Getting Started

The countdown has ended, and tomorrow morning we're off to the Nashville airport, with sweet Natalie driving. By tomorrow night we'll be with Aaron in Jersey City, with the Manhattan skyline rising over the Hudson. As Byron says about Childe Harold, "Once more upon the waters! yet once more!" We haven't reached those waters (the English Channel) yet, but the line nevertheless expresses our sense of excitement about starting off once again on an adventure. 

I will be blogging the part of our trip that retraces the 1816 route of Byron from London  to Geneva; this was the background for Canto III of his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, a long narrative poem that follows the travels of a young man (very much like Byron!) through much of Europe. Cantos I and II were written in 1810, and cover Byron's travels from England to Portugal, Spain, Malta, Greece, and Albania. In the intervening years, Byron became famous and then married. Both fame and marriage were personal disasters for him, and in the spring of 1816, estranged from his wife and society, he left all--including his beloved half-sister Augusta and his new-born daughter Ada--and, accompanied by his "doctor" John Polidori, fled England. Canto III ends with his sights set on Italy, and Canto IV follows him there, from Venice to his final destination Rome, where all roads lead. If this summer excursion is successful we'll want to retrace the other parts of the pilgrimage too. 


So right now I'm just getting familiar with blogging again, since it has been a few years. The Travels with Childe Harold blog doesn't  start until July 28, but I need to know how to post photographs, edit, and work out the relationship between the stanzas of Canto III and my own commentary.