Europe 2023

Not to go all Arnold on you, but… we’re back! :)

I realize now that some of our friends might not have known we were gone. We stay pretty private and don’t tend to announce our travels on Facebook prior to our return, for safety reasons, as you can imagine. 

But now, I must share. Europe 2023 was our longest, toughest, most ambitious adventure yet. 

If you know us well, you probably know that Michael and I are what you could call, hmm, unconventional travelers. We don’t plan trips, in the same way that we didn’t plan on having kids, never remodeled the house, never even bought a flower vase until our fifth year of marriage. We used the blender for the Valentine’s Day roses, once. True story!

We’re that kind of people. The kind who are gifted a beautiful mint plant by a dear friend and then forget about it, and let it die. (Sadly, also a true story). As travelers, Michael and I are likely to stumble around in little European alleys, wandering, drinking wine, getting lost under the setting sun, with barely-there cell phone service and a half-assed plan as to how we intend to find a last-minute hotel (or contact our next Airbnb host). We’re the kind of travelers who fall in love with places that we merely stumble upon and attempt to revisit years later, only to wind down this road and that road, aimlessly, looking to rekindle an old flame with some pub or some restaurant that stole a tiny piece of our hearts.

But our Europe 2023 trip, which ended exactly two weeks ago, had some structure to it. Only ten days after he endured the radical cystectomy that saved his life, Michael declared we were going on a trip in June 2023. And sometime in September, he planned it, a 31-day behemoth of an expedition across Spain and Italy in which we would target eight European cities: Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastian, Barcelona, Rome, Peveragno, and Bologna. 

Spiritually speaking, I knew Michael could do it. But the trips to the ER, the frequent changes in medications, and the endless medical visits that appeared to have no favorable outcomes had me doubting whether Michael could physically endure this voyage he so earnestly desired. I knew the daily encumberments of my husband’s ileostomy bag and the many reservations he felt about them. I knew the anxiety he felt about traveling with all the necessary equipment. He wondered, what exactly would happen at the TSA checkpoint? Would they ask questions, act suspicious, or worse, confiscate precious medical supplies? 

In the end, I think Michael willed himself onto the airplane on May 29th, 2023. And it makes perfect sense, because, well, he is Michael Harrawood. He’s still the man who wanted to teach class virtually from a hospital gurney after a pretty bad motorcycle accident in 2008. He’s still the man I can’t even talk out of grilling meat in the middle of a Florida typhoon. 

The journey was hard for him. It definitely was. But he pushed past the headaches, the vertigo, the colitis, the dehydration, the fatigue, and the emaciation. Walking slowly, treading carefully up and down staircases, in the sunlight, even in the rain, he made it to the plazas, to the markets, to Picasso’s Guernica at the Reina Sofia museum, to The Trevi Fountain, to The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and even uphill all the way to the Duomo in Orvieto. He stumbled the most on the cobblestones of Rome, in Trastevere. He fell twice during this trip, but he got back up each time! And, then, he drove for hours — from Rome to Orvieto, and all the way to Peveragno, which might as well have been Monaco. And finally, to Bologna. 

We drank at least thirty bottles of wine during our gargantuan excursion, by my humblest and most modest of calculations. And my husband and I have no regrets, no apologies to offer the universe for this wanton lavishness that is so characteristically ours. 

I wouldn’t call this a “bucket list” trip, not exactly. So, what should I call it? 

I’d have to steal my husband’s words and simply call it living hard. This trip was a beautiful culmination to the hardest sixteen months of our lives, but – we didn’t do it in case Michael’s cancer comes back. 

We did it because we wanted to obtain, from the universe, permission to keep living. 

Permission was granted. Or, as my husband would put it, we wrested permission out from under the claws of Fate. 

He did the work. Michael went into Europe with a look of frailty and came out of it looking sunkissed, thicker-bodied, with a much improved gait, and with the altered soul that is the sole and true purpose of travel. 

In conclusion, I must say, simply – 

Thank you, Michael, my love. For orchestrating this most delightful, most memorable monster of a journey, in which you invited my parents to join us during the first two weeks in Spain. The memories are invaluable. 

For our lives, and for you, the star-speckled universe has my eternal gratitude. 

With all my love,

Fleur

13 July 2023

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Notes about the Youtube video:

• We listened to Robert Earl Keen's "Feelin Good Again" in Orvieto and Michael squeezed my hand and we both teared up. He said, "Fleur, I was really, really sick for a moment there." And I said, "I know, my love. I know."
• We listened to the "Flower Duet" from the first act of Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and I was so entranced I dropped my beer and it broke. No lie. This happened in San Sebastian.
• We got married to Dolly Parton's "Marry Me," in 2008. Dolly has a special place in our hearts, and we've always particularly loved "Shine," so I had to finish off the video with that song.