These Boots Are Made For Travelin'

A new year. A new trip. It’s become my classic combination, akin to wine with cheese or Doritos with M&Ms (trust me, it works). My earlier fascination with travel has grown into a nearly physical need for it. The signs of the craving are now familiar: I’m restless, I peruse travel websites during work, I look at stamps on my passport and reminisce as if they’re old family photos.

I don’t know where this year will take me, but I hope it will be across the Atlantic. In anticipation, I’ve amassed stashes of travel porn: Budget Travel magazine, Rick Steves DVDs, VRBO, and my beloved weekly Kayak travel deals email. While I may look like the same old me, I focus on my potentially awesome versions of me in 2010: the me who hikes through Croatia to see waterfalls! The me who sips Bohemian beer after a day of sightseeing in Prague! The me who watches for giraffe and lion on the plains in South Africa! I salivate at the idea that by year’s end, I might know my way around Salzburg or dicker for prices in a Budapest market or learn basic phrases in Dutch.

I recently read Alain de Botton’s Art of Travel in which he examines why and how we travel. Parts are refreshingly unromantic: I sympathized with the feeling of arriving to a foreign location expecting to find both the city and myself there to be postcard perfect (see above) and feeling let down initially. But the gap between the ideal and the real -- in regards to both the place and myself in the place -- seems the most valuable part. I love the discovery of it all. I travel because I know that the person I’ll be on the return flight will be more enlightened (albeit tired) than the starry-eyed one on the outbound trip, that I’ll have learned more about my world and myself largely due to the gap between my expectations of the trip and the reality of it.

It’s funny -- in a humiliating way -- to remember predictions of my past trips. Upon booking our Paris trip, I fancied I’d become a Parisian Carrie Bradshaw, breezing through streets wearing a dress with a flirty, full skirt (I don’t even own dresses like that!), scarf around my neck, while speaking my few phrases so convincingly that the locals would be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn I wasn’t a native. The reality? I was my usual jeans-clad persona, only the people on the Metro stared so disapprovingly at my boots that I knew they set me apart in a bad way, and I couldn‘t figure out how. In cafes, after I’d stammer my order and a couple niceties in French, I’d wait for the waiter to escape earshot before exclaiming to Jimmy, “I did it!! I ordered us coffees!” And unfailingly, the waiter would return -- not with coffees but with espressos because I ordered the wrong damn thing. Again. Luckily, I had many opportunities to learn to love espresso in Paris. The boot thing really bothered me, though. C’mon, black leather boots! What could be wrong with black leather boots?

Travel changes me. Improves me. Each new place demands humility, an open mind, and a willingness to learn what it has to teach. Paris -- despite its reputation -- taught me to be more polite to strangers, to greet and bid au revior to shop owners and to respect a local language at the cost of my ego and desire to appear effortlessly chic while abroad. Italy taught me to slow down while eating and walking, to stop rushing and start noticing, and in the name of all things holy, to use fresh foods and herbs when I cook. Ireland taught me to cherish ties and time with friends and family. London, like the rest, taught me to ditch my preconceived notions and to accept a place on its terms -- or, as it were, to mind the gap.

So where will this year take me? Which me will I become? What place will offer its own lessons that will forever change me? I don’t know, but I just hope where ever it is, black leather boots will be OK there.

"Un tavolo per due, per favore."

When talking about my big trips, the subject invariably returns to food. Advice we received in Italy seems applicable to every place we‘ve been: the best meals you’re going to eat are not in expensive restaurants, but in small, unassuming places tucked away. Finding these places have been highlights of our travel.

Jimmy and I pass many an evening on the back porch reminiscing upon great meals we've had while traveling. Some are obvious (the Guinness and lamb stew of Ireland, the curry of London), some were surprises (our favorite pizza spot? Paris!), some were so blissful that we stop and sigh when we remember. Our trip to Italy still inspires such moments of silent, blissful reverence.

Rome. I’m putting Rome down as the location for the best meal of my life. It came courtesy of Osteria Ponte Sisto in the Trastevere neighborhood, a place that we spent an hour walking to because it came highly recommended by our trusty friend Rick Steves. It was the only time I’ve let so much of my order up to the discretion of the restaurant owner and humbled myself enough to ask stupid questions like, “How do I eat this? Do I eat this part, too?” Glad I did. L‘antipasto: Fried artichoke. The owner told us that in Italy, you eat every bite, down to the stem. Delicious! Primo: spaghetti with grilled mussels, octopus, and cherry tomatoes. Everything was so fresh! The flavors so vivid! Secondo: fried octopus. Yummy down to the last tentacle. And throughout the meal (which lasted over two hours), we sipped away a bottle of local white wine while sitting at a table on a quiet side street in Rome, lined with scooters and across from a small church. We spent the long walk home in culinary afterglow, walking arm and arm, smiling, and reminiscing on the meal we had just minutes earlier.

Gelato. And, of course, the gelato! Before I knew the Italian words to ask where to find a bathroom or how to ask the price of an item, I knew how to ask for various kinds of gelato (in a cone, in a cup, two scoops, maybe three), how to ask for a small taste to sample, and how to ask which flavors “married” well for an ultimate flavor combination. (Food is a great motivator for my foreign language skills.) I used these phrases frequently -- most days I had three cones with two flavors on each. We were there eight days, so you do the math. My goal was to determine the ultimate flavor combinations for each time of day: a lovely breakfast gelato (espresso and dark chocolate), mid-day snack (mint-chocolate chip and stracciatella), and post-dinner cone for the stroll home (stracciatella and tiramasu). Rice-flavored gelato? Surprisingly delicious. To prove just how much walking we did in Italy, I ate nothing but gelato, pizza, pasta, and bread for a week and still came home a few pounds lighter. Who says eating well is not hard work?

Florence (Site of the Battle of the Beetle)

Florence felt more like home than the other cities we visited in Italy. This was mainly an issue of time (we spent the most nights here) and location (we opted for an apartment over a hotel). It allowed us to get into the groove of the town. Each morning, we lingered over cappuccino and pastry at the bar across the street (they had a signature donut that ruined me on the idea of any other donut) and shopped at the neighborhood market for produce and necessities (ask Jimmy about his Italian underwear). In the evenings, after we played tourist all day, we’d duck into a café for a drink or two, stop by the grocery and gelateria, stroll through the piazza on the corner filled with people enjoying conversation and a nightcap, and return home to finish the night lounging on our patio. It was a great routine.

This, however, paints an all-too-quaint picture of our stay in our Florence apartment. While hotels offer a cheery, English-speaking concierge to make transportation and other arrangements, we had no such advantage. Instead, we humiliated ourselves daily in a language that could only be described as Spanitalgish. No nearby restaurants offered menu translations; the local market didn‘t bail us out in English like the tourist one did. But I really dug this! It was an interesting -- and humbling! -- experience to flail about in another language. I used what little Italian I knew to attempt conversations, I carried my guidebook and phrase book with no shame, and I tried to feel at peace with appearing like a simpleton. At least I was a simpleton who earnestly tried. My self-administered final exam was wandering the local market alone, shopping for clothes, produce, and attempting small talk with merchants. This little exercise was exhausting, but I came away with one shirt, two tomatoes, two cloves of garlic, and half a pound of mozzarella di bufala -- all of which, luckily, I meant to ask for.

Then there was the issue of unexpected apartment guests: the mega-bugs. Picture a giant beetle wearing patent leather armor. The singular qualities of these mega-bugs was their assertiveness and resistance to death. We would wail on them with heavy shoes and no mercy (sorry, PETA), yet they would go on, dented but undaunted. One night, I awoke to find one climbing on the sheet atop Jimmy’s shoulder, scampering toward his face. (Note to self: waking Jimmy by tapping his forehead and whispering, “Don’t move” alarms him.) The next morning we shopped for mega-bug death spray. No big deal, right? Try shopping for insect repellent without knowing the language! The directions never included our handy memorized Italian phrases (“We would like a bottle of red wine,” “Where is the bathroom?” or “Yes I am American, but I voted for Obama.”). Luckily, one can offered an illustration of our culprit with a red line through it. Bingo.

It’s interesting to see how a week’s worth of vacation experiences become condensed into a few key tales to tell friends back home. It’s interesting to see which details are included, which omitted, and which will be slowly forgotten over time. I’m ashamed to admit that when I reminisce over Florence, it rarely is about the art, palaces, or cathedrals, which were stunningly beautiful and reason enough to visit the city. I usually smile and describe what it felt like to be in Florence, to slow down, to stroll streets lined with incredible architecture while eating my third gelato of the day, to attempt Italian with dubious results, to sit each morning with a cappuccino and world’s best donut while watching the neighborhood around me slowly come to life. And somehow, I laugh the most over those damn bugs. My apologies to Raphael.

Venice (Or, In Piazza San Marco With No Baedeker)

Open sewer. Stinky. Crowded. These were the general impressions of Venice given to us ahead of our trip. Close to our departure, though, a few well-trusted sources told us to stay in Venice because we’d never be anywhere like it again. It’s hard to turn down such advice.

It was true: Piazza San Marco was insufferably crowded when we arrived in the morning. It was easy to miss the beauty because it took too much energy to walk five steps. After maneuvering through the crowds, we reached our hotel (kudos to Jimmy for finding it; I was never not lost in Venice). The concierge advised his two weary travelers to go to the Rialto Bridge: to the left, tourists; to the right, Venice. He was right. Within a five-minute walk was a tranquil Venice. We had no agenda but to explore. We had no guidebook but only our eyeballs to decipher surroundings. Walking aimlessly meant constant surprises. Some surprises charmed us: rooftop gardens, cool architecture, and the sweet elderly woman who didn't seem to mind that we couldn't understand her conversation. The bigger surprises wowed us: one unassuming street opened to a piazza flanked by two cathedrals where a man performed an impromtu opera for the enjoyment (and euros) of onlookers. In a papershop, an enthusiastic owner took us to the back room to demonstrate the centuries-old Italian technique to design painted papers. In a public park, we explored a garden with time-worn statues peeking out from ivy, we ducked into shady alcoves enclosed by tree branches. Then we saw another beautiful sight: cruise ships and their hordes departing for the evening, making it safe to return to Piazza San Marco. Ciao, crowds. Buena sera, Venice.

Venice at night was splendid. The narrow streets were only partially lit by the glow of shop and restaurant windows. Lights danced across water. Music was everywhere. Piazza San Marco seemed more majestic when not under the duress of crowds. The restaurants along the piazza had outdoor stages for bands; each band took a turn to wow the crowd and even compelled couples and groups to dance. Jimmy and I sat on steps in a far corner of the piazza, enjoying the music, the dancers, and those out for a stroll, all with San Marco as a backdrop. It was a perfect moment.

We missed the big Venetian sights suggested in most guidebooks: we didn't enter San Marco or the Doge's Palace, we skipped the gondola ride. But we did debunk the theory of Venice as stinky and crowded. Not even. Perhaps it took losing the guidebook to see it.

I saw London, I saw France.

During my final months as a twenty-something, I was mostly cool with turning thirty. I began to greet most changes with a “ehh, so whattayagonnado?” attitude: the little lines forming beside my eyes; not caring which channel to find MTV (but finding NPR in my sleep); lamenting the state of MySpace-addicted, overspending kids today. The aspect of turning thirty that nagged me, however, was realizing I didn’t travel in my twenties as I hoped. I hadn’t gone to the Eiffel Tower, as listed on my “must do before thirty” checklist.

I checked that baby off with days to spare.

With only a few weeks' planning, Jimmy and I took an eight-day trip to London and Paris. We saw things we never imagined we’d see: the Rosetta Stone, a good chunk of the Parthenon, and ancient Egyptian relics at the British Museum (imperialism has its privileges); Shakespeare’s first folio, Jane Austen’s writing desk, and the Magna Carta at the British Library; a performance of Othello at The Globe (Wow. Wow wow wow.); Degas, Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh at Musee d’Orsay; millions of centuries-old skeletons (shiver) in the catacombs; the beauty of Notre Dame and Sacre Cour; and, of course, the Eiffel Tower.

Even though London offered so much, something about London and I did not click. On paper, we’re pure chemistry. In reality, something's off. Everything I saw was incredible, but in-between stops it seemed like another big city. I imagined more of a pip-pip kind of vibe (perhaps I’ve seen My Fair Lady too many times), but its role as an international center seems to prevent it from having a distinctly local flavor, which is exactly what I travel for. (Although I enjoyed the irony that a country that spent centuries conquering a quarter of the globe now finds its capital under the influence of its former subjects; when we asked for a good British restaurant, the concierge directed us to a fantastic curry place.)

Paris, however, was instant infatuation. The cafés! The parks! The fashion! The cheese! It’s a big city that takes time to smell the chocolate crepes; even in a hurry, one can make time to add the perfect scarf to an outfit and then saunter off in gorgeous heels. So much of it seemed a beautiful dichotomy of young and old, refined and nonchalant. And did I mention the chocolate crepes?

We stayed in a 19th century apartment in Montmarte, impressionism’s birthplace (19th century rents were cheap, wine not taxed; for struggling Parisian artists, parfait!) and mere blocks from Sacre Cour. (If you’ve seen Amelie, you’ve seen the apartment: it’s directly across from the market.) We explored the narrow cobblestone streets, always finding a café in which to drink wine or espresso and to people watch; we dined on cheese, bread and wine for many a meal (and I could do so for every meal of my life); we entertained Parisians with our attempts at the language (the R will always be beyond me). Despite the big stops on our itinerary, some of my favorite moments were spent wandering the streets and stopping at cafés or shops, in the Latin Quarter and Montmarte, especially. We even scrapped our last day of sightseeing in Versailles to spend a leisurely day of exploring and café-hopping, practicing my well-rehearsed Je voudrais carafe de vin rouge, s'il vous plait.

My favorite moment in Paris came atop the Eiffel Tower. I was almost embarrassed about wanting to go, considering my years mocking tourists who wait hours to go up the Washington Monument (ascending 555 feet to gaze at a city with 110-foot building restrictions and largely uninspired architecture). The Eiffel Tower is no Washington Monument. We went to the very top just in time to watch the sun set. There aren’t words to describe the view. Then we descended to the second tier to watch as the city lights came on, one by one, slowly illuminating the city as darkness enveloped it. As the time grew later, the crowd thinned, and I was able to sit in a corner against the railing and gaze up at the tower, which is a perfect place to feel very small. Then the sparkly lights started their ten-minute dance. I sat with Jimmy, equally laughing and crying, recognizing it as a perfect moment. When the sparkling dimmed, I smiled and thought, "OK, I’m ready to turn 30 now."

Ireland.

I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten attached to a place so quickly, so deeply as I did with Ireland. Usually after several days on vacation, I begin to miss home – my house, my dogs, my routine, my privacy. Even if I’m having fun, I love coming home. I didn’t have that problem with Ireland because, quite simply, it felt like home already. I believe that Jimmy and I could have moved into any of the eight B&Bs we stayed in, remained a year, and been perfectly happy. After staying two nights at one inn, we already established our neighborhood restaurant, our reading spot in the garden, and the dog even followed us around. It truly felt like home.

Ireland is full of God showing off. It requires your total attention to take in – all at once, you see endless green fields, interrupted only by wildflowers and large stones, mountains, streams and rivers, and big puffy clouds glowing against a brilliant blue sky. The land is too beautiful for words or even pictures to capture. You hear sheep baaah-ing, birds in constant song, water rippling by. I wanted to grab everyone I have ever met to say, “Look at it. Just look at it.” We would sit quietly, looking all about us, realizing the inadequacy of words. An Irishman told us that it was the tragic irony of Ireland – God gave them a beautiful land, but made the land unsuitable to live from. When you see the large stones everywhere – and I do mean everywhere – you understand. To shallow tourists like me, they’re a rustic touch to an elegant landscape. To farmers, they’re a hell of a problem.

Another irony is that Ireland’s poor economy seems to have been a powerful factor in maintaining its unique beauty. So much beauty is there to stumble upon; it’s not marketed. Old stone mansions, left crumbling to the elements, dot the countryside as nature reclaims them. The roofs are long gone, ivy climbs the walls, trees sometimes grow inside. It’s sadly, sweetly romantic. They’re only there because it cost too much to tear them down, and entirely too much to restore. Sometimes one of these old mansions rises from a farmer's fields, a reminder of the land’s past while the present persists around it. It made Ireland feel so much more authentic than the States. Most American beauty and romance seems manufactured; even when it’s found naturally, the accompanying billboards and gift shops and fast food franchises make it seem so… fake. If we have something beautiful, we know how to make a buck from it, to jazz it up in a vain attempt to improve on nature. It’s pageant beauty; once the make-up is over-applied, the hair teased, the boobs inflated, it’s not as pretty anymore. But Ireland. Ireland’s a natural beauty. Ireland’s the one you fall in love with.

Things are changing in Ireland; the mid-nineties marked its economic resurgence and interest to investors. What does one do with such beautifully preserved land? Develop it, of course. Word passes of Dublin-area farmers selling their land for millions to foreign developers; the farmers out west spoke of this with a sense of melancholy because they would probably reluctantly succumb to the Faustian offer as well. Not many of us could resist it. As the economy enters its boom, I envision a frightening flash of the Ireland yet to come… the remains of the old stone mansions torn down for townhouses, perhaps a McDonalds. The landscape interrupted by generic architecture, or God forbid, vinyl siding. The mere thought made me so sick to my stomach I could have vomited. Not here. Not this.

The people we met were as beautiful as the land. There was John, a bartender at a Westport pub who allowed a group of us to stay for hours after closing for free pints and unforgettable conversation. When one man discussed his new working hours, I asked him what his new job was, to his obvious discomfort. He was a graphic designer, which piqued my interest. But he said that people there don’t care about what your job is, and they don’t much like talking about it. It’s not what you do that matters to your friends, but how much time you have after work for a long dinner with your family and time in a pub with your friends for some craic (“craic” is the Irish word for fun, fellowship, and you hear it often: “it’s all about the craic”). The views I heard that night on American politics were so different than anything I’ve heard, so far removed from the American paradigm, that I still dwell on them (“The American god is money. American politics isn’t democracy, it’s capitalism.” “American imperialism far surpassed nineteenth-century English imperialism, only American imperialism was largely accomplished without a battle. The Irish just want to live their lives, they don’t try to make money by selling their lifestyle to the rest of the world.”). The discussion ranged from history to music to football (the real football, of course). The people were enviably smart and well read. I’ve never experienced such intelligent, friendly discussion in a bar.

And there was Linda, a pretty , light-hearted, twenty-something Parisian who recently came to Dublin for a new way of life. She works in a cheese shop, she travels any chance she gets. She’s part of a movement in Dublin to return to a slower life, a slower pace. When talking about people who spend life fretting about jobs or clothes or money, she would simply flick her wrist as if shooing a fly from her face, and exclaim, “Ugh! Victims of the worrrrld!”

There was Mary, who ran one of our B&Bs and was one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met. She told stories about people who had come to her inn, including the man from the States who has stayed there every year for fifteen years. He couldn’t make it this year, so he her sent a small framed picture of his hometown. It was an inexpensive plastic framed picture of the St. Louis Arch, but she displayed it in her beautiful breakfast room, along her china tea sets and trinkets, with great appreciation of this token of his generosity. “Look at it! Wasn’t it so nice of him?” When we complemented her inn, her food, she would beam. This was a woman with deep appreciation and gratitude. She mentioned she was looking for a girl to help her cook and clean around the inn, and I wanted so much to apply on the spot. Send the dogs over, Mom! We’re not coming home!

Each morning would start at the B&B or farmhouse with a killer breakfast, and if we were lucky, we’d meet fellow guests and hear about their trips. During the day, we would tour castles, abbeys; hike wooded trails or even up a mountain; explore a cave; walk along the coast; drive past indescribable landscapes, taking time to get out of the car to sit and attentively be in the moment. During the evenings, we sat in pubs for some craic, to talk, listen to music, and once again say, “Can you believe we’re here? I can’t believe we’re here.” The awe-struck feeling never ended… at a waterfall, mountaintop, in a garden or at a pub, it was always, “Can you believe we’re here?”

I suppose the best vacations are those that leave you a little changed. Anyone can go to a beach and feel un-stressed. But to go to a new country, to expose myself to a new culture, to fall in love with a land and its people… it wasn’t about experiencing a relaxing week but tasting a new life in order to improve my old one: to limit the role of work, to appreciate the importance of a weekday evening in a pub with friends, to spend less time preparing and more time doing. It makes past versions of myself, my past priorities, seem a little silly. (Agghhh, victim of the worrrrld!)

While in Ireland, I recalled a Joan Didion line, as I often do during important life moments. She wrote, “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively.” And now I can understand why Ireland belongs so strongly to so many people. We were there for just nine days, but it partly belongs to us now as well. It was our honeymoon, the time of falling in love with each other all over again. Only ours was a ménage de trois – we fell in love with Ireland, and I think she loves us back.