From Where I Stand…

On my trip, I somehow managed to travel 42, 220 miles around the planet.

I didn’t walk around the world, but my feet certainly got to stand in some pretty amazing places. And for the first time in my life…I really did wear out my shoes. They finally earned their worth!

Mezquita Feeta

Hot Feet

Wet Feet

Sandy Feet

Hiking Feet

Cold Feet

Clean Carpet Feet

Tennis Feet

View Feet

Cyclo Feet

Muddy Feet

Many Muddy Feet

Covered Feet

Sandy Feet

Footprint Feet

Dry Feet

Ancient Feet

Mediterranean Feet

Friendly Feet

NOT my feet

Castle Hill Feet

I see dead people feet

Travelin' Feet

cobblestone feet

East/West Feet

stone cold feet

happy feet

'put your right foot in' feet

greenwich mean time feet

cracked feet

airplane feet

big apple feet

jewish quarter feet

 

Just the FAQs, Ma’am

• Time traveled: 15 months or 75 weeks or 522 days
• Countries: 24
• Continents: 5
• Flights: 115 Hours/42, 220 miles (67, 946kms)
• Pictures taken (after deletions): 6120

Here it is, what you’ve all been waiting for. You have either already asked me this, you are thinking of asking me this, or you don’t give a rat’s ass, but I’m going to answer you anyway:

“So, what was your favorite place?”

Well, after 15 months, 24 countries-visited (now about 36 total if you count the Vatican and Monaco), you can imagine my dilemma with this question. So in response to this very common inquiry, I offer you the following Top 5 lists (keep in mind these lists are limited to this particular trip, NOT my favorite places of all time—that’s why Chicago, New York, Italy, Greece and others are omitted):

LL’s Top 5 Fav cities:

1. Berlin–The hype was right. Literally every single other traveler I met who had been to Berlin said it was awesome. I was afraid it was over-hyped, like when a good movie gets ruined before you see it, but I truly loved it. Modern. Progressive. Fresh ideas and design. This city is going places…fast. And it’s the one place I have said ‘I could live here in a second.’ Maybe I still will. Ja?
2. Buenos Aires—A very European city in the Southern Hemisphere that has a lot going on. It’s sexy. It’s sophisticated. It’s cosmopolitan. And there are hot men running around playing lots of futbol. There are cute neighborhoods where you can hang out a café all day without a care in the world. Viva Buenos Aires!
3. Istanbul—Not only is it mystical, thriving, and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, I was literally stopped in my tracks by the inhabitant’s sincere warmth and friendliness. So much so that what was originally going to be a two week visit turned into three months—with my own apartment, temporary adopted cats, a job teaching English, and a long list of new life-long friends. Tea, sugar, a dream Istanbul.
4. London—I had a ‘brilliant’ time in the ‘Big Smoke’. I spent a month in this little town of 7.5 million getting to know the wonderful neighborhoods within the M25 Motorway and being charmed by its inhabitants. I’d been here only once before back in the 90’s and honestly wasn’t bowled over. But the place has completely reinvented itself since then with modern skyscrapers, fabulous museums, and an amazing riverfront. Cheers!
5. Hong Kong—Although I was tired from a long flight from Australia, my first night here I felt compelled to get out and join the feverish momentum on the streets. There is a great energy here in this crazy metropolis where east meets west. It really is a perfect mix of new and old—pagodas are wedged in between skyscrapers in a city that has to have the most spectacular skyline I’ve ever seen.

Honorable Mentions:

• Melbourne—This sparkly city reminded me much of my hometown of Chicago. It’s full of great neighborhoods with lots of ethnic eateries, great modern architecture, and helpful bike lanes criss-crossing through it. My favorite part had to be all the little back-street ‘lanes’ (read: alleys) that were turned into hip cafe-filled streets and nighttime destinations. Thanks mate!
• Budapest—Emerging from a soviet state into an arty, cosmopolitan city with grand architecture andboulevards.
• Gothenburg, Sweden—Three Cs—clean, charming, cute. It also has an underground vibe of progressive artists and forward-thinking thought that breaks the IKEA mold.
• Transylvania, Romania–charming medieval villages dotting the green, hilly countryside. The picturesque hamlets of fairy tales.

LL’s Top 5 Natural Places:

1. Galapagos Islands—Every volcanic, scenic island was a completely different utopia teeming with life. Sea Lions, Tortoises, and Birds, oh my!
2. Northern Vietnam–SaPa, Vietnam is the quintessential Vietnamese mountainous countryside with terraced rice paddies clinging to mountainside hills. It has gorgeous vistas everywhere you turn.
3. Bozcaada Island, Turkey—A great escape from Istanbul and just ‘off the beaten path’ enough to be an island of mostly vacationing locals and not the hordes of tourists going to the other Islands on the Aegean Sea. Gorgeous blue waters, tasty local fare, and lots of sun. Ah, the simple life.
4. Munsterland, Germany—Rolling green countryside dotted with charming medieval towns that are connected by meticulously charted bicycle paths. Leave it to Germany to make it perfect.
5. Southern Patagonia—Jagged peaks and ominously huge glaciers as far as the eye can see.

Honorable Mention:

New Zealand—Unfortunately, I was sick there but it seemed amazingly clean, blue, and beautiful.

LL’s Top 5 Experiences

1. Meeting people and building new friendships all over the world. The discovery of how easy it is to basically build my own community wherever I was…gives me such a rush and renewed sense of trust in the overall goodness of man.
2. Couchsurfing.com –an amazing travel community and great way to meet locals.
3. Pueblo Ingles – a fun, intense, and unique English immersion program for Spaniards and a great way to spend a free week in Spain making new friends.
4. A spontaneous romantic week motor biking the hills of SaPa, Vietnam.
5. Volunteering at Crisis UK during Christmas – an amazing weeklong program held every year in London to help and support the homeless.

Honorable Mention: eating my way around the world

 

These Vagabond Shoes…

It’s almost impossible to walk around this vibrant city and not mix with people from all over the globe. From the filthy rich to the just plain filthy it is this veritably chunky stew that makes this tapestry complete. Just like the streets and avenues weaving through Manhattan in their symmetrical pattern, the inhabitants of New York City are like threads coming together to make up the rich fabric of one of my favorite places in the world.

Since I grew up just through the Lincoln Tunnel on the other side of the Hudson River in hills of North Central New Jersey, I have visited New York dozens of times and even lived here for about a year back in my university days when I was an intern at “Late Night with David Letterman.” But never have I really explored the city as much as I did during the two months that I stayed with my grandmother right after my world tour. Perhaps it was because I was still happily in traveler mode; I was more than content to wander the streets like the modern-day vagabond that I’d become.

The island of Manhattan is undeniably walkable. Every time I went out to explore a new neighborhood I would walk there and back oftentimes covering several miles during my journeys. But there was just so much filling my view, so much tickling all my senses, that I barely notice how far I’d gone.

One day I strolled from my grandmother’s Chelsea apartment on 24^th Street and 9^th Avenue to get a very overpriced haircut on the Upper East Side at 73^rd Street and Lexington Avenue. That’s 50 short blocks north and 7 long blocks east coming out to about three and a half miles one way. Another day, after experiencing one of New York’s best tourist deals—a free round trip aboard the Staten Island Ferry which passes our nicest gift from France, the Statue of Liberty, I walked home from the southern tip of Manhattan and Battery Park City. It was amazing and also a good way to try and ‘walk off’ all the food and desserts my grandma was forcing me to eat. Well, force is a bit dramatic…she offered me chocolate and I said ‘yes.’ She offered me ice cream and I said ‘yes.’ You get the idea.

It’s funny, when I was in my early twenties my favorite neighborhood was the Upper West Side—it was clean, trendy, and well, just plain ‘neighborhoody.’ And although it is still very nice, it’s become a bit too plastic and ‘chain-store’ saturated for me. I think it’s like the biggest fear of gentrification—well, simply-put: over-gentrification where there’s no longer any personality or independent thought or design to the Starbucks frothed area. This go-around, I got to know some other neighborhoods better and really became smitten with them. Like the old warehouse-lined streets of the Meatpacking District (officially known as the Gansevoort Market) just south of Chelsea with its velvet-roped nightclubs and obscenely expensive shops sprinkled throughout the industrial zone’s hulking structures where cows once hung in its 250+ slaughterhouses in the early 1900s. Now high-end boutiques like Christian Louboutin and Stella McCartney, and restaurants such as Pasti’s and Buddha Bar, all have recently opened in order to cater to yuppies and hipsters. In 2004, New York magazine called the Meatpacking District “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood.”

I can’t think of a neighborhood more charming than the West Village. Its leafy cobblestone side streets are lined with super-expensive and painstakingly renovated brownstone apartment homes with freshly painted shiny black banisters, polished brass door knockers and charming wooden shutters. On a stroll through Greenwich Village I realized how much I liked it now. Back in the 80s and 90s, I think it was still a bit too hippie-slash-grungy for me. Today it’s teeming with trend-setting students from NYU, cute coffee shops, hip bars, and still a few hippie holdouts that add a dash of grime and grunge to give it just the right flavor.

While wandering around, I satisfied my craving for some tasty New York street food with a $3 juicy, drippy Gyro in a pita with tzatziki and hot sauce. I indulged in this fatty delight while sitting on a bench next to someone you find in every park in Manhattan—a pigeon-person. This man was feeding dozens of his fine feathered friends right out of his hands in the Village’s famous Washington Square Park. While I munched on my lunch, I also watched dogs of all sizes gleefully playing in a fenced off ‘dog park’ where a posted sign summed up the whole ‘hood:’ No people without dogs, no dogs without people.

My third new favorite new ‘hood is the Lower East Side. It was formerly home to thousands of Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century. It was here where my grandma, Esta Saltzman, performed in Yiddish plays and musicals in some of the biggest venues of their time. Of course nowadays, these theatres are gone, with new funky shops and trendy eateries in their place. In fact, the theatre on the corner of Second Avenue and Houston was formerly know as the National Theatre where she performed, but now in its place is a new cultural icon of our generation: a 60,000 square foot Whole Foods.

But there are still some old Jewish holdouts that I can’t ever miss when I’m in town: Russ and Daughters Deli and THE one and only, Katz’s Delicatessen—made famous by its orgasm-inducing pastrami sandwiches—well, at least the one Meg Ryan was having in When Harry Met Sally (really the best rom-com of all time). Nowadays, this area is gentrifying fast with the most written-about hip and trendy restaurants opening up next door to Laundromats, convenience stores, and even a retro skateboard repair shop all up and down the great, lively streets: Ludlow, Rivington, Orchard, Stanton, and Clinton. This was once home to family-filled tenement buildings of lower class workers. Now it’s a trendy mix of hipsters, artists, and rich-folk wanting to be in the neighborhood of the moment. One night I met up with my new Swedish friend Erik—we were actually supposed to meet in London a couple months ago, but he moved here to New York before we got the chance. He took me and a friend to the lower East Side for dinner. We were walking down Rivington Street when suddenly, he just turned a corner and headed down a dark alley that oddly had a street sign. Oooo-kay. At the dead-end of the alley was a little shack of a place called Freeman’s that looked to be the back side of a building. But its million-dollar rustic-chic interior was packed to the gills with the trendy-set drinking cocktails and nibbling on tuna tartare. Needless to say it was at least a two hour wait (and it was a Tuesday night) and we didn’t stay. A wait that equals the time it would take us to fly to Chicago for dinner was a bit too long even if it was THE in place to be of the second (this is new York after all, by the time you read this—it may have closed already).

New York City. It’s more easy-going and friendlier than most think. I hear hellos and how you doins’ all the time. The people walk with a purpose and are a direct lot, but really do smile and say hello probably more than any other city I’ve been in (ok, even if most of the ones saying hello are the construction workers).

Just on my subway ride to the airport I experienced this New York friendliness that I’m talking about. First I asked some of New York’s finest of the NYPD about which train to take to JFK. Not only did they point me in the right direction, they waited for me to board the train and told me which stop to get off at. Another man helped me with my suitcase as the wheels got stuck in the door while I was hoisting it onto the train car. And once onboard and riding through Brooklyn another friendly local who knew I was heading to the airport, thanks to my bags, told me I’d be getting off in just a few stops…and I didn’t even ask him. And you can be anyone and meet anyone here. One day I walked past beautiful actress Anne Hathaway on the sidewalk in Chelsea. And then the next day I was passed by an old lady pushing a stroller…with a cat in it. Yep—only in New York.

 

“When I’m 94…”

While I was traveling around the world I really didn’t have much to worry about except Dr. Seussical things like: ‘where will I find a bed? Where can I lay my head? Where can I go to be fed?’ But one thing I worried about back home was my grandmother still being there when I returned. She’s a fiercely strong, independent woman and the older I get the more I realize I am a lot like her. We made a pact before I left that she would wait for me to come home… And she’s a woman of her word. Just this past weekend she turned a young 94-years-old. I am staying with her in her apartment in Manhattan. She’s phenomenal. She was an actress in the Yiddish theater in New York and traveling shows for about sixty years of her life. She started on stage when she was six-years-old and didn’t stop singing and dancing until she hit eighty.

And today she lives alone and is still taking care of business. Her mind is amazingly sharp, but thanks to emphysema (she used to smoke, oh, roughly fifty years ago when it was très chic and oh so healthy) she’s slowed down a bit. She gets around fine though by zipping around Manhattan in what she calls her Lexus, a snappy red electric scooter. I can’t even keep up with her when she’s cruising down the sidewalk plowing down the fine citizens of New York left and right. Watch out, or she’ll take you down.

And believe it or not, just the other day, she motivated me to get on her treadmill. That’s right, not only does she own a treadmill, she uses it three to four times a week. She walks on it for about fifteen minutes and seeing her on it made me think to myself, ‘Okay, if my grandma is on there, I better step it up and start running again.’ Nothing like your 94-year-old granny to kick your ass into gear. I can only hope to be like her when I’m old and wrinkly.

 

 

My Fellow Americans

Now that I am back in my homeland of majestic purple mountains, fruited plains, and good ol’ amber waves of grain, I am amidst my American brothers and sisters–sometimes loud, sometimes big, but almost always smiley and friendly. After more than one year on the road, I feel I have taken a very unscientific measure of foreigners’ views of Americans and America. Many statements have some truth to them—although, of course, they are all generalizations.

Here are some of the most common things I heard about us from foreigners.

1. Americans are very confident.
2. Americans are all rich.
3. Americans don’t know much about the rest of the world.
4. ‘I like Americans but I do not like American politics or foreign policy.’
5. How come every American traveler I meet tells me they don’t like George Bush? How did he become president…twice??”
6. I traveled to the United States and was pleasantly surprised at how friendly and welcoming they were (I honestly heard this at least ten different times).
7. You are thin for an American (this was really said to me in Madrid by a British guy).
8. You’re American, and you know how to drive a stick shift (standard transmission)??
9. You’re American…so you have a gun, right?
10. I don’t meet many Americans—they don’t travel as much as others.

This last one is a much discussed topic amongst travelers. Roughly 20-25% of Americans have their passports and those that do are more likely to be liberal-minded, left leaning individuals. But even though I do travel and think it is a great experience, education and investment for me personally, I do not feel the need to ‘wear my passport’ as a badge or look down on others who choose not to. I also know there are many reasons why some Americans do not or can not travel outside the country:

• The US is very big and one can spend a lifetime just seeing the fifty states inside its borders. North America has just about every climate and landscape known to man and a wide variety of culture, cuisine and lifestyles. A lifetime isn’t enough to see everything.
• Unlike European countries, the US is very far from most other countries making it very expensive to travel abroad. A New Yorker may go all the way to Florida on holiday while the same thing for a Brit may be to fly to the Costa del Sol of Spain—probably the same distance but because of the small size of European countries, crossing borders is just more common.
• And in relation to the above, since the distance is so great, the flights are therefore very expensive and many, many people in the US can not afford to travel abroad.
• The unfortunate lack of vacation time given by the majority employers in the US.

The United States is a vast nation. With a total land mass area (exclusive of waters) of 3,536,294 sq mi (9,158,960 km²) the U.S.A. is the world’s third largest country, following Russia and China. Stretching more than three thousand miles across with nearly fifty states and nearly 300 million people in between, this is one diverse land. Like all nations in the world some people are good and some bad. Some are the nicest you would ever meet and some are complete morons. One of my biggest pet peeves is generalizations.

In the beginning of my trip, I was slightly excited to be thought of as a ‘cool’ or ‘good’ American. People said I was ‘different’ because I was traveling and seeing the world and not just holed up in my country watching one of 300+ channels on my TV or driving my big, gas-guzzling SUV on some big highway somewhere (these are obviously more stereotypes). By the way, I sold the only car I’d ever owned, a 1989 Honda Prelude, before my trip began. I only drove about once a month and hope to not buy another one since I normally use public transport anyway. I was happy to also defend and explain to people that all Americans are not created equal and we are all different just like the rest of the world. But, I have to admit, as time went on I began to get sick and tired of trying to make sense of it all and either defending or renouncing other Americans. I grew weary of debunking the negative stereotypes that I really can’t do much about.

A few times I did encounter the stereotypical “ugly Americans” (as well as other English-speaking nationalities that shall remain nameless) during my travels giving us all a bad name, but I still tried to give them the benefit of the doubt because of the fact that they still made the decision to travel and see other parts of the world in the first place. But I also met and know wonderfully kind and open Americans. Just remember also that the Americans who are traveling abroad are there to open up to new experiences and engrossing themselves in new cultures, but by making comments about these very visitors to your countries that open-mindedness can quickly turn to defensiveness. After all I’ve seen and done I am still an American and I like myself and most of my American friends. I was proud to represent my country as I toured the world. I’m not proud of all Americans or everything my country does but who said it was all or nothing? Now shut up before I shoot you…and then sue you.

 

 

What Goes Around Comes Around

Many asked if coming ‘home’ would be bittersweet for me. I don’t know if ‘bittersweet’ is the right word. I’m certainly not bitter and life is still sticky sweet. I’m certainly not saying that my journey is over…in fact far from it—it’s only just begun (hum your version of the Carpenters tune here). Here in bustling New York I am continuing to meet new people giving me that same positive rush I now crave that I felt during my worldly travels. I’ve caught up with old friends and new ones that I met online through this very website–some were inspired and asking me for advice on their own upcoming adventures, some were getting back in touch after reading about my trip in the local paper, and others were trying to sell me some kind of ‘enlargement.’ I’ve been told I already have big ‘cojones’ for doing a trip like this…so I guess I don’t need that now. But it goes to show you how traveling is a great way to meet people–even if you are meeting New Yorkers or Chicagoans while you are in Istanbul.  Even when I’m not sure what to do next or feel flashes of confusion, I find it hard to stay that way because I keep coming back to the fact that I’ve been so extremely lucky and fortunate to see what I’ve seen, not just in the last 15 months, but during my entire life.

I am now back in the land between the two shining seas, the United States, but the only plan I have now is to stay in New York for about a month, then go to Chicago for another month or two, and then cross the country to Los Angeles for a few months to stay with my friend Mark, try to publish some more of my writing and/or photos, do some freelance PR work for Pueblo Ingles that I picked up in Spain, and most importantly lay at the pool.

Many have warned me about the very tough re-entry after a trip like this and that returning back to the US could be the biggest culture shock of all. I think like a good (or bad) movie, I heard so much about this ‘reverse culture shock’ that the hype was a bit more than the real deal. But I also feel like flying from London to New York made things so much easier. It was quite a seamless transition to go in between possibly the world’s two greatest, most diverse cities. I guess I’m doing what you would call not ripping the band-aid off quickly by creepingly slowly transitioning back to life in the US. As you can presume, I have never been away this long. So I wanted to try and see things differently here in the ‘US of A.’ You can see, do, and experience just about anything and everything in London, but nevertheless, New York City was still a bit of sensory overload. There are just so many things for your brain to absorb—no wonder people are stressed. A multitude of signs are everywhere you look, telling you something: ‘Stop!’ ‘Sale,’ ‘Barack wins this primary’, ‘Hilary wins that primary,’ ‘Hot Pizza’, ‘Cold Drinks’, ‘Buy this’, ‘Eat here,’ ‘Walk,’ ‘Don’t Walk,’ ‘Don’t Shoot!’, ‘Run for your life…,’ etc. There are so many, too many choices for everything. I mean it’s nice to live in a land where things are plentiful, but sometimes it seems a bit ridiculous. I now realized how simple my life had been for the last fifteen months. I only had a few pairs of pants (that’s trousers for the Brits–I did have a week supply of underwear, fyi) to choose from each day, I had no bills to pay, and my only worries were finding a new place to stay every few weeks, booking some form of transport, and avoiding most insects. I had avoided most media while I was away. It was a really nice break from being force fed lots of information, most of which is not 100% true, and a lot of which I frankly just don’t need to know. For the most important world news, I could scan the headlines on the internet or watch the BBC News and get a really nice five minute (that’s long by US news standards) update on the latest scuttlebutt of the US Presidential Race. I really didn’t need to know about any traffic-causing car crashes on the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago or old warehouse fires in the South Loop or another sad missing child story.

And speaking of the media—there is also an overabundance of television channels (do we really need 300?), magazines and tabloid newspapers being flashed in your face all day long. And then there are the stores. I went in to a drugstore (of which there are a multitude—practically one on every corner—just like the now omnipresent Starbucks) just to buy a simple tube of toothpaste. It was intense. First I had to sort through all the brands on offer. Once I settled on one name, I had to study each package for the various differences—gel, paste, tartar control, whitening, whitening with baking soda, all natural, all chemical, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend it, with fluoride, with crystals, for sensitive gums, for gums of steel, plaque control, with scope mouthwash, minty fresh, orangey goodness, or a swirly combination of everything. Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh…my brain hurt. Do we really need all this?

I was also confronted with a plethora of unguents, emollients, moisturizers, creams and lotions that claimed to firm, tighten, buff, polish, darken, shine, and improve my life, or at least the life of my skin. For more than one year I have done without nearly all of this and thanks to good marketing—now I just had to have some.  It was too easy to get sucked in–in fact I think they have a lotion for that–so I just have to avoid going in these stores at all.

The day I returned to our fair country, I flew into JFK International in New York City.  It was weird to go through immigration and not be a “visitor” for once and actually be around more American citizens than I’ve seen all together in more than a year. I have heard a few horror stories from my ‘foreign’ friends about their experiences being grilled by US immigration officers and I have to say I was a bit disappointed with my experience. I was sure hoping for a little stern interrogation or maybe just a comment about me being gone for so long. But nope. The white, stocky, grey-haired officer barely glanced at my customs card (on which I had to list where I’d been on my visit out of the country–twenty some-odd countries took up more space than allotted of course), took a cursory flip through my stamp-laden, well-worn passport, stamped me in and said, ‘welcome home.’ There was no ‘what were your dealings in the Middle East?’ ‘Why were you in Turkey so long?’ Not even a ‘Wow, gosh, gee, 15 months is a really long time!’ Oh well. Very soon it will be like I never even left.

 

 

Come Fly with Me

During my trip around the world I’ve now logged 115 hours flight hours (not even including the many hours getting to and from airports plus doing the wonderful ‘arrive two hours ahead of time for international flights’ game) and feel that my time flying the friendly skies has given me enough research to compile this list of things that will inevitably happen to you on international flights:

1. There are always, at least, two screaming, crying children on board. And one of them will always be an average of 3.3 seats away from your ears.
2. The headphones they give you to watch a movie are always crap and so is the audio. Four out of five times, the used ‘toy’ headphones you remove from their specially ’sealed’ plastic wrapping will only have sound in one ear forcing you to go back to 1940 when everything was in mono.
3. On some budget flights nowadays you have to pay (way too much) for your own food and drink, but the pungent body odor coming from the passenger next to you is always free.
4. Also on some budget flights (ie Air Asia, Ryanair) there are enforced weight restrictions for your checked baggage (15Kg/30lbs or less). I often had to shove my boots, toiletries, and other heavier items into a second carry-on bag. Unless, of course, they only allow you one stinkin’ carry on (including purse!) like the good folks at Ryannair, then I was stuffing all things imaginable into my one carry on back pack…its weight seeming to outpace even my checked bag. This makes no sense whatsoever considering it all goes on the same plane anyway.
5. More body odor.
6. The fattest and only American on the plane will sit next to you. She didn’t pay for two seats, but she certainly is using them.
7. Or…there are two Brits sitting next to you that do NOT shut up the whole time and there voices are the loudest on the plane. And not only that…they ‘talk’ with their hands in a very ‘herky-jerky’ way nearly slapping you with every damn punctuated sentence.

I flew to New York’s JFK International Airport on Air India. It was the cheapest flight available at $400. When I mentioned flying on Air India, a few raised their eyebrows. It was a standard 747 like all others, the flight was great, I had scored an exit row all to myself (I always ask for it, ya know, because I’m just so darn tall), and as I’d hoped the food was a tasty Indian curry. I even requested the vegetarian meal. Yum.

Inevitably, as soon as the plane touches down on terra firma and skids to a screeching halt at the last bit of runway, all passengers (especially in Asia) jump to their feet (yes, seat belt light is still on) so they can stand hunched over in a queue in the aisle for ten minutes as we taxi to the gate and wait for the plane’s doors to fly open and release its fidgety human contents. It is as if somehow standing will get them out of the plane faster. And now they can get to the baggage carousel that much faster so they can stand there for fifteen extra minutes and wait for their bag to come off…unless it’s lost, of course. By the way, in my thirty-five or so flights not once did my bag get ‘lost, stolen, or damaged.’ Sweet.

 

“Hi. My name is Lisa and I’m a Travel Junkie”

Habitual runners get off on the kick in of endorphins that give them that extra boost they need. I get the same jolt from an exciting day of travel or an unexpected side trip to a new and undiscovered land (for me…not for all mankind) that I hadn’t planned to visit. Traveling seems to give me a near constant roller coaster type of adrenaline rush. It’s a healthy drug, travel, but may cost a bit more than crack.

I was flying to New York City in five days. My trip was winding down. I was about to return to the United States after 15+ months traveling around the world and living out of the same bag (my faithful traveling companion…which I often refer to as my boyfriend—he’s sturdy and trusty, but can often be a pain in the ass and the wheels and metal zippers aren’t too cozy to cuddle with). My last few days in England I was not planning a whole lot, but then wham!

Another spontaneous trip miraculously presented itself on my very last weekend abroad. I was staying in the charming old Roman town of Bath, England (aptly named for the natural hot springs discovered there by the Romans about 2000 years ago) for a few days before I headed back towards London just to jump into Heathrow one of the world’s busiest airports and go through a possible strip search at the tight British airport security for the zillionth time and board the thirty-fourth flight of my world tour to rack up approximately 115 hours of flight time and 42, 220 miles (67, 946 kms) around the planet.

A British friend and fellow world traveler, Caroline, who I’d met during a ‘swim with the Dolphins’ experience in the chilly waters (freeze your ass off type of ‘chilly’) off of the North Island of New Zealand, lives near Bath and we planned to meet for lunch before I was to hop on a train and head back into London. I was planning to spend my last three nights in England actually outside of London in a small town near Windsor with another friend I’d made in Turkey who graciously offered up his flat to me and my boyfriend (Mr. Suit Case), but then he (Glen, not my bag) came down with the flu and feared his nasty germs were coating all the surfaces of his home. Caroline emailed me about how it was too bad I couldn’t join her and her girlfriends for the weekend in a resort town on the north coast of Wales. ‘But…wait…I can join you!’

And another great trip unfolded perfectly before me right when I needed it.

I joined four other single thirty-somethings for the weekend in Llandudno, Wales where we hiked and laughed over glasses of wine by the fire sharing tales of travel, men, and other girly things (so “Sex & the City”). We even got pulled over by some lovely Welsh policemen. Caroline had forgotten to put her lights on—good thing they didn’t notice us driving the wrong was down a one-way street about five minutes prior (and it was the Brit driving on the ‘right’ side of the street, not the American). The area was beautiful with rocky, green hills meeting the sea through the foggy mist. It was a perfect weekend and the perfect temporary ending to my travels.

Oh, how I will miss this rush of the unexpected trip that seems to come out of nowhere, but really comes from all the cool friends I’ve made around the world. If it weren’t for them I would never have seen the amazing terraced mountainsides of SaPa, Vietnam, the beautiful vineyard covered island of Bozcaada, Turkey, or the multi-personalitied charming yet industrial city of Gothenburg, Sweden. I guess it’s true what they say: When one door closes, another one opens.

 

Blogus Interruptus

Sorry to jump ahead in the chronological order of things and post a story out of order. But I’ve just traveled to a new town…see if you can guess where:

A Beach Destination?

A small rural town?

Back on terra firma…

What’s that in the distance?

Another Train Journey…

When you get caught between the moon and New York City…

This is the city that never sleeps, the Big A, say it with me…New Yawk City! Yep, I’m back on American soil. I landed at JFK International Airport and made my way to chilly Manhattan on the subway while the sun set and a full moon rose. And there she was, looking a bit shorter than I remembered. No, not the statue of Liberty, my nearly 94-year-old grandmother, Esta Lubin. Oy Vey! I’m home.
Now back to the London story…

 

London Bits and Bobs

Random London Musings:

One rave:

The city is full of amazing museums. I’m not a huge museum goer and still checked out the Tate Modern (housed inside an old power plant on the banks of the Thames), the Victoria & Albert, the Natural History Museum, the British Museum (which boasts the largest covered square in Europe), and the National Gallery. They are all great and the buildings themselves were oftentimes just as impressive as the contents inside. And the best part—they are free. You can just pop in for no more than an hour and not become overwhelmed because of their size because you know you can always go back whenever you want thanks to the no-admission fee.

And one rant:

What is up with the eat-in/take-away differing prices? I don’t find this very fair and frankly don’t understand why this concept is still around.

 One Cheer:

All the pubs, bars, and restaurants have gone ’smoke-free.’ I have to say it is wonderful to hang out in pubs now where it just smells like someone’s living room (not even stale beer smell) and not a smoky den that would make my clothes stink and  usually make me leave early due to the inability to no longer breathe.

 One Jeer:

The London Underground does not run all night nor were there any train or bus services at all on Christmas Day.   C’mon people, this is London not Albuquerque (sorry my friends in NM)! London is one of the biggest cities in the world with an incredibly diverse population who certainly don’t all celebrate Christmas and need to ‘move’ on the 25th of December. I mean even New York and Chicago have public transport still going on that day and have 24 hour trains the rest of the year.

I have traveled all over the world and had trouble reading the street names in some places in Germany or Turkey (Can you say: Mecidiyeköy? It’s pronounced Medj-i-dee-ye-kurr), but even though they are in English, some names in London are just as foreign to me. I couch surfed near “Tooting Bec” tube stop. I could have eaten at the very appetizing sounding restaurant chain, ‘Slug and Lettuce,’ but I didn’t. I passed pubs with names like ‘The Blue-Eyed Maid” and “the Rat and Parrot” and “the Hairy Armpit.” And I could have eaten ‘winkles and whelks’ (snails), but I didn’t.

One night I met Tony, Emma, Nick, and Sara at the Cow, a famous pub near Notting Hill. I don’t often go into bars alone as I usually feel more comfortable going solo at a café with a coffee and a book. But it was damn cold out and when I got there, the friendly, intimidating atmosphere beckoned me inside for a quick pint. This surprisingly turned into a few pints and dinner.

 

The Cow was a nice corner pub (not really sure if it is on a corner though), not too trendy and not too ‘over done’ fake British. I was at a small table just across from the bar partaking in a pint and reading my trusty guidebook (Lonely Planet) just minding my own business. That is, until I started eavesdropping on the conversation next to me between two guys (one of whom had an American accent) and two gals. Their conversation had turned to Americans and how easy it is for them to find ‘legal’ work in Britain. This sparked my interest and my nerve to jump into their chat. I was feeling a kinship with my fellow American and, as always, was curious to hear his story. I finally blurted out in my tell-tale American accent, “Please tell me where to find work because I’m an illegal American always looking.” They laughed, introduced themselves, and in literally seconds were inviting me to join them for dinner. Tony was a documentary filmmaker in New York, Emma was an Artist. Oh, and she used to be married to George C. Scott’s son. It turned out to be another fun night and quite typical of the solo traveler who may not be alone enough to even use the word ‘solo.’

I spent the rest of my rainy and damp days in London strolling around picturesque ‘hoods like Chelsea, Hampstead, and South Kensington catching up with friends I had met during my travels around the world: a late ‘English’ breakfast with the fun English School owner I’d become friends with in Istanbul, lunch with the sweet British law student I’d cruised down the Danube with in Budapest, dinner and drinks with the charming Airline CEO I’d met years back at the British Consulate’s house in Chicago, sleeping at the flat of a cool chick I’d met on a tour of Turkey, wine and feasting with an Australian Couch Surfing Host and her cool Tasmanian (and nicely devilish) friend, beers with a cute chap and fellow Crisis volunteer, dinner with a Sri Lankan/Australian I’d also met in Turkey who lives in London, and a partridge in a pear tree…