2023 Review: Living Our Best Life
Compared to 2022, 2023 was a huge relief. Lots of cool activities that make us say we’re living our best life.
MALTA
: It was in Malta that we spent New Year’s Eve. Malta which we visited for the first time (JB had been there for a week with his family as a teenager). It’s a bit of a return to our roots because JB is 25% Maltese. Oh, how we love this country! There’s a certain sweetness to life! The country is tiny, so it’s very easy to see everything; you just rent a car every now and then and you can go from one end of the country to the other in 45 minutes. It was weird seeing doppelgängers of JB’s grandfather on every street corner, haha, and seeing his name everywhere (he has a very popular Maltese name, like Smith or Johnson in the US). We felt right at home.
ITALY
Since Sicily is nearby, we were able to take a boat to get there. After a few days in Syracuse (my dream), then in Catania, we spent a month in a spacious Airbnb in Palermo while exploring the surrounding areas. Being in such a large and central Airbnb did us a world of good. JB was able to learn new things while I finished crafting my very first leather bag. It just goes to show that the environment was just as important as motivation or talent.
Since we weren’t too far away, we spent a few days in Pompeii, à Naples before spending a week in Rome in March. Seeing Rome so crowded confirmed how lucky we were to be there during the peak of COVID in 2020 and to have the Sistine Chapel all to ourselves. It did me a world of good to see my friend Simona again. Remember, Simona is a kobido massage therapist and I finally got to see the new design of her massage studio: complete with a tatami mat and feng shui decor. Plus, Simona has improved even more since last time; in just two massages, she gave me back the youthfulness of my face (more on that later).
THE BALKANS
This year, we added 3 new Balkan countries to our list of visited countries: Serbia (March), Kosovo (April), and Bulgaria (July). These countries can be visited very quickly, partly because there aren’t many tourist attractions and partly because they’re quite small. We loved the vibe; the people were incredibly kind, and the food was excellent and organic (Serbia is the largest supplier of organic vegetables in Europe, for an original reason: for years, it couldn’t import chemical fertilizers due to international sanctions, so it had to do without).
The small country of Kosovo impressed us from the start. A Tesla taxi picked us up at the bus station. Yes, it’s indeed in Kosovo that we took a Tesla for the first time. Who would have thought! We rented cars to explore beyond the capitals and really enjoyed our little road trips. Our stay in Bulgaria was made even cooler by a visit from my friend O.
Sofia is definitely THE place to be for digital nomads. I understand why everyone goes there.
NETHERLANDS & BELGIUM
A new country to add to the list (where until now we had only visited the airport): the Netherlands ! We finally fulfilled one of my biggest dreams: seeing the tulip fields and visit Amsterdam for the first time.
We took the opportunity to tour Belgium. In Antwerp, we unintentionally opted for an Airbnb inside a retirement home (ahahaa) and it was surprisingly comfortable. I spent my life at the Plantin MuseumWe did a little road trip by train in Belgium (Liège, Brussels, Bruges, Namur), I highly recommend traveling by train in Belgium; it’s on time and not expensive. You can see a clear difference between French-speaking Belgium and Flemish Belgium: the French speakers know how to eat well! We took advantage of asparagus season to taste their traditional recipe.
TURKEY
One month in Istanbul (where we quickly saw our friend K. again) and then 4 days in Göreme made us a bit sad because we saw the impact of inflation and the devaluation of the Turkish lira on the people, as well as the various disasters hitting the country (earthquake, migration crisis). Turks are still super kind, but there’s no longer that sweetness of life in their eyes. It pained us a lot, especially since we see our wonderful dentist each time, and the news gets worse every year.
FRANCE
We’ve been spending more and more time in France since my niece was born <3 in 2022.
From a short stay in May where I did a linocut workshop, I traveled to Paris with my friend Simona, then to Chartres to visit my future stained glass workshop. We returned to France in August to look after my sister’s cat. We saw M. and E., their daughter E. whom we had only seen once when she was a baby. It’s so touching to see our friends’ children and watch them grow up between our visits.
Then we spent a week on a dairy farm before heading to the mountains 1h30 from Lyon in September. We rented a chalet 10 meters away from Vincent’s (JB’s brother) and his girlfriend P.’s place. Occasionally we’d take little excursions in the area. JB trekked every day with his brother to prepare for their future adventure. While in the mountains, we indulged in seafood every weekend because Vincent knew how to shuck oysters 😀 Just when I thought I could live in a mountain chalet forever, a storm had me mopping up rainwater for 2 hours in the middle of the night, and all I wanted was to go to Lyon.
This long stay in France did me a lot of good because I got to do DIY at an intensive pace. I made great progress in leather crafting. After researching William Morris, a genius who mastered a dozen artisan crafts, I realized I was underestimating my dexterity; I just lacked practice. I bought a cutting machine, which I had dreamed of for years, and it allowed me to do projects I couldn’t do by hand.
M. and I visited the rare book fair in Paris. I think it’s one of the events that impacted me most in 2023 because I knew nothing about that world.
NEPAL
JB and Vincent left for 3 weeks in Nepal to climb up to Everest base camp. It was grueling, full of drama, twists and turns, frustration, and luck. JB recounted his adventure here. Spoiler : they made it!! Without the intensive training in the Massif Central, it would have been tough for both of them, but they got themselves in shape in time for this grueling trek.
Meanwhile, I was traveling solo in Europe. Between my bookbinding workshop in Tours (where I met up with friends again, and above all their adorable daughters <3, and my stepfather who showed me his beautiful book collection), my visit toIlliers-Combray and my stained glass workshop in Chartres, M. came to join me in Chartres. We had an incredible stay. We saw the cathedral lit up in the evening and explored the Chartres labyrinth on Friday morning.
Next, I visited Gdansk which I’d always wanted to discover (in Poland), then Prague (Czech Republic). It was in Prague that I had a setback, all the energy drained from my body, and unfortunately I saw very little. I then spent 10 days in Nice for reasons I’ll reveal, hopefully, in a few months.
Symphony of the Seas
JB and I met up in Barcelona, where our transatlantic cruisestarted. It was a repositioning cruise, which means it’s cheaper than a regular cruise and the trip lasts 14 nights in total. There were many twists and turns; for example, on the first night, a passenger jumped off the boat (he was rescued!), and then we later found out, while digging through archives, that in 2017, we were in Nazaire during the construction of this ship, and we took a photo with it. Yes, without knowing we’d ever board it. Since it’s the second largest cruise ship in the world, we never thought we’d get on it.
USA
Symphony of the Seas dropped us off in Fort Lauderdale, where we caught a flight to Las Vegas. We rented a car for a 35-day road trip (and I caught up with G., whom I hadn’t seen in over 10 years)!! It was our first trip to the American West, and it was a feast for the eyes.
PERU
To round off the year, we spent 12 hours in total on 2 planes to reach Lima, then Cusco. Completely KO from the altitude change (Cusco being at +3000 meters above sea level), we’re still extremely happy because Cusco is one of those places where I feel the best in the world. There’s an incredible energy; for the Incas, it was the navel of the world. Someone like me who had no battery left, it’s as if I got recharged in USB-C mode in Cusco. There are so many things to visit in the surroundings, and of course, the people are absolutely lovely, we eat SO well (ceviche, arroz con mariscos yum yum). There’s no better place to end the year.
CHEERS
After JB’s emergency surgery in 2022, JB and I noticed a decline in health.
JB, because of his non-existent gallbladder, has been fumbling a bit to find a more suitable diet. It wasn’t easy in the first months. And then he had to urgently see an ophthalmologist and a dentist in the middle of a road trip in the USA.
I don’t know if it’s related to the shock of JB’s 2022 surgery or just “old age”, but my elephant-like memory suddenly turned into a “goldfish memory”. Within a few months, I lost all my energy and aged a lot without knowing why. According to a dermatologist, there are these “plateaus” where you suddenly age all at once. To remedy this, I took up reading again, at an ultra-intensive level (I read 120 books in a year thanks to my reMarkable, including the 7 volumes ofIn Search of Lost Time) to regain my memory, and Simona, with her miraculous hands, managed to save my face.
But we both realized we were putting way too much pressure on ourselves at work and that we had to do something. For several months, JB had a very heavy workload: he had to take on a managerial role, replacing colleagues who had left or resigned (while still being a contractor, part-time, and remote!). And I had to compensate for the effects of the economic crisis on my clients by working +++.
That’s why JB definitively abandoned his law studies. This also explains why, at the end of the year, JB went into “vacation” mode by going to Nepal and then taking the cruise ship. JB is someone who can’t help but work on weekends for years. These two experiences forced him to completely disconnect for the first time.
As for me, after several months in zombie mode, I went on sabbatical in May. This means that now I only do what I love. But I exhaust myself as much when I work as when I don’t, because intensive reading is tiring (I don’t read easy books), and crafting demands extreme concentration. Reading, however, did me good morally; I felt understood and supported in some books. I’m giving myself one to two years to test a bunch of things, find a balance and see what I like most, hence my many workshops. I admit having a particular obsession with the world of books, not just bookbinding but also printing, typography, layout (DTP), illustrations (engraving especially), illumination, fine books etc. I’ll have plenty to keep me busy for years.
In the 2021-2022 review, I wrote that we wanted to have no more calls and be completely free to move, well, we did it!
In summary:
Top 5
- Sleeping at the Everest base camp
- Picking tulips in the Netherlands
- The transatlantic crossing on a cruise ship
- Traveling with my friends (Simona in Paris, M. in Chartres, O. in Sofia)
- All the new things we learned this year
- Our road trip in the USA
Flop 3
- We’re getting old!
- The economic crisis, the war, and the gloomy atmosphere
- Dentist appointment (again)
You see why we consider 2023 as the year we lived our best life.
We really tried to focus on our well-being, it will always be our focus for next year, I think.
Happy New Year 2024 to you, and I hope it brings you health, happiness, and well-being.
2024 is going to be a year of transition before, we hope, a big change in 2025!
