Pants on Fire

I lied. Sue me.

 
A little over a year ago, my beautiful wife and I went to Paris, and I decided to blog the event in real time. It was a little tedious (the blogging, not the beautiful wife), especially considering the consumption of all the wine and duck parts I was also forced to fit into our busy, vacation schedule. I was pretty adamant about never blogging like that again. I even posted as much, so my promise still hangs out there in the ether, like a garlic burp.

Yet, here I am again. Oh well.

I lied. Sue me.

Maybe I missed the challenge (doubtful, considering I’m a chronic coaster). Maybe I thought that documenting our experiences would be beneficial to other travelers (yeah, as if). Maybe I liked the ego-stroking that the blog’s eventual popularity afforded me (oh, now we’re getting warmer). Regardless, promises be damned, I’m back, baby!

This time we are off to Iceland, land of rotting shark cuisine and oddly revered losers of international soccer tournaments, and I’ll be back on-line to document the entire trip. The blog title has been officially changed.

 An A$$Hole in Paris

 

is now 

 

 An A$$hole Abroad
http://aholeabroad.blogspot.com/

 

This better reflects the more generic nature of my wanderlust (while simultaneously preserving my well-established asshole-ness). I even changed the blog’s background colors to prove that I’m at least 32% invested in the success of this project.

Some other things that have changed:

·        Our travelling companions: We’ve swapped out the aunt and uncle from Paris fame and replaced them with my nephew and his girlfriend. The girlfriend’s brother is also coming, who will act as an emergency back-up nephew in case mine gets eaten by revenge-seeking, Icelandic Puffins or succumbs to rotten shark poisoning. Successful travel is all about being prepared.

·        Facebook: I don’t do it anymore. I got tired of blocking mouth-breathing, pro-Trump supporters from my feed, so my blog posts won’t show up there unless links are added by others. If you want to follow along in real time, you’ll either need to 1) sign-up with your email address on the "Follow by Email" link at the right or 2) continuously visit my blog, 24 hours a day, for the entire week we are gone to see if I’ve posted anything new. Unless you are a shut-in, I’m going to go ahead and recommend that first approach.

·        Language: Whenever we travel, I try to learn (or re-learn) a bit of the language beforehand. I think it’s respectful as a guest. As a result, I can say, “Excuse me, where do I post bail?” in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Alabama. However, try as I might, Icelandic is impenetrable to me. I’ve tried. Too many consonants--specifically, too many K’s. Also, too many little dots, slashes, and unidentifiable, linguistic jism sprayed over top otherwise perfectly good vowels. I’ve tried to be a good world citizen, but this time I’m going full court, ugly American. If someone doesn’t understand me, I’m just going to say it louder, in English. I’ll even wave my AmEx card around if need be.

Things that haven’t changed:

·        Food: Yes, I’ll still be taking pictures of and writing a lot about the food and drink we enjoy on our trip. It’s basically the reason I go on vacation. Actually, it’s the reason I do much of anything.

·        Me: I’m still an A$$hole.

 

Stay tuned. The trip starts July 23^rd.