Food Adventures (ITC Week 29)

What do you splurge on when you travel?  What’s one thing that you are willing to spend more on while traveling? Why?

 

I am generally a cheap traveler; the less you spend each day, the more days your cash will last. I stay in hostels, use budget airlines, and I have often carried a jar of peanut butter and a squashed loaf of bread in my backpack so I don’t have to eat out every meal.  However, there are some things that are worth budgeting in; after all, I don’t want to be so cheap that I miss what I came for. 

Meat, gravy, and knedliky in the Czech Republic

The first thing that comes to mind is local food: you’ve got to get lasagna in Italy, sausages in Germany, and barbecue and my mom’s chocolate gravy in Tennessee (not together, of course).  You’ve got to get shrimp within view of the ocean, and waffles in Belgium (which, by the way, are much better than what we call ‘Belgian waffles’ in the States—crunchy, sticky, sugar coated!).  And then of course, sometimes you’ve got to get Chicken Parmesan in Hanoi and Turkish kebabs in Krakow. 

As I’m still trying to outlive my reputation as a picky eater (well-deserved) as a child, I have tried over the past few years to be adventurous and have at least one meal of traditional local food you can’t get elsewhere in each country.  I stopped at a diner in Jičín, in the Czech Republic, and had their roast meat and knedliky (sliced dumplings), all smothered in gravy.  I ate the official food of the Dragon Boat festival in China, glutinous rice wrapped in tea leaves, when my students offered me one (and I managed to keep smiling and chewing while they were looking, and deposit the rest in the bushes when they weren’t). 

Glutinous rice wrapped in tea leaves

When I traveled with my study abroad group in college, we would live on baguettes, fruit, and chocolate bars for most meals so that we could splurge on Hard Rock in every city.  I’ve kept up a similar philosophy over the years; it’s worth a few peanut-butter sandwiches to afford a nicer meal that will be part of my memory of the place.  Sometimes it’s trying the local food, and sometimes it’s getting some good Italian or American food—as an expat, finding an Italian restaurant that, on the inside, looked like you could be on a side street in Rome, next to my hostel in Shanghai seemed heaven-sent after months of nothing but Chinese.  And then, sometimes I find it entertaining to eat something wholly out-of-place—how are the Polish people at cooking Italian?  (Not great).  How are Germans at Tex-Mex? (again, not so great).  But the Vietnamese can sure handle Italian! 

A dish of stewed potatoes and beef at a banquet in China

The Traveler that Went Back in Time (ITC Week 25)

If you could travel anywhere in the world, in any era, where would you go? Where is that place that has always fascinated you and you’ve always asked yourself how it would have looked like ages ago?
 

As if there wasn’t enough to explore in this world as it is right now, let’s throw in time travel—don’t just settle for Florida, lay on the beaches of Atlantis.  Already seen the pyramids?  Go take a look at the Colossus of Rhodes.  Have dinner in the city of Maccu Picchu, buy souvenirs in the marketplace in Athens and watch to see if Aristotle walks by, stroll through an Angkor Wat teeming with monks.  Or go the other direction: take a shuttle up to the mining operations on the moon; celebrate as Tokyo reaches a population of fifty million; take a road trip on the TransAfrica interstate system. 

With not only space but all of time thrown in, where would I go first?  Of course, as a Christian, first-century Palestine would be high on my list; I’d like to witness the miracles of Jesus, and sing praises with the church in Antioch.  The tabernacle in the desert God instructed Moses to build, the tower of Babel going up, the construction of the arc, and the flowers in the Garden would all be wonderful sights.

Outside of Biblical places and events, I became an English major because of Beowulf; I’d like to see what life was like in the ‘Dark Ages’.  The treasure of Hutton Soo must have been spectacular before it was buried.  I doubt castle life was as romantic as we make it out to be, but I’d still like to explore one that doesn’t have a gift shop. 

My next stop would probably be tea with Jane, or maybe Charlotte: would regency fashion look good on me?  Could I attract the attention of a rich gentleman?  I think I’d enjoy teaching in a Belgian boarding school and trips to Bath, at least for a while. Too bad Mr. Darcy is fictional. 

I’d love to know my ancestors; time travel would give me the chance to watch the seasons change with my Native American ancestors, and learn how to live off the land—I’d finally find out what tribe Lizzie was from in Illinois.  I could step off the Anne to join the Plymouth colony with Edward Bumpass, or build a home in Jamestown with the Clayes.  I could ask Mexico’s mother where she got that name, and try to convince the Castlemans not to sell Lot #5 in the brand-new settlement of Nashville; it would be worth a lot of money if they’d keep it in the family and pass it down to me!  I’d go give Priscilla Mobley a hand with the cooking as she raised seven boys alone, and find the Dortch’s village in England. 

After I’ve finished exploring several thousand years of recorded history, visiting fictional places would be the next great frontier.  I guess Hogwarts would be overrun with gawkers if we could do that, though. 

From the Desk to Vietnam (ITC Week 21)

 For week 21 of the Indie Travel Challenge, we’d like you to tell us what your travel dreaming tools of choice are. Do you still pull pages from magazines? Do you keep a spreadsheet on your computer, organized by country? Do you have a smartphone app or a website you love?

When I talk about trips I’ve taken or places I’ve traveled, one of the common responses I get is, “I wouldn’t even know where to begin to do something like that.”  How do I get from a blank piece of free time to getting hit by a motorcycle in Vietnam? 

To begin with, I love maps; I always have.  When I was a child, we had a dusty red set of encyclopedias, already years out of date.  The last volume was my favorite—an atlas with hundreds of maps of different parts of the world.  Now and then, I would pull it out and flip through, reading the names of distant cities and seas and mountain ranges. 

Maps still fascinate me.  I like to navigate on road trips, and I like to keep a map updated of where I’ve been.  Google maps is one of my most frequent distractions when I have down time at work.   Most of my trips start there; I start with my city, and zoom out: what’s to the north? The south?  What’s along the way between me and another major city? What loop could I go in that would include the most places I’d like to see?  If I go this direction this time, and that direction another time, what will I find? 

Once I have an idea of the general possibilities, my next step is usually lonelyplanet.com.  A bit clichéd, maybe, but useful, especially if I’m not already familiar with a country or region.  Lonely planet gives a list of “top picks”; while some of these are unavoidably touristy, it gives me a good idea of what’s on offer.  Then, it’s back to google: first stop, google images to see the place, then google search to find out about its importance and history and all, and finally back to google maps to plot it on a custom map I’ve created for the trip.  Repeat process, until I’ve plotted everything I would like to see or do on the map.  Then it’s time for lonely planet again, as well as train schedules, flight websites like Kayak and Vayama, bus schedules, etc.  What route is feasible, both time-wise and monetarily?  Once I figure out what would be entailed in getting to each destination, I can choose a route that will include as many as possible without backtracking too much.

Once I’ve got a general route, then I can find out about hostels on hostelworld.com or hostels.com.  I don’t usually plan a strict itinerary; in fact, the longer I travel, the less detailed my plans get.  I make a list of things I’d like to do in a city, but once I arrive I decide the specifics based on the weather, my mood, and what other discoveries I make along the way.  Here are the websites I use the most, if you want to research a trip of your own:

General Travel Information 

•  Lonely Planet
•  Google Maps
•  Trip Advisor
•  Wikitravel
•  Travel China Guide

Flights

•  Kayak
•  Vayama
•  Air Asia
•  (Within Europe) Ryanair

Trains

•  Rail Europe
• Travel China Guide: China Trains
• Indian Rail
  

Where to Stay 
(These are hostels websites, but they also show inexpensive hotels, bed and breakfasts, etc.) 

•  Hostels.com
•  Hostel World

Travel Articles, Podcasts, and Stories

•  Amateur Traveler  My very favorite travel podcast (also available on iTunes), but there’s a lot of good stuff on the website, too.
• Rick Steve's Radio Show  (also available under podcasts on iTunes)
• Rick Steve's Europe  Advice and planning for a beginner traveler to Europe 
•  Matador Online travel magazine
•  BootsnAll Travel articles, geared towards long-term independent backpackers 
• Vagablogging The blog of one of my favorite travel writers, Rolf Potts

Misc. 

•  Time and Date  Good for figuring out, until you get used to the time zones, if it’s too late at night to call home.
•  XE Currency Converter  Useful until you get used to a different currency.

Autostrada del Sole (ITC Week 19)

Indie Travel Challenge Week 19: Road Trips

 For week 19, we’d like you to design the perfect road trip. Who’s with you in the car? What kind of car are you driving? What snacks are in the cooler? What music is playing? And, most importantly, where are you?

When I read this prompt, the first thing that popped into my head was  sunlight pouring in the windows, catching a glimpse of Orvieto, an ancient town built on top of a cliff, out the window as I head south towards Rome on the Autostrada del Sole.  Giorgia’s Girasole (Sunflower) is next on the playlist, and I’ve brought along a bottle of A.C.E. fruit juice. It’s hot outside, but the air conditioner is thankfully working at the minute. 

 Even the name Autostrada del Sole, the Highway of the Sun, Interstate 1, seems an invitation to find out where it goes.  It’s the backbone of Italy’s interstate system, running like a spine from Milan to Naples.  In between, it passes through most of the major cities of central Italy, including Bologna, Florence, and Rome. 

When I lived in Italy, I traveled every mile of it at some time or another, most of those in a large and crowded van (the rickety old gray Bible School van on our way to a convegno in Velletri, just outside of Rome; crammed in the back of the di Marco’s van with the Naples crowd as I bummed a ride down to explore Naples after another trip to Velletri) or else riding along with the Shorts to Florence, or again Velletri.  I guess those trips to the women’s retreat and family retreats held at Velletri really added up the highway miles. 

However, the thing all of these trips had in common was that I was in route somewhere, and I had a time I needed to be there.  And while the sights along the way are nice even in passing, it would make a beautiful road trip if I had the time to wander: a side trip to the independent country of  San Marino, parking and taking the tram up into Orvieto to see the famous old church,  fields of sunflowers with the Tower of Pisa floating on the horizon behind them, eating the original ragu (meat sauce) in Bologna, meandering off side roads to explore the small towns perched on top of hills in rural Tuscany, parking at Piazza Michelangelo for the postcard-picture view of Florence, passing miles of empire-era aqueduct just south of Rome, and finally taking my life in my hands driving into the chaos of Naples, with Vesuvius looming over the city.  Dozens of other side trips would be possible, if the time and money held out. 

Sadly, it’s been three years since I left Italy; nearly as long as I lived there.  I still feel homesick sometimes to walk across Piazza del Duomo in Milan.  I thought when I left that I’d find a way to visit frequently, but as always, life hasn’t worked out that way.  Life instead took me even further the opposite direction, to China.  My Italian is getting rusty as there’s rarely anyone to talk to around here. You would think that after living for three years in Italy, I’d have seen it all, but I only scratched the surface.  I could spend three more years and still not make it everywhere I’d like to go: I’ve never seen Juliet’s balcony or the ancient amphitheater in Verona, taken a cable car up over the Alps into France from the mountains near Aosta, visited the Borghese Gallery in Rome (I could spend three years just in Rome), or gone to the little republic of San Marino, and the whole mainland of Italy south of Naples is unknown territory for me.  I’ve been to Catania and Mt. Etna in Sicily, but making the loop around Sicily would be another road trip of a lifetime in itself. 

Plastic Islands (ITC Week 16)

That island of plastic debris swirling in the mid-Pacific scares me.  Food waste, wood, paper—all that will disintegrate, but plastic…that stuff’s going to be around a while.  The number of plastic bottles I use myself is a bit overwhelming, and I’m just one person.  Unfortunately, the green tea I like only comes in 16.9 oz bottles; I wish they had jugs of it so that I could just refill a bottle instead of using so many. 

When I’m traveling, I try to keep one water bottle for as long as possible, refilling it when I get the chance. This was easy in Europe; there was always a museum or large store with water fountains right across the road.  In Rome, and many other places in Italy, there are public fountains on the sidewalk.  It’s been a lot more challenging in Asia, as tap water is often not potable. When I’m at home, I try to buy tea and juice in the two liter size and drink out of a glass, but on the road it seem inevitable to end up using three or four bottles a day.  I don’t remember hostels having water tanks available; I wish they would—I’d chip in bit to fill my bottle. 

At least it seems that recycling facilities are becoming more common, although nowhere near fast enough, in my opinion.  Any other travelers have any suggestions on how to use fewer water bottles, or how to environmentally friendly while traveling? 

Indie Travel Week 1: Resolutions

As I mentioned in my last post. to get myself back in the habit of writing regularly, I'm going to do the 2012 Indie Travel Blog Challenge.   This is an idea from Bootsnall, which is one of my favorite travel websites.  It's been a website to daydream on, as it wasn't blocked at work over the past few months.

The first week's topic is resolutions, surprise surprise.  Although not terribly original, I do appreciate that we have a time each year that we think about where our lives are at and what we'd like to improve.  It's too easy to get so busy living that we don't stop to evaluate and check our direction, and besides, we all need a fresh start sometimes.

My first resolution is, obviously, to write this blog about resolutions.  One down!  Well, really, 1/52 down.  I really want to write, but lack of self-discipline is my worst shortcoming.  The challenge involves writing a blog post  each week, so I'm going to keep you all hanging until December to see if I really keep it or not.  Or at least until next week when I forget to post.  No.  I'm going to do this...I will write a weekly post. I will write a weekly post.  I will write a weekly post.  There.  Leave obnoxious comments if I don't. 

My more difficult resolution is the classic one: I've got to get in better shape.  I've blogged before about my very favorite of all my adventures: mountain hiking.  There was Mt. Etna in 2006, the hike up the mountain on the shore of Lake Como to the lighthouse on Pasquetta (the day after Easter, a public holiday in Italy) in the spring of 2007, Swiss Alps around St. Moritz, and then later around the Matterhorn in summer and winter 2007 (well, I took a train/ski life for most of it on both of those), summer camp in the Sibylline Mountains in central Italy in the summers of 2008 and 2009, looking into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius in May of 2009, hiking in the Tatras in southern Poland in 2009, Hua Shan and Huang Shan in China in the summer of 2010, and, well, Rock City on Lookout Mountain in 2011 (well, it was fun, if not quite so exotic as past years...).  But each year the mountains get a little harder on my knees.  Each year the getting-there gets more miserable.  Hua Shan involved a lot of prayer.  The peaks are always worth it, but the getting-there would be a lot more fun, too, if I kept myself in better shape in the meantime.  And my face wouldn't be so red in all the pictures.

After spending this past year entirely in the U.S., with ubiquitous cars, no sidewalks, and too many creature comforts indoors, I especially need to get into some better habits.  I was going to join some exercise classes offered by my job, but they've schedule them to where everyone from my branch can't attend them (still miffed over that one).  Once I get my new computer, I'll download some of my favorite exercise videos again.  I've thought of catching up on actually watching some of my DVD collection while peddling on the stationary bike upstairs. That doesn't seem to really be much of a workout, but I suppose it would be better than nothing.  I'd go for a walk, but it's dangerous to walk along the highway or in the parking lot at work; we've got the woods behind the house, but the summer I'd get eaten alive by bugs.  In the fall, our neighbors all deer hunt. In winter, it's dark by the time I get home.  That leaves a bit of early spring before the bugs come out too bad.   I also need to forget that Little Debbie Brownies even exist; unfortunately, the rack of them is directly within my line of view all day long at work. :(  Why does it seem  like healthy habits are so inconvenient around here?  When I lived in Italy or in China, or even in college, for that matter, you had to walk to get to public transportation.  You had to walk to the grocery store.  There were sidewalks everywhere and large safe parks to walk in.  There were neighborhoods to meander through and explore; there were towers/belfries/hills/domes to climb for the view.  The lack of walking as a part of everyday life is one of my biggest gripes about life in the U.S.  I get too lazy here.  

Getting in shape may not seem like a travel resolution, but I think it is for me--or at least, that's my biggest motivation for it.  I want to be in better shape to make my travel adventures easier and kinder to my knees. 

Now, the resolution I like to daydream the most about is, as it has been for years, to find my mountain for 2012.  I keep hoping that one of these years it's going to be to Everest base camp, or in the Andes to Machu Picchu, or, my ultimate dream, Kilamanjaro, but I don't think that any of those are going to be right for 2012.  I'm not sure what it will be...but somehow I'll find one.

Indie Travel Blog Challenge 2012

It's easy for me to get caught up in the minutiae of day-in, day-out life...playing games on my kindle, wasting hours on those life-sucking inventions pinterest and facebook timeline, and fiddling with the layout of the blog instead of actually writing anything...as well as those little things like my job, church, family, friends...but I really do want to get back in the habit of writing.

As a means, of reminding myself and having a goal, I've decided to really, really try to keep up with the 2012 Indie Blog Challenge.  There will be a new prompt every week (and I'm already over a week behind), all about my favorite subject, travel.  Please nag me if I don't keep up.