the builders of the incredible NEOM project in the far northwest corner of this big country.

View from our rental in Grimaldi, Liguria Italy.
View from our rental in Grimaldi, Liguria Italy.

Then in June I’ll fly over on the 5th to Marbella for the TBEX conference and speak about travel writing with this esteemed group, including my good friend Tim Leffel.

Then I’ll fly up to Nice, France, and take about five days touring on a press trip in Cote d’Azur, including Nice and some of the other French Riviera towns.  Later, I’ll rendezvous with my daughter Kate, her husband Jon and my granddaughter Sofie for a four-day stay in Garibaldi, Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera.

It all adds up to a great summer…oh, then in July I’m going to Amsterdam to join a Scenic cruise all around the Netherlands. I can’t wait to see my friends Elliot and Jeanie on the ship.