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Hi LLworldTour friends!

This is just a warning…my website is NOT going away and my travels are far from over. The website is in a bit of a transition phase as the LLWorldtour team (okay, me) makes some changes.

Please bear with me and also PLEASE change any links you have on your sites or bookmarks/favorites you have regarding this website to:

http://www.llworldtour.com

The old site, the one you are on now, www.llworldtour.wordpress.com, will be going away shortly…well, it just won’t be updated. The new one is exactly the same…just will be better.

**Keep in mind – you may have thought you linked or bookmarked to llworldtour.com when you were really linking to www.llworldtour.wordpress.com…so please check.

Thanks so much for your support!
LL

After two lazy days drinking Belikin, the local brew, eating deliciously fresh seafood ceviche, I took the 45-minute water taxi ride to Belize City where the rest of my adventures were about to begin.

My friend, Renee, had convinced me to join her on a week long kayaking/camping/snorkeling trip in Belize and it was, simply, an offer I couldn’t refuse.

Island Expeditions is a Canada-based tour company, which has been leading different Belize adventure tours for 20 years. Our tour was called Mayan Caves and Coral Islands. We were a group of eight, all gals from all over the US and Canada plus one lucky (or unlucky considering he played for the ‘other’ team) guy and our two tour guides: Canadian Dave and hometown Belizean boy, Domasco. Our first night we stayed at some rustically cute cabins at Belize’s fairly new “Tropical Education Center.” We were lucky to go on a night tour of the Belize Zoo, a wonderful facility that only takes in injured or rescued animals and prides itself on never removing any healthy animals from their natural habitats. The well maintained zoo was definitely worth the visit as we were greeted by it’s happy boa constrictor, “Balboa,” a purring leopard and a few wild and crazy guys—the Howler Monkeys.

The adventures really began the next day as we toured Actun Tunichil Muknal, a recently discovered, eight-mile deep cave (about 13 kilometers) full of not only wonderfully preserved Mayan pottery, but actual dead people…well, their bones that is.

The cave, which just opened for tours in 1998, consisted of pitch-black winding passages leading to several large chambers making the headlamps we all wore very handy. To enter we had to swim until we reached a rock ledge inside the cave and about half of the time we were submerged in water. The several-hour Indiana Jones-like tour was, in a word, a thrill. We literally had to climb up and down sharp and slippery walls, shimmy through narrow dark passages and careen down natural rock waterslides on our way through the dark tunnels.

For a good portion part of the tour we had to remove our shoes and just padded around the muddy cave floor in our socks so as to not damage the floor more – either with the soles of our shoes or the oils of our skin. Over 1400 artifacts – pottery, tools, and ceremonial items dating from 1 to 1000 AD – including over 200 vessels, have been cataloged within the cave. The most common artifact – about 400 ceramic jars traditionally used to hold water – has lead to the hypothesis that this cave was most used for ceremonies that pertained to water, rituals to the Rain God. Some not-so-common artifacts were the human remains. So far, skeletons and bones from fourteen folks have been found; 7 adults & 7 children, all under the age of 5. It’s been determined that these poor souls were not being buried here, but instead were sacrificial victims. They were all likely sacrificed in the hopes of appeasing the gods and bringing rain. Hang on a sec…time for me to do a quick rain jig.

Even though we were with a guide, I had to think that there was no way the public would be allowed in a cave like this in the US. And coincidentally, only a handful of guides in all of Belize are trained and permitted by the Belize Department of Archeology to give proper tours of this special site. To this day, the cave has not been looted and nearly all of the cultural artifacts have remained in place as they were originally found in 1989. Right now the maximum tourists per group is eight, but we were told they will soon reduce it to just six people allowed with each guide. It’s nice to see that the Belize government is putting the preservation of such an amazing place over the priority to squeeze dollars from every wet tourist they can fit into it.

What? Yes, I just returned from Belize. I know what you are thinking—‘yeah, Lisa, you really needed another vacation’ (better get a mop because the sarcasm is dripping). What can I say? Traveling is in my new career.

Belize is one of those places that some backpackers skip–mostly because it’s quite expensive compared to the rest of Central America. But compared to the Caribbean islands, it’s one of the cheapest destinations around. Home to the hammock, unbelievably blue Caribbean waters and the second biggest barrier reef in the world (after Australia) – Belize is just too good to miss. Previously a British Colony (remember British Honduras?), this tiny nation (roughly the size of Massachusetts or Belgium) was granted independence in 1981. I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t even sure where Belize was (besides somewhere in Central America) before this trip. Now I know it’s the tiny nation jammed in between Mexico and Guatemala. But apparently Madonna knows because she sang about it in her 1987 hit La Isla Bonita: ‘last night I dreamt of San Pedro …´ (one of Belize’s Caribbean islands’ main cities). This being perhaps the most played song in Belize after various Bob Marley tunes.

My American Airlines plane careened down the airstrip in Belize City, I walked down the metal stairs and onto the tarmac into the warm, Caribbean air, and went through immigration and customs in all of about 5 minutes. I had a connecting flight in about an hour to one of dozens of Belize’s off shore islands or Cayes (keys). I approached the counter for Maya Island Air where a relaxed chocolate skinned, beautiful Belizean girl greeted me with a grin.

“Where ya headed today?” she asked with a charming Caribbean accent.

“I’m going to Caye Caulker or Caulker Caye,” I forgot which way it went.

I started to fish my passport (love that thing) out of my backpack when she said, “Lisa Lubin?”

Confused by how she knew my name, I enquired while literally looking down at my chest to see if I was wearing a ‘Hello, My name is…’ tag that I’d forgotten about. She slyly replied, ‘magic’ and continued to grin. Laughing, I asked again.

“You are the only one getting off there, love.”

Okay, you know you are in a small place when they greet you at the airport counter by name.

There were twelve other passengers, but I was the only one getting off at Caye Caulker.

“Ya know,” I said, “when I check-in at Chicago O’Hare, odds are they are not going to greet me by name.”

(Cut to interior of tiny 12-seat propeller plan)

“Ma’am, there are no seats left so you have to sit upfront with the pilot.” One of the friendly ground crew said to me as I saw my bag being stowed underneath. He escorted me around to the front passenger seat right next to the pilot. How cool—I was riding shot gun.

When he told me this, one of the other male passengers offered to go in my place, assuming I was a timid ‘flower-of-a-gal’ who would be afraid to sit upfront or something.

“No way!” I exclaimed, as I held up the whole flight while I scrambled to dig for my camera in my carry-on which I’d have to leave in the back (there is no “under the seat in front of you” when you are in the cockpit with only the windshield and nose of the plane in front of you).

In my life, I’d ridden in small planes, a helicopter, a blimp, and once, the backseat of a Cessna, but I can’t recall ever having the chance to ride shotgun. Like a toy plane, we skitted down the runway and took off as if we were as light as a feather. It was a beautiful, 15-minute ride over turquoise blue waters and other islands and before we knew it we were gliding down to the tiny airstrip of Caye Caulker flanked by what looked like a clapboard shack which turned out to be the ‘airport.’

I caught a ride in a ‘golf-cart’ taxi to town with another American expat, who just so happened to own one of the most popular bars on the island: the Lazy Lizard. I thanked him and pledged to catch up with him later.

Caye Caulker is a beautiful, relaxing, palm tree bit of paradise. It is a bit more of a sleepy, laid-back destination compared to the larger, more touristy Ambergis Caye to the north. It’s only about 5 miles long and a few blocks wide. There are now a good amount of hotels lining the main streets. I bedded down in Trends Beachfront Hotel, a pastel colored wood, shingled building trimmed with front decks and hammocks. There is no shortage of good, local eateries serving up tasty seafood and also a good amount of Mexican specialties. Some of my favorite spots were for breakfast. Glenda’s restaurant is a humble, tiny place with a screened-in porch at the back of the island. Here you order off the chalkboard menu as you enter and start your sunny day with a great cup of coffee, sweet fresh-squeezed OJ, eggs with onions and tomato and most likely Belize’s best homemade cinnamon roll all for five bucks.

I enjoyed a few lazy days in the sun on Caye Caulker. As promised, I ventured down to the Lazy Lizard to say ‘hello’ to my new friend from my flight over. His bar was right on what they call the ‘split’ on the edge of the island where it once was attached the island just a few yards to the north but is now ‘split’ in two. The tiny beach here is sprinkled with picnic benches and tanned bodies lying in the sun. I made some new Canadian friends, quenched my thirst, and again, felt at home in the world.

I haven’t slept in my own bed in nearly two years. In fact I don’t even have ‘my own’ bed anymore. It was one of the things I gave away before I left. The good part about this is I’ve become a very low maintenance sleeper and can sleep basically anywhere, anytime, and with anyone. Ok, I’m joking about the last one, but you know it’s best to write in ‘threes.’

During my travels around the world, I’ve slept in all kinds of places and in all kinds of beds. From hostel bunks to homestays to cabins to boats to tents to trains to airport chairs. And, no, I never once was bitten in bed…at least not by a bug.

]]> http://llworldtour.wordpress.com/2008/05/01/don%e2%80%99t-let-the-bed-bugs-bite/feed/ 4 LLworldtour http://llworldtour.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/snapshot-hong-kong/ http://llworldtour.wordpress.com/2008/04/20/snapshot-hong-kong/#comments Sun, 20 Apr 2008 02:39:07 +0000 Lisa Lubin http://llworldtour.wordpress.com/?p=1292 ]]>

No, I’m not back in Hong Kong…not yet. But an article I wrote and my photographs were recently published on Smithsonian Online. Check it out, and don’t forget to click on the photo gallery to see my pics with captions!

Snapshot: HongKong

A forward-thinking city with ancient traditions
By Lisa Lubin

In a place where Cantonese and English are the official languages, Hong Kong’s seven million inhabitants thrive in this center for international finance and trade. Hong Kong is a vibrant city with an infectious rhythm. On the surface it’s a huge metropolis like any other, with mobile phone-carrying workers hurrying to meetings in a forest of steely skyscrapers, but look a little bit closer and you find an ancient land full of traditions and culture. Here East truly meets West.

Origins: The area now known as Hong Kong has been inhabited since the Paleolithic Era. The region officially became part of Imperial China during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.) and later served as a trading post and naval base during the Tang (A.D. 618-907) and Song Dynasties (A.D. 960–1279). The first Europeans arrived in the 1500s when a Portuguese seaman claimed Hong Kong for Portugal.

Then and Now: This very animated city was just a collection of small fishing villages when the British claimed it in 1842 after the First Opium War. Hong Kong was returned to the Chinese in 1997 and is now known as a “Special Administrative Region,” along with nearby Macau, of the People’s Republic of China. Today, this former fishing colony is a huge international metropolis boasting one of the world’s most open and dynamic economies.

Appeal: Hong Kong is a bustling coastal city that offers a full-on assault of sounds, sights and smells. A simple stroll down Nathan Road in Tsim Sha Tsui is invigorating. You hear constant calls from street corner vendors (‘handbag?’ ‘need a tailor?’), see stores jam-packed with shoppers, and breathe in the enticing smells of steamy noodle shops that remain open late every night. Standing on the tip of Kowloon Peninsula, visitors can gaze across Victoria Harbor to the full expanse of the Hong Kong Island skyline, with a total of 7,681 skyscrapers. And while other great cities like Paris, London and New York took several centuries to build, Hong Kong built almost everything here in the time [can we include a year here “in the couple of decades…” or somehow indicate what “young” means?] since today’s young investment bankers were born. A seven minute ferry ride costing only about 30 cents brings travelers across the harbor to Hong Kong Island. This 30-square-mile financial center is the heart of Hong Kong. Here visitors experience the fusion of past and present by walking around a mix of modern skyscrapers and centuries-old markets.

Who goes here: Hong Kong is a forward-thinking city with ancient traditions. It welcomes visitors from all over the world, and since the handover of Hong Kong back to China, increasing numbers of migrants from mainland China have been coming to the city. The Hong Kong Tourism Board estimates the number of visitors in 2006 was 25.25 million. Ninety-five percent of the residents of Hong Kong are ethnic Chinese. But there is also a large community of foreigners with Filipinos, Indonesians and Americans being the largest immigrant groups. Expatriates from Europe and America have flocked here, working on the “Wall Street of Asia,” where steely skyscrapers hover over ancient temples and a few remaining rickshaws.

Famous sons and daughters:

Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940 – July 20, 1973) was an American-born, Hong Kong-raised martial arts actor and is widely regarded as the most influential martial artist of the 20th century.

Jackie Chan (born April 7, 1954) is a Chinese stuntman/actor/producer/director. He is one of the best-known names in kung fu and action films.

Maggie Cheung (born September 20, 1964) was born in Hong Kong and raised in England. She is an award-winning film star who’s appeared in more than 80 films. She is best known in the West for her roles in the movies In the Mood for Love, Hero and Clean.

Interesting Fact: Hong Kong is geographically compact and boasts one of the world’s most efficient, safe, and affordable public transportation systems. In fact, over 90 percent of daily travels are on public transport. Also helping Hong Kongers and visitors traverse the city is the world’s longest covered escalator. Because part of Hong Kong Island is built into the side of a steep hill, the Mid-Levels escalator— stretching 800 meters in length and consisting of 20 escalators and 3 moving pavements—moves more than 35,000 commuters each day (it operates downhill during morning rush hour and reverses direction for the remainder of the day).

(See more of my published articles here.)

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For the first time in my life, I am one of ‘those people’ I always see in the middle of the day lingering over a latte and a laptop at Starbucks. I always wondered who they were and how did they manage to be doing virtually nothing in the middle of a weekday? Now I am one of them. A freelancer. A writer. A vagabond. Slightly jobless and ever so slightly homeless and it’s great.

But it did take me a few days to transition back to this life again. After all my adventures over the last year and a half and all the new relationships I’d forged, after one ‘catch-up’ drink here with old friends, would anyone really care? I had been growing anxious for my return to Chicago. I was excited to see old friends and just a bit trepidatious since it meant kind of an unofficial end to my ‘round the world’ travels. But nothing prepared me for what I really did feel once I was actually in my favorite city. Everything was the same and everything had changed. Nothing seemed different and yet I was different and the little life I had here was no longer here ready for me to just jump back in. Or was it? In some ways, it was like time stood still. While I was off having the most amazing experiences of my life and making more friends than I ever have in such a short time, everything here was pretty much status quo. It was like I never left except for one thing: the life I had assembled for ten years in Chicago had dissolved into the city air. Of course I am being a bit dramatic (I have to keep you interested dear reader); many of my friends were here doing pretty much the same thing they were doing when I left and it was great to see them. The “Ferris wheel” that was my life with my different groups of work/neighbor/activities friends on the ride in different carriages with me in the middle of all the spokes had been broken down and dismantled. Everyone had gotten off and gotten on other rides or even gone to other amusement parks and random traveling carnivals. I felt like after I said all my ‘hellos’ to friends, maybe I’d start to feel down. But I realized that I could settle back down and reassemble this ‘Lubin Ferris Wheel of Fun’ in no time and all would be fine. Although some riders really did up and run away with the circus including one of my best friends who had moved back to Germany while I was gone and the ex-boyfriend, whom I did everything with and went everywhere with, was now in another relationship. Even though I managed to wrangle him out for a beer one night, he was simply just not around. I haven’t missed being in a couple at all, but I have to admit, coming back to Chicago was like a slap of reality. I was out in the world being footloose and fancy free and not in a position to miss it.

But before I could get too sad or nostalgic for the ‘old days,’ I was falling in love with my city all over again. Not only was I catching up with old friends, but also meeting new ones. I was finally meeting some folks who’d contacted me through my website from articles written about my trip or various links on the web. They’d written me over the last two years while I was away, like new pen pals, and now we could actually meet face to face. Meeting lots of new people was one of the best things about my travels so I really enjoyed keeping this going even in my hometown.

When I first returned to Chicago, I have to admit, I was a tad let down–not sure why–but it was a combo of things–missing my trip, having a very, very delayed reaction to my break-up with my ex-boyfriend (after five years of being together in Chicago, I associate a lot of the city with him), and just general stress that comes with the place you actually call ‘home’.

But after a few days of self-wallowing, the sun came out—-literally and figuratively—-and I realized it was springtime in Chicago. There is no better time to enjoy Chicago than in the spring—the enormous lakefront is alive with cyclists and joggers, restaurants put out their alfresco sidewalk tables and chairs, and the Cubs’ season starts.

What a great time to be alive. I re-immersed myself in my city: caught a Cubs game at Wrigley Field, went to a friend’s barbecue, wandered around the phenomenal Millennium Park, caught a couple flicks at the International Latino Film Fest, joined the Chicago Couch Surfer group for a pub crawl in Bucktown, picked up the Emmy award I’d won while I was away (!), and caught up with old and new friends nearly every day and night doing various lunches, dinners, and/or drinks. Before long, I had reclaimed Chicago as my own and once again, had no regrets.

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!

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• 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

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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.