kindness of strangers | Sherry Lachelle Travels

I took a flight from Florence to Paris and walked from the metro stop which was located a few minutes from my Airbnb. I was staying in Josephine’s home for nine nights. She was the sweetest lady and rented out her two spare bedrooms. There was a young girl staying in the other room. We all shared the same bathroom.

It was five flights up (no elevator) so I got my exercise.

During my nine night stay Josephine cooked some and her bean soup was delicious! She didn’t speak English and I only knew a few French words, so we would either babble at each other in our own languages and use sign language or use Google translate.

Her baked goods were sinful!

I asked her for a pair of scissors so I could trim my hair and she somehow communicated that she used to be a hairdresser and wanted to do it for me. One day I did laundry in her washer and she wanted to help me hang it to dry. When I returned from exploring she had already folded it for me.

One day I brought her flowers which are in the photo above. She helped with the loneliness of traveling solo and I’ll never forget her kindness.

p.s. In case you’ve just began reading…I planned an 11 week, 5 European country, 21 accommodations solo trip from April – June of 2022. Photos were taken with my LG Velvet Android phone.

Royal Caribbean‘s “Brilliance of the Seas“, set sail from Barcelona in June of 2010 for a 12 night Mediterranean cruise, to include these stunning ports of call — Cannes, France / Livorno, Italy (where most people went to Florence and/or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but we chose to hike through Cinque Terre); Rome, Italy; the Island of Capri off the coast of Italy; Venice (where we docked overnight); Dubrovnik, Croatia; and Corfu, Greece, before returning to Barcelona.

There are pros and cons to cruise travel. Just like every thing in life. But for this type of trip it made sense. I’ve been on three other cruises…all of them to the Caribbean and they seemed to have more of a party atmosphere than this cruise. That suited me because of the long days at each destination and the amount of walking we were doing!

We were upgraded at no additional cost to a room with a window to our pleasant surprise!

There were three formal nights. One of them was a masquerade ball…so I’ll save that for another post!

Fun in the sun!

I awoke at 5:30am to capture the sun rising. I believe we were headed to Corfu, Greece. It almost reminds me of a lunar landscape.

It was white night on the ship…so I bought a dress in Corfu, Greece.

I met a lot of people on the cruise. On the second day of the cruise my camera mal-functioned and I was lamenting my misfortune to a fellow passenger named Dan. I had just met him and was very surprised when he said he had a spare camera and let me borrow it for a few days. That gave me time to purchase one on the ship. The kindness of strangers is wonderful!

This couple, Johan & Heidi, are from South Africa. They were planning to marry in 2011 and I really enjoyed talking with them about their lives/country. They even extended an invitation to visit them…but we’ve lost contact.

Tomorrow we dock in Cannes, France. I’ll see you there!