Moms. I gots lots.

Mother's Day celebrates mothers. For me it celebrates people who are mothers to me and my child. They don't have to necessarily have a child but they have the sense of mind to give sound advice and comfort when needed. Moms come in so many shapes and sizes. They also seem to understand when you need a hug, a good cry, when you need love or in some cases when you need to hear the plain truth. 

I am so lucky. I was a single mom, but I was never alone. I can't even begin to thank the wonderful people in my life for helping me to be a decent mom trying to raise a decent human. Thank you for giving me hard truths when I needed to hear them. Thank you for telling me plainly when I was a big fuck up. Thank you for being there for me and Scout.  I love you more than I can possibly express. Happy Mother's Day,  to my village of strong women . ❤

Il était une fois....

Once upon a time... 

I grew out of believing in fairy tales. Scout and I moved in with my parents after my fairy tale ended. My faith slipped away as we sat on the carpet of my childhood room. Scout was full of excitement and promise. She had just started Kindergarten and wanted to tell me everything. We took time every night to read and just talk about our day together. 

Starting over was not easy. My heart ached as I fought my sadness but kept up my spirits for Scout. Our talks at the end of the day was a way for us to connect and enjoy each other's company. Earlier in the day, I felt like I would never feel hopeful or happy. It followed me all day and I wanted to shake that feeling. There had to be a way for me to find hope, to feel excitement...to fill my heart again. When I got back, Scout and I took our places on the carpet and chatted away. I knew there had to be something to look forward to so I asked Scout, "Where do you want to go when you graduate from high school? Pick something so crazy that it would be amazing when we make it!".

She said,"Paris. I want to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris."

I told her, "Let's get crazier. Let's go for New Year's Eve. We'll celebrate in Paris for New Year's Eve. You'll be in college and we can go wherever we want!". 

The plan for Our Little Trip was born. 

At that time (and many times in between), I had no idea how we were going to get there, but I knew that we were going to get there somehow. It was a goal that was so far away, but we talked about it every year: what we were going to see, what we'd wear, how fun it would be. We would go to the bookstore and camp out for hours over our warm beverages (she had cocoa and I had coffee) and mound of books. Really.. who am I kidding, this was a weekly visit to the bookstore, but once a year, we'd have books about Paris. 

Scout and I had many adventures near and far. Sometimes we were together. Sometimes we were apart when she was visiting her father. In all of those times, she knew that she was always my first choice. I was fortunate enough to get to Paris a few years back, but without Scout.

On this day, the morning we leave for our epic trip, I am a ball of so many emotions. I've been stressed out, angry, happy, grateful, sad, amazed and just...overwhelmed. I knew that this day would eventually come and these feelings would manifest themselves in too many random ways.

Currently, my warm blanket has been the way I've tried to hide myself from the inevitable: my little girl is no longer little. The Kindergarten innocence that once blinked its wide, brown eyes at me has been replaced with an 18 year old, college freshman who enjoys sleeping and watching movies. 

I'm packed and ready to go,  but knowing this trip is coming means... this is it. 

This. Is. It. 

Every moment of our planning is coming to this.  

Wings up,  friends.  Scout and I are ready to fly! 

Xoxo

Emma

We're Back With a Vengeance!

Welcome readers... AGAIN to the new and improved Library Girls Travel Blog. When we last left off, your favorite blogesses, Lizzie and Emma stopped writing about 5 years ago. 

It's a lapse we'd rather not repeat. For this, we apologize and will try to do better by you, our loyal readers. 

Starting again is difficult after a half decade hiatus, but rest assured, we'll be back with gusto and planning ANOTHER trip to Europe. The apple is not falling far from our travel tree as we will, once again, be visiting the metropolitan cities of London and Paris. This time, we will be travelling with Taylor and (the new adult person) Scout! 

This trip has been a long time in the planning. Scout, as a wee Kindergarten lass, and I were in a low place. We had moved to a smaller place together and were not in any financial position to do anything but dream of bigger things. In our many chats, I asked Scout to give me a dream for her Senior Trip; a dream SO big that when we achieved it, it would be epic. She said, "I want us to go to Paris together.".

Paris: a place that I had dreamed about for so long that the mere thought of it made my heart flutter. 

Paris: the magnificent city where I could use my toddler-status French language that I studied in high school. 

Paris: a destination so far away that the THOUGHT of going made my wallet weep dusty tears.

Paris: a 13 year time period to shoot for the goal to make Scout's dream a reality. 

As you all know, I made it to Paris without Scout in 2009 as an addition to mine and Lizzie's trip to London. I asked permission from Scout and she said I was forbidden to do one thing and I was to wait until we were together: Go to Disneyland Paris, so I didn't. I spent my solo time wandering the Père Lachaise cemetery and getting lost in the haute couture underbelly of Paris (no seriously... I didn't want to be there because I didn't belong there !). 

There's a quote that has stayed with me for a long time. I heard it many years ago before my own trip to Paris. Gwyneth Paltrow had recounted her first trip to Paris with her father when she was 11 years old. Her father had said to her,  "I wanted your first trip to Paris to be with the one man who is going to love you for the rest of your life." 

This is what I'll say to Scout when it's a quiet time in Paris, "I wanted your first trip to Paris to be with me, the mother who has loved you since the day you were born and will continue to love you for the rest of your life."

Over all of the challenges in our lives, we'll always have each other. With everything against us, we will have made it to our destination together. I look forward to that day and I can't wait to share it with her and all of you. 

xoxo
Emma 

The Resurrection

We are incredibly sorry.  

Really sorry.

It's been way too long.

We'll  do better,  I promise! 

We have a trip that's brewing and we want to share our experiences planning and on our adventure. 

Welcome back, dear readers!

Adventure is out there!!

Xoxo

Emma 

I admit...

I've had adventures and not shared them with you all. 

I've had so much to say and I haven't been able to write a stitch since I've. Been. Lazy. 

There, I said it. It's out there. 

Frankly, there is no good excuse to why I haven't written. I could tell you that it was my work that was causing me not to want to write. Or enjoying watching Scout play soccer was a reason. 

There are no valid reasons or justifiable excuses for my lapse in putting word to page. 

My solid vow is to make sure I get back into writing again so I can share some of the fun things I do in hopes that you go out and have adventures of your own, too! 

So, I am extremely sorry for not keeping up and I assure you that I will do better this time! 

:D

xoxo
Emma

Finding new adventures

Everyone who loves to travel has a bucket list of places they want to go, or things they want to do. Sometimes the list is a formal one, longingly written in a journal or commonplace book or typed into a computer document. Ever evolving, probably being added to faster than items can be crossed off. Sometimes the list is short and unspoken, internalized. The person who swears that one day (s)he will see Paris from atop the Eiffel Tower, or gaze upon the Sphinx whilst camelback, or snorkel in the Great Barrier Reef.

These are dreams that are so ingrained in a person that there's no need to be on the lookout for them. But not all travel has to be of the major vacation, fulfilling-a-lifelong-goal variety. There's also the day trip, overnight, long weekend, close-to-home adventure out there waiting to be discovered. People have often asked me, "How did you hear about that place?"

So here are some of my secrets to finding new adventures:

• Local and/or National Magazines- I religiously read Sunset Magazine and make notes of recommended hotels, restaurants, and things to do. Sunset focuses on life in the Western U.S., but there are usually other regional magazines, such as Southern Living, that would do the trick for different parts of the country. Sunset always has a section for day or weekend trips to places I never would have thought to visit. Who would think to spend a whole day visiting Alameda, or spending  a night in Petaluma?
  
  National publications, such as Travel + Leisure are also good, but more for those "pie in the sky" someday trips. But here's where technology can be your friend. I make notes of recommended hotels, eateries and sights in a database. That way if the opportunity for a trip to Italy or Japan ever comes up, I've already got a head start on planning.

•  Travel Channel- Though it may feel like they've gone away from their original format a bit, and there are more shows that do nothing for me ("Baggage Battles," "Bizarre Foods," "Ghost Adventures") than shows that are truly useful (Samantha Brown, Anthony Bourdain, etc.), I sometimes still find inspiration from cable TV. I must confess to having a spreadsheet with over 1,000 entries of nothing but places to eat that I saw watching Travel Channel or Food Network shows. It may seem like a waste of time to some, but I'll tell you, when you suddenly find yourself going to Portland, Oregon, and the list says that Voodoo Doughnut is a must, you'll be glad for compulsive note-taking.

• Online Deal Sites- If research and note-taking isn't your thing because you're more about spontaneity, consider signing up for one or more of the various "daily deal"-type websites out there. I love, love, love Travelzoo. Every Wednesday they publish their "Top 20" travel deals. Some are international, but there are usually really good local deals as well. Last year Emma, Scout and I went whale watching on Monterey Bay for $25 each with a Travelzoo deal. Groupon has teamed with Expedia to offer their Groupon Getaways, and there's also Living Social and Google Offers, and Travel + Leisure has a deals site called Vacationist for deals on upscale hotels. A couple of years back Emma and I got a great deal at the Tonga Room at the Fairmont in San Francsico through Google. Just be sure that the site you've signed up for is reputable, and be aware that there's potential for your in-box to be flooded with emails.

~Lizzie~

Re-re-introductions

This is the part where your faithful blogesses confess to not being so faithful after all. Has it really been more than a year since our last post? Shameful. 

Perhaps it's time for a re-commitment ceremony of sorts.

Hi there. We're Emma and Lizzie. We both work in libraries. We both like to travel.

In actuality one of the reasons our blog has fallen by the wayside in the last couple  of years is that we were both assigned to work in the same section of the same library within our system. And our system has been incredibly short-staffed for more than a few years now. So getting time off to go on BFF trips was extremely difficult. During this period we each traveled independently of each other-- Emma to San Diego, Oregon, Seattle and Las Vegas; Lizzie back to the UK. And there's always Disneyland and San Francisco. 

But the recent professional separation of your dynamic duo-- Emma finally got her dream job working in her hometown branch-- means we can hopefully return to our globetrotting ways. We have one adventure under our belt already, more on that in a soon-to-be-written post, and we've got something very interesting in the hopper. 



~Emma and Lizzie~