24 posts tagged “travel”
Ok, I don't have an income or any idea of how I am going to have one over the next year, BUT I would like to take 6 weeks to travel in Europe next August/ September. Iceland Air has ridiculously cheap airfare. I would start with 5? days in Iceland, then fly to London and take the train to the south coast for my friends' (The Wedding Present) music festival in Brighton on 8/28. Then fly to Copenhagen and spend up to 2 weeks at my uncle's place in southern Sweden, reading, writing, and relaxing. Then maybe Paris? It has been a few years.
All I need is several thousands of dollars and a birdsitter. I've got 9 months to find those things. No problem.....
This morning I have a 9AM business "meeting" - well actually my partner and I are going to an ESL class at a center for Hispanic day laborers to find folks to interview, so it's not a typical meeting. Here's what I'm wearing:
- a bikini
- a short cotton wrap dress
- sandals
- a swallow-in-flight necklace
After the meeting I'm going straight downtown to meet a friend, stop by the bank, and get on a bus to the nearest place to jump in a lake. Lake Washington is never quite perfect, but it'll do in this heat. And then, the next 48 hours:
- Head home, using as many tunnels as possible. (We need more tunnels)
- Stop by the liquor store for martini stuff
- Buy AA batteries & supplements for vacation
- Clean kitchen
- Take a cold shower
- Sushi with Lee (@petitrobot)
- Martinis & girltalk with aunt rosie
- Finish packing
- Another cold shower
- Attempt to sleep
- Dress for flight
- SEA -> GEG
- Rental car
- Mom
- Hotel
- Lake Coeur d'Alene
- Moon Time pub
- AC sleep
- Thursday, North Idaho is my oyster.
A decent thunderstorm for once. Not great, but not the usual wimpy Seattle storm-fizzle. And it now looks like weather in Seattle and San Francisco will be exactly the same this week. Mostly sunny, 70ish. Fine by me, but how anticlimactic to go on vacation and get the same weather.
I have been way too distracted trying to figure some things out (business, travel, personal, pure curiosity, etc) that I haven't been writing much, either here or in my plethora of notebooks. I guess that's ok, but I feel like I'm avoiding something.
Meanwhile.
I played the Anagram game with a 91-year-old French woman named Marie (and friends) on Sunday. This is a very random connection, but it was super fun and I predict I will be going back regularly when I'm back home. Something about spending time with the elderly is nourishing in a way I can't explain. Sure, it's depressing to see someone withering into extreme old age, but it is also uplifting. She has a remarkable vocabulary for someone for whom English is her second language.
And tomorrow I fly off to SF for fun in the mild sun. I have a map of museums and restaurants to visit if I feel like it, but like all travel, this will be subject to whims. I will report back with anything interesting. For now, gotta pack!
I'm "finally" reading Eat, Pray, Love. It wasn't high on my priority list of things to read, but watched Elizabeth Gilbert give a TED talk and she seemed like a pretty together human. Plus, I take professional interest in memoirs that become international bestsellers.
I just finished the Italy section. She's a good writer, and she has been through some difficult personal crap to be sure. A prolonged, unfriendly divorce followed by a doomed love affair. Not fun stuff. Severe depression and identity crises? I hear that. Some travel and personal rejuvenation was definitely in order.
But here's the thing. Her publisher paid her to take a year off finding herself in various locations starting with 'I' (Italy, India, Indonesia). Good for her! More people should be given generous advances to find themselves and write about it. It's just a bit hard to take reading about her having gelato for breakfast and going to seek out the best restaurants in Sicily, when I don't have any such options available to me.
Yeah, I'm jealous. Just having a publisher would be huge, for me. But a publisher that would pay me to live abroad for a year and write about it, giving me the opportunity to eat Italian food for four months and then go practice yoga for four months? Craziness.
I'm told to look at my jealousy of others as an indicator of my hearts desire. Travel, pizza, wine, and yoga sound good to me. Where do I sign up?
I have decided to travel no further than family visits in Idaho and Albuquerque this year, but next year: Galapagos, Peru, and Ecuador.
I've been having trouble sleeping lately. This morning I got up at 5:30 and did my dishes. If you knew how unlike me this behavior is, you might be worried. I have a bundle of stress between my shoulder blades. I need a massage, but I have no money. Today I'm going to go sell books and CDs so I will have lunch money to get me through to payday in a week. I spent the dwindling balance of my checking account on a trip to Trader Joe's last night, so at least I have food at home, and birdfood. Thankfully I am scheduled to get a raise at the end of September, if the clients don't drive me out first. Is it the full moon? They are all acting crazy this week. Arguing, expressing frustration, accusing me of trying to "blame" them for our internal problems. I have never had so much client negativity before, and I'm pretty sure it's nothing I'm doing. I need a different career. Project/Account management, while invigorating, does not suit my essentially intraverted personality. I pretend to be this organized, client-focused, take-charge type of person. Most of life turns out to be acting.
There's a mosquito in my apartment. Strange.
The last couple of weeks have been hectic. I went to Idaho with Rosie and Lily and went to 4 bars that I never thought I would set foot in again, plus one I'd never been to before. I bought my mom a ginormous crystal and a moonstone ring for her birthday. She sleeps with the crystal under her pillow and and dreams in lavender and blue. Have I mentioned my mom's a kook? Yeah. Also saw both of my male cousins (one on each side of my family). I have 5 female cousins and 2 male and I have talked to my female cousins collectively about 5 times. I take that back - I spent a month in Europe with one of them, but I spent most of the trip hanging out with her husband & mom while she and the baby slept, so some how it doesn't count. Besides which I was already an adult by then, over 30. My male cousins I saw regularly when I was a kid and it was sweet to see them. Cousin Matt got all misty about my dad who died 4 years ago and gave me a random hug in the bar. Cousin Shay offered to help with my condo buying process. Good people, my boy cousins.
My aunt and uncle arrived a week ago with their hail-damaged Nissan to go on a cruise to Alaska. I'm car-sitting for them, so I offered to drive down to Portland last weekend to meet up with my friend's friend from New Orleans who makes cute little coin purses and sells them at crafts shows. Sometimes I wish I had a crafty pursuit. I enjoy doing things like that, and it would be fun to actually sell my wares, but I lack time, patience, space, motivation. In Portland we mainly hung out at Powell's and McMenamin's Edgefield "compound" in Troutdale (though our room was at the HoJo in Gresham). We saw Burn After Reading at a theater with "Authentic 1950's Restrooms" for $4.50. We spent some time driving around trying to find a part of town that we finally found the next day and spent some good hours in the Bye and Bye Bar before driving back. Saturday night, hopped up on Xanax, wine, and emotional stress, I snuck into the Howard Johnson pool in my underwear after hours.
This week, I went to therapy which I missed last week due to a MobileMe snafu, went to Trader Joe's and bought a lot of packaged meals, and have been preoccupied by work nonsense. Tonight I am going to a Paul Auster reading, tomorrow to an opening reception at the Frye Museum. Next week I'll be going to see The Wedding Present and not Nick Cave (sold out). This weekend I will be coming back down to earth.
I have my aunt and uncle's hail-damaged Nissan this week while they take a cruise up to Alaska, and tonight I am going to drive it to Oregon! And do stuff! With people I know and people I don't know! At least one of each! I'm staying at Howard Johnson's! It's going to be sub-standard! But they have a pool! Ok. I'll write more when I return. Sunday.
This week I am not going to go to the gym. I'm not going to do yoga. I'm not going to cook or attempt to eat healthy food. I might clean a bit, because I am leaving my apartment with someone else for a few days and he should not have to look at my mess. I'm just getting through 1.5 more days of work and heading to North Idaho for what promises to be a ZANY weekend. I'll take photos. When I get back... I'll get back on track, but for now I am off the hook. September 8 I start a new daily routine. Kinda like going back to school, except without class.
Here's an abbreviated summary of my travels (I could go on for pages and pages... but ya know, I have things to do!)...
Sweden
The area of Sweden I visited is quite picturesque and bucolic (a word that means something much nicer than it sounds like it should). Uncle Phil's house is a 10 minute drive from a small town called Hasselholm, about an hour to the North of Malmo. The weather was absolutely gorgeous! I like rain, but the rainy, grey, cold days ha
When Phil's wife mentioned a park full of art I pictured something local and kitschy, but in fact it is full of installations from well-known international artists. It's fun just to walk through and find pieces of art hidden in the forest. Apart from the park and a castle, I mainly sat in the sun and read while uncle Phil worked in his ginormous garden.
Berlin
I took a bus from Copenhagen to Berlin, with a ferry across the Baltic Sea in the middle of the voyage. The first thing that struck me as we drove into Berlin was the trees. Berlin is much greener than I had ever imagined.
I found my way to my miniloft apartment via u-bahn without even looking at a map. I was immediately enamored with the space. It was small, but it felt clean and roomy, with tall windows and stark, modern furniture. There was also a fully equipped kitchenette with utensils and everything.
I did get to see both Nick Cave and Einsturzende Neubauten in Berlin. These are two bands I had strongly associated with Berlin before I went, so it was kind of perfect.
Prague
Prague was everything I wanted it to be. Cute, warm, friendly, cheap. There's a strange sense of Deja Vu when traveling from city to city now. There are some things that are becoming universal... like big shopping centers with all the same stores. I shopped at H&M in three countries!
My hotel had an incongruous Salvador Dali theme, with Dali prints on every wall. I discovered that it is possible to walk nearly everywhere in Prague, and I did so. I spent the hours between 10am and 5pm walking, walking, walking. I joined the herds of tourists to see the castle. I shopped a bit. I ate roast duck. It was good.
UK
I took a cheap Easy Jet flight and found myself at the Best Western near Victoria Station with the smallest bed ever. Cheap and convenient. The train from Victoria to Brighton runs every 30 minutes, and my host for the night (Louise) met me at the station.
That night we attended the Wedding Present concert at the Brighton Corn Exchange and subsequent private album release party in the Brighton Dome. I ended up having a conversation about urban violence with the ex-drummer's German girlfriend.
I spent the next day wandering around Brighton. I did a bit of shopping, ate fish & chips, and I managed to find my way back to Louise's house by following a bus route on foot. Luckily I had memorized their address, because they are on one of those streets where all of the houses are identical and connected. Their house (like 90% of houses in England) is tall and skinny. They had remodeled their top floor into a big open space with skylights. That was my room... with private bathroom even!
Saturday night I went with Louise and her partner Nimrod (yes, Nimrod, seriously) to a dinner party at the Gedge residence. The whole band was there, as well as all of their brighton friends. It was fun - and nice to be social again after a couple of weeks of relative solitude.
My final night in England was spent at a former horse stable converted into a hotel near Stansted airport. It was very rural and green, and every field was full of little brown bunnies! I nearly had a cute fit. My cabbie had directed me to a nearby pub for lunch and I risked my life walking along a very narrow road with no shoulder to go there. It was absolutely the classic country pub. And the bunnies!!
I flew to Copenhagen early and had a couple of hours to wander around in the sun before boarding a plane back to Seattle. Technically, I got to Seattle one hour after I left Copenhagen, but to me it seemed to take more than 10 hours. The plane arrived early. That's how good my transport karma was this trip. Everything was timely and painless. Unusual for public transport! In Berlin, you can literally get from anywhere to anywhere else in about 15 minutes. Why oh why can't we have good public transportation? Why?
Home again
So I have arrived back to my life with a renewed commitment to cooking for myself, exercising, and saving money. After tomorrow I will have a real job. And life goes on...
One week left of vacation! Prague is hot and cute. Hot, as in I'm wearing a halter top and at 10am I'm already too warm. The beer is good, the tourists are annoying, and wtf is up with the tacky crystal goods and marionettes?? Anyway, I am starting to think about things I will be coming back to in Seattle and what I am looking forward to, versus not. All this time on my own has led to introspection and thoughts about what kind of life I want to live. Anyway. More on that later. For now, I am back to the prague sun!
