Breaking in a new book

In what some might say is spectacular turn-around time, the US Department of State returned my new passport to me in exactly 2 weeks from when I mailed it.  This new passport book, which apparently has a microchip embedded in it, is so new it creaks when I open it!  I got the book with extra pages this time around, as I nearly filled my last passport.  Here's hoping to more of the same!

So it seems its inaugural trip with me will be Tanzania, unless an impromptu escape somewhere else intervenes.  I'm finding it sort of cool to wonder exactly where it'll be headed with me.

Replacing a constant travel companion

It happens to all of us who travel internationally, and when it does, it's always bittersweet.  It's now time to replace my beloved passport.  I say "replace" rather than "renew" because this one will be completely different, accompany me to entirely different destinations and probably look a whole heck of a lot different.  I say bittersweet because it represents the trail across the globe I've taken in the last 10 years and it was with me every step of the way.  I'll have to make friends with a new little leather traveling buddy, but I look forward to breaking it in!

So as I send my dog-eared, wear-softened passport off on its own solo trip, I'll fondly remember everywhere it ably accompanied me in the last 10 years:

Dublin and Edinburgh (May 2003)
Florence (March 2004)
Prague and Vienna (October 2004)
Tuscany (May 2005)
Paris and Venice (May 2006)
Madrid, Barcelona, Seville (November 2006)
Amsterdam and Cologne (April 2007)
Rome (November 2007)
Paris and Vienna (April 2008)
London (February 2009)
Moscow and St. Petersburg (September 2010)
Paris (December 2010)
China (September 2011)
Berlin (September 2012)