Bon voyage!

Bags packed and ready to go! My trip starts with three train transfers (Long Island Railroad to New Jersey Transit to Newark Airtrain) because I have the good fortune to be flying out of our beloved EWR. Garden State, here I come.

First travel lesson: unlock your phone before you go. Unless, as the helpful gentleman at the Verizon store told me, your phone model cannot be unlocked (as with the elderly Android I was trying to use) or is already unlocked (as with my current, miraculous IPhone 5). Lo and behold (C'mon autocorrect, I said Lo not lol. Give me some credit.), and contrary to conventional wisdom, my IPhone also has a pop-out SIM card. The miracles never cease.

I'm glad I can take an elevated train into the city. New York looks more peaceful and green from this height. Soon, I'll be surrounded by sand and sea, in a country stretching from the vast Sahara in the  south to the storied Mediterranean in the north.