MONTEVIDEO
The morning after we got back from our ten hour Amtrak train ride to Raleigh followed by a 4 hour car ride home it felt so good to sit here in my own house on a beautiful sunny day and relax. I have been looking at my email five times a day, hoping to find a plane ticket to Italy for October 1 to November 28. I found one a month before for $606 round trip from Asheville to Rome. But first I wanted to check with my granddaughter, Caroline, whom I was going to meet in Tuscany. She didn‘t answer and the next day the ticket was back up to $1500. I knew you don‘t fool around deciding on GOING.com, but I did and lost the ticket I wasn‘t going to make that mistake again.
But what I found instead had just arrived from GOING.com (Scott‘s Cheap Flights) was Montevideo round trip from Asheville for $668. This was a rare drop in price to Uruguay which had earlier been $1300 and it was from Asheville.
Our closest airline hub is Charlotte, two hours away by car, or Atlanta, four hours away on in the other direction, Chicago ten hours away. So while these hubs often have lower fares they mean that I have to get someone, twice, to drive at the least the 4 hours round trip to Charlotte to take me and pick me up.
So this flight on American Airlines from Asheville seemed very good. And by exploring a little I found out that for $50 extra I could get an open jaw ticket returning from Buenos Aires, a 3 hour ferry ride from Montevideo. So I didn‘t consult anyone, I bought it, secure in the knowledge that I had 24 hours in which I could cancel the flight without penalty.
So for twenty four hours I took my pulse to see if I really wanted to go. I mentioned it to Susie, who encouraged me. I know little about South America and nothing about Uruguay. I had to look it up on the map to see where it was and discovered that it is an hour to the east Asheville and Eastern Standard Time.
At first I was excited, then I was depressed, all based on no information at all. I finally realized that how I feel now has no bearing on how I will feel in three months when it is time to go. I had nothing to base a decision on. So I finally decided just to let go and float free and to get on the plane when it was time and open myself up to Uruguay and whatever is there. It is an adventure and probably a safe adventure. So all I can do is to relax and open myself up and discover what I am getting myself into when I get there. I didn‘t know anything about Morocco and has a great time there. So why not just go, so I let the 24 hours slide by and I am flying to Montevideo for a month.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 