The Travel Architect

Perhaps the greatest Enigmatic Location Conundrum of all is “where has this ultimate travel quiz been all this time?”. Well the ELC has been on vacation, travelling the world and finding clues that will twist the senses and entangle your reason. But now it’s back, and ready to deliver more cryptic clues than ever before!

The new installment is here for your confusion!

This next ELC is somewhat topical of late, and that can count as your sixth clue (you need to listen to hear the first five).

Give this a listen and a very serious think (no easy starts here):

Go ahead and grab your atlases, have a ponder and leave your answers in the replies below, or send directly to [email protected]. Good luck and thanks for playing this season of The Enigmatic Location Conundrum Mini-Pod.

Podcast episode 173 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

We’re back after a longer-than-planned absence, but we have our excuses at the ready, including the Husband’s knee surgery (which went off without a hitch—we were owed a win on the medical front). After taking time to celebrate the cooler, fall-like temps, I start us off with a joke that foreshadows the travel talk later in the episode. The National Day gives me a chance to tease the Husband about something he hoards, and the Travel Quiz makes me want to both eat and travel (which is all I ever want to do anyway). Next, the Bucket List activity, which combines both culture and nature, elicits two thumbs up. After some updates, in which I reveal the nickname I’ve given the older woman the Husband flirts with at the grocery store, we discuss my recent trip to The Land of Enchantment, highlighting just what’s so great and unique about New Mexico. The travel chat includes my stops not just in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, but my several nights at a hot springs resort that has much more than hot springs, namely, puppies and chickens!! If you didn’t want to go to New Mexico before, you’ll want to visit after listening to this episode.

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 172 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

We’re back from our first Bobbie camping trip, and while one of us is getting ready to travel, the other is getting ready to start the school year. The joke is in honor of that poor schmuck whose life is about to change, and the National Day is in honor of the joke. Next, the AI-suspicious Husband uses AI to generate the themeless but fun Travel Quiz. The Bucket List activity makes our eyes roll, and then we reveal the results of our s’mores-off. Still aglow with happy camper joy, we reminisce about the fun we had spending two nights in Bobbie and the great new local region we discovered, and throw in random dashes of travel trailer advice for good measure. We end with a little teaser of my upcoming trip and what it will take for the Husband to get the New Mexican products he’s tasked me with bringing home.

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 171 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

We’re back from our trip, but not the trip you think, and not the trip we said we were taking. Alerted by a blog buddy about a wildfire that started right around the time we were hitting “publish” on our previous podcast, we spent 24-hours wringing our hands, after which I spent a half day fashioning a new trip faster than you can say airmiles. (The Willow Fire of which I speak is still burning and is human-caused, a serious tragedy for so many people and animals, and that’s just one of many Centennial State wildfires causing devastation this season.) The joke pays homage to this pivot and the National Day has started a challenge that we hope to report back on next time. The Travel Quiz shows how dearly you may pay for cheap air travel, and then we learn how I survived my second natural disaster in two months! We end with a segment we should have called Talkin’ Temecula, in which we detail the plusses and minuses of our last-minute trip. Here’s to rolling with the punches!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 170 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

As soon as the podcast ended, the Husband looked at me over his microphone and said in a wistful voice, I love it when we get lost in travel talk. And that’s what we did. So, after a lifted joke and a National Day for a fought-over fictional folk hero and a World Cup-themed Travel Quiz and a Bucket List destination with rare 100% agreement and several random updates, we talk travel: London, England (where the Husband just was), Leadville, Colorado (where we’ll soon be), and Venice, Italy (where we’ll be so far in the future we need binoculars to see it, and yet I’m already researching hotels), with themes of “you can’t cross the same stream twice” and “then and now” running through it. There’s also a call for advice from you Venice travel experts out there, so get typing!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 169 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

As promised, we’re back with part two of my recent trip to Sweden and Denmark. We switch things up a bit this week. I tell not one joke but three (though I’m the only one quaking with laughter) before the Husband messes up the National Day. Following that, I host a short Travel Quiz that pays homage to the natural disaster I survived in Denmark and which may also be helpful info for the seismophobic travelers among us. The Bucket List activity gets two thumbs way up, though one of the thumbs is under duress. After some listener comments, the Husband pulls out his Dullness Rating Scale and gets busy judging my Copenhagen activities, surprising me by adding “Interesting” and even “Cool” to his scale. I can practically hear you shaking up your travel plans to include Copenhagen. Good idea.

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 168 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

Back home less than 48 hours from my first solo international sojourn, I set my jet lag temporarily to the side to engage with the Husband on the pod. We get cruising right away with the joke, and then geek out over the National Day. What follows is the shortest non-quiz Travel Quiz the Husband’s ever presented, all in an effort to get to the heart of the matter: Malmo, Sweden, and Copenhagen, Denmark. In the end, we only have time to discuss Malmo, and, using his highly sophisticated Dullness Rating System, the Husband evaluates each of my travel activities for its level of ennui. My final activity begets much discussion, some argument, and ends with a live taste test dare. I hope you like this episode, because, having run out of time, we’re repeating the whole format next time!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 167 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

Nine weeks. That’s how long it’s been since our last pod. Everything has been MORE with the Husband’s illness: more hours in surgery than predicted, more nights in the hospital than planned, more visits to the ER, more recovery required, more time off work. I’m getting exhausted just describing it, but I want you to know why we’ve been absent for so long. We’ve been here, just caught in the web of illness and caretaking. Several times we’ve talked about podding; we even prepared to pod once or twice, but it was always thwarted by a downturn in the Husband’s condition. I hate to say, “We’re back,” because every time we think it’s over, something else goes wrong, but maybe, just maybe, we’ve turned a corner . . .

After a joke that reveals a cultural divide between the Husband and me, I present a National Day that isn’t particularly quirky, but instead brings about travel memories (and a short list of skills we think everyone should possess). The Travel Quiz reminds me to pack my rain slicker for Denmark (which I was going to do anyway), and then I turn the tables and administer a short quiz based on my Dictionary.com app. Then we recap some canceled travel and add another depressing instance, while hoping the Copenhagen trip doesn’t face the same fate. This brings us to another rare useful piece of travel advice that I forgot to mention last pod. I hope it won’t be another nine weeks before we meet again!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 166 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

Seven weeks. That’s how long it’s been since our last pod, but at least we have a good excuse. (If you’re just joining us, the Husband has been quite ill. So ill, in fact, that he’s ruined three vacations and has to have surgery in a few days.) My joke honors this impending operation, and the National Day honors something the husband has been doing a lot since he got sick. However, before we even get to those staples, we casually review three meal delivery companies, including one I’m using now since the Husband is too weak to cook. The Travel Quiz hints at one of the destinations in my makeup Spring Break trip, but completely ignores the other, whereas the Bucket List destination is an easy two thumbs up, though we have no plans to go there anytime soon. We plan to dispense with any retrospective on last summer’s Caucasus visit until we are back to normal. Instead, we reveal the cost of the Aruba-busting ambulance ride and detail the lengths I had to go to to get our travel expenses reimbursed from the travel insurance company (some rare good advice here). After that, we dip our toes in a puddle of schadenfreude as the Husband recounts a colleague’s terrible start to his Spring Break trip. Finally, we discuss how the most recent crisis with Iran has affected Azerbaijan and the complicated geopolitical relationships therein. If you’re like the Husband, you’ll get to the end of this episode and think: Time for a nap. Meanwhile, I’m off to start dinner. See you sometime after surgery!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode:

Podcast episode 165 is available by clicking below.  It is also available on iTunes, Pocket Cast, and Spotify under the travel architect.

A whole lot has happened since we last interfaced with you: a new year has begun, ambulances have been ridden, Caribbean trips have been cancelled, insurance claims have been filed, hospitals have been returned to and stayed in overnight, just to name a few happenings in our never-a-dull-moment-please-can-I-just-have-a-few-dull-moments lives. The joke pays homage to one of those events, whereas the National Day harkens back to my Wisconsin upbringing. The Spectacular Jentacular Travel Quiz was inspired by none other than this morning’s French Toast breakfast. The Bucket List activity gets two thumbs up, but if we’re honest, they’re more thumbs to the side due to the idiosyncratic ways we each want to see that country. After that we dive headlong into why we performed a last-minute cancellation on our trip to Aruba, because who doesn’t like a good medical drama? (You don’t have to tell us—we’re currently rewatching ER in its entirety.) We end with the uplifting tale of how we put our airline e-credits to good use before listing the 32 things I’ve published since our last pod. To your health, and happy New Year!

Previous blog posts referenced or hinted at in this episode: