Opinions

Travel and Writing in the Age of COVID-19

May 21, 2020May 24, 2020Kimberly8 Comments

*This post was originally published on the Writers Abroad blog.

For many years, travel has been a source of inspiration for my writing. What started as personal travel journaling shortly after college, turned to group email updates to family and friends at home through the years I worked in Africa, turned to an interest in creative writing. I started writing classes in 2017. In 2019, I launched this blog. Late that year, for my first National Novel Writing Month (Nanowrimo), I produced a very rough draft of a novel based on my two years living in Prague. I dreamed of traveling to Prague to do research for the book.

charles bridge by todd hirsh Photo by my brother, Todd Hirsh

The COVID-19 pandemic curtailed my travels and most everyone else’s in early 2020. My international writing group, Writers Abroad, was considering possible destinations to meet for the group’s ten year anniversary.

In mid-January, I flew to Lusaka, Zambia for work. When I arrived at the airport for my return flight on January 31, things had changed. The airport employees wore masks, as did many of the passengers. It was an eerie signal of what would come. The world watched the epicenter of the pandemic move from Asia to Europe. I postponed a work trip to Laos, concerned that, even if I found a flight pattern, I might not be able to get back to the U.S., where I live. The epicenter of the pandemic moved to the United States.

I haven’t found much motivation to write since returning from Zambia. I haven’t even written a blog post about the trip (which was fabulous). My photo at the top is the lovely Sarovar Hotel in Lusaka. I’ll have to rectify the absent blog post situation soon.

Baby Elephants at the Lilayi Elephant Nursery, Zambia

From what I’m reading online, a lot of writers – including some members of my group, Writers Abroad – and other creatives are feeling the same way. However, a minority (it seems) of writers are finding themselves more prolific, which is wonderful.

For people who’ve had their travel plans cancelled or are missing their usual forms of inspiration, what to do? First, know that you’re in good company. In addition, here are some ideas that you might find a source of enjoyment:

“Retravel” by looking through old photo albums – even better, by organizing and scanning old travel photos from before your photography went digital.
Call a friend who you traveled with and share the memories.
Draft a flash story/essay about a favorite travel memory. Flashes are under 1000 words, but often are much shorter. There is a destination-based 100-word flash series that started in Santiago, Chile and expanded to other places such as Medellin, Bogota, and Boston. The flash pieces are written by someone who lives there and are in the native language. Maybe you’ll be inspired to start one in your city!
Watch travel shows, such as Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations or Parts Unknown, on Netflix or another streaming service. If you’re interested in a specific destination, search it online and see what videos you can find of the place.
Revisit your “bucket list”. Compile a list of places to go when restrictions ease and you feel comfortable traveling again. These might include visits to family, day trips, or places within driving distance of your home.
Try a new creative hobby. Rick Steves – whose name is synonymous with travel – told the New York Times that he’d never cooked a thing in his life before the pandemic. Now he’s taking short hikes around his home and cooking.

What new activity have you tried since the quarantine started? Perhaps you’ve picked up an old hobby you hadn’t done in years. Where will your first trip be? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

London: where to visit that’s not Big Ben or Westminster

November 24, 2019December 2, 2019KimberlyLeave a comment

IMG_20191122_021252_794 Bjork in concert at the O2 (love!)

For some reason, I took the same trip to London three times before deciding to see something new. You won’t be reading here about Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, or the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. You definitely won’t be reading about Stonehenge, which is on my list of Why?

On my recent visit to London, I stayed with a friend on the South West side, so my list is designed for convenience of travel from there. I was by the Raynes Park train station, near Wimbledon, and the destinations listed below took 45 minutes to one hour to reach. London is a big city, so be prepared for long travel times. Trains, tube lines, and buses provide outstanding coverage.

1. Hampton Court (5 stars)

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Built in the 1500s, this was the palace of Henry VIII. It’s remarkably well-preserved and dripping with history. The optional audio tour will refresh your history of Henry’s six wives and his break with the Catholic Church. Tour the medieval dining hall and the royal chapel. A series of kitchen rooms offers a rare look into food preparation of the day and excess of consumption. I spent three hours in Henry’s part of the palace and didn’t even make it to the newer, baroque side, and walked through just the part of the gardens open in winter.

2. Tate Modern (5 stars)

IMG_20191121_160351 Some of Mark Rothko’s murals, designed for the Four Seasons in NYC

They have a top notch permanent collection – Rothko, Pollack, Krasner, Picasso, Degas’ Little Dancer, Kandinsky, Matisse – and fascinating rotating exhibits. Free admission(!) to the main collections and some of the exhibits. When I was there, exhibits included Olafur Eliasson‘s innovative projects, like his heartbreaking glacier melt series, Ed Ruscha, Helen Frankenthaler, and a Kara Walker fountain.

3. The Play That Goes Wrong/West End (4 stars)

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Clever comedy about, you guessed it, the production of a play where everything goes wrong.

4. Food (5 stars)

Food is important to me. I was very happy in London. Wagamama and Pret a Manger are two excellent chains with headquarters in London. Find food from just about every part of the world there. I had delicious dim sum one day. I passed a Basque restaurant in the West End. I didn’t try it, but Basque is one of my favorite regions for eating. There were vegan options everywhere, even at fast food chains and in train stations, like the parsnip and kale soup I enjoyed at Waterloo station. I found easy access to fresh juices and plant-based milks for my coffee.

5. Victoria and Albert Museum (5 stars)

IMG_20191123_142007_834 Ceramic staircase

The V&A is an expansive decorative arts museum. Wander the European rooms, Asian rooms, and others to find collections of silver, ceramics, furniture, clothing, musical instruments, sculpture, etc. etc. The Victorian cast courts housing reproductions of famous sculptures throughout the world were fascinating. There is a large Chihuly glass sculpture suspended over one of the lobbies. I spent a bit too much time in their interesting gift shop.

The sites that follow, I missed. They are on my list for next time I’m in London:

6. Dennis Severs’ house

The house was home to a Hugenot silk weaving family. Ten rooms are set up representing different eras between 1724-1912. These tours sell out, so book in advance.

7. Brick Lane

This is a funky, hip neighborhood that can be explored any time, but I’d like to coordinate my visit with their Sunday market.

8. Historic literary district of Bloomsbury

There was not enough time in my 5-day stay there!

Experiences Over Things: a list

September 7, 2019December 13, 2019KimberlyLeave a comment

sunrise over sinai Sunrise over Mount Sinai

I’ve written a number of posts about what to bring home, but I haven’t given just due to experiences. Trends, of course, change and the millennial generation’s preferences for experiences over things is getting wide attention in the press.

For this post, I sifted through my own travel memories throughout the decades to prepare a short list of knock-your-socks-off types of experiences. Call it a “Things to Do Before You Die” list, rather than a “Places to Go Before You Die” one. There are many such lists on the interwebs, and I would dispute much of what’s there. (Case in point: you can skip the pyramids at Giza, Egypt and the rock carvings at Petra, Jordan, and still be fine IMO, but many people disagree with me.) Some of the experiences that made my list were dependent on the destination (for example, hiking Mount Sinai at dawn, which I’ll recount later in this post) and others can be created in a variety of places.

In the first example on the list, it was the combination of place+experience that puts it on knocked-my-socks-off list:

1. The Great Wall of China

I was underwhelmed by my first visit to the Great Wall. It was a busy tourist stop. There were super-sized tour buses. There were stalls selling various trinkets, such as “gold”-plated moulds of the wall. It was difficult to get a photo without tourists in it. I snapped a few and left.

Later in the trip, my family held a double bat mitzvah reception on an area of the Wall reserved for private events. This experience deserves its own blog post, but in short… The evening began with an elegant cocktail hour on the Wall with traditional drummers and dancers. Then we were seated at round tables in a formal setup in an adjacent section of the Wall. Our tables were surrounded by lush flower arrangements and beautiful decorations. We were served a delicious multi-course Chinese meal with red, white, and sparkling wine. A mix of music played and people got up to dance. We watched the sunset from our tables or from the dance floor. Sometime after dark, some secret guy behind a switchboard lit up the Wall section by section. At the end of the party, as the guests made their way back to the chartered buses, the skies opened up. It poured and lightning bolts lit up the wall in flashes. It was the most suitably dramatic end to the night.

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2. Paris

Paris is enchanting anytime, but especially at night. Pro-tip: the light show in the gardens at Versalles (a short train ride outside Paris) in the summertime is total magic.

3. Prague

I’ve written some about my time in Prague. This was a function of time+place, and there’s a full-length book that will emerge someday from my two years living there. I could be walking to work any day and see some architectural detail I’d never noticed before. Or look up (instead of down at the cobblestones) and see what I’d seen many times before, but my mouth would still drop open in disbelief at the beauty and grandeur.

4. Safari in Africa

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It could be Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Botswana, Malawi or Zambia. You pick. There is nothing like seeing these great creatures living undisturbed on their own lands.

5. A quiet beach

Take a trip and find your spot, away from the crowds. My two favorites were in Costa Rica and Dominica, but beyond that I won’t specify. You have to find your own. On a vacation without an itinerary and with a malleable return date.

6. Oktoberfest in Munich

It was 1996 when I first went, and then returned a couple years later, so I can’t attest that the raucous, multi-cultural vibe remains the same. This experience merits its own post, but it would be rated R and names would have to be changed to protect certain people. You know who you are.

7. The Grand Canyon from the air

I was a seasoned traveler, even hardened, but when I flew over the Grand Canyon my jaw dropped open and stayed that way for a while.

8. Mount Sinai at sunrise

This is the moment captured in the photo at the top of this post. My aunt and I awoke at 3 a.m., as the local residents said we should, without a plan. We walked from our camp with its two dozen or so cabins in the desert, following the road out until we found other people on the pilgrimage. People were already out walking at that hour and the numbers grew throughout the night. We walked by a few homes and businesses. Villagers were up early, watching us, and we stopped a few times to ask where we were going. We chose a less trafficked, but steeper path up. Along the way, we hired a man for a few dollars to guide us. It was dark and cold and the path was steep and rocky, eventually heading nearly straight up. There were a few huts on landing areas on the way, serving tea and snacks. Our guide basically ended up pushing my aunt most of the way up the hill by her butt. He still turned around to give me his free hand to grab at times. We wouldn’t have made it without him. At the top, travelers from all over the world gathered and we set our gaze on the eastern horizon. We waited through hushed utterances of “what time is it?”, “which way?” When the sun peeked over the horizon, there was an audible gasp from the crowd, including me, and the sounds of shutters clicking and clapping all around. I am not a religious sort, but it was such a spectacle (nee miracle?) that it was easy to see why the ancients believed this was a holy place and why it inspired belief in gods.

9. Macchu Picchu

If you plan to go, keep an eye out as closures have been discussed.

Where were your most memorable experiences?

Stupidity in Mexico City

June 1, 2019July 8, 2019KimberlyLeave a comment

Even an experienced traveler does stupid sh!t. To stay out of potentially problematic situations, it is best to remember this, no matter how experienced you are.

In a job years ago, I used to visit Mexico City on a regular basis. I considered myself an experienced traveler, by then having visited two dozen countries in Europe and Asia.

Screen Shot 2019-05-31 at 12.09.03 PM My office building in Mexico City (This came up in a Google images search) The Starbucks is new!

I worked for a technology company and their travel support was good. A pre-arranged driver would pick us up from the airport and deposit us at the hotel. For rides around the city, we often had drivers or Mexican colleagues take us. At my U.S. home office, we had a security company who delivered presentations on security in general and advised us on specific destinations as well.

The instructions for Mexico City included this clear instruction: do NOT hail a taxi. At the time, green Volkswagen beetle taxis were as common as houseflies, but there were also boxy yellow ones everywhere.

SHEA-Vocho_6423 Photo credit: Terry Shea

I read here that the city eliminated the green beetles in 2012. Absent 65,000 or so green taxis, I imagine the city landscape has changed.

Once again, NO taxi hailing: green, yellow, or otherwise. If we needed a ride from the hotel to the office, we were to get a taxi only from the taxi line at the Camino Real Hotel where we stayed. If we needed a taxi from the office back to the hotel, the office called one for us.

Camino Real Polanco – it’s very cool – I recommend it!

I still did something stupid. As instructed, I got my taxi in the morning from the hotel line. I was going to the airport directly from the office, so I was all packed with my roller suitcase and my black laptop case ready to explode at the seams. I was dressed in a business suit, a silk blouse, and heels. It was warm outside for a suit jacket, but the office was always overly air-conditioned.

For some reason, the taxi driver was confused. My office was on Insurgentes Sur, the main avenue in Mexico City, nearly 18 miles long. Other than the traffic congestion, this was not difficult. The buildings are numbered, in numeric order. As one would expect.

Insurgentes Sur is also lined with tall, glass, office buildings, such as mine in the photo above. My driver was frustrated. He pulled over and barked at me that we were here and I should get out. Then he peeled away from the curb and I looked around. I was not standing in front of my office building; that was a good 15-20 minute walk north.

I was furious, and mad at myself for paying him. This was probably good because I was a bit scared too. On the sidewalk, I stuck out like a beaming white girl in a pale pink suit and black patent pumps. I was starting to sweat in my silk blouse, but did not remove my suit jacket, as I did not want more crap in my hands. Dragging my roller bag, I marched up the avenue, fast and with purpose, muttering and cursing — not under my breath, but loudly. I was pissed off, but also hoping that anyone considering messing with me would think I was crazy. Several people looked at me (for any number of reasons). I gave them the stink eye and they turned away. I don’t know if my behavior helped to thwart any danger, as none befell me, but it’s an idea to try.

While I am on the topic of Mexico City, it is an incredible city that I highly recommend. There is plenty to do there, but here are 3 quick tips to consider:

Order Queso Fundido at the Camino Real (or elsewhere).
There is a lot of a amazing food to be found – try dining in a restaurant in an historic building.
A day trip to the ruins at Teotihuacan – it’s an amazing site/sight.

Main takeway: make sure you know where you are when your taxi driver drops you!

On the Cheap (and my comments on Money Mag’s annual list)

April 27, 2019June 21, 2019KimberlyLeave a comment

You can have the richest experiences by going on the cheap. Actually, I pretty much guarantee it.

Case in point. l LOVED Cuba.

In addition to it making my list of top 5 places that I would go back to, everyone else I know who has been there has loved it too. That includes my parents who went 10 years ago; my friend who went 20 years ago; and my art teacher who moved there recently, started an art and tourism business, met a Cuban man, and had a baby all in one year! Last month, my aunt and uncle went and did not like it at all. Wha??! They took a cruise. I have written about cruises already. The ship stopped in three principal cities and a guide told them that the government embeds spies in the neighborhoods who watch everyone. And THAT is what they remembered. I told them I was in cities, villages, and on farms and met dozens of Cubans. I spoke to them in Spanish and we had a few English-speaking (Cuban) tour guides. Not one of them mentioned a plague of neighborhood spies. What did we talk about? The politics of Cuba, the political positions of the U.S., racism in Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, art, health, sports, food, music,… You get the idea. I loved it. You can draw your own conclusions, but if you are considering going, just DO. I should apologize though, as the theme of this post is “on the cheap” and it is not easy to go there cheaply. To do that, you will need to go on your own (not on a tour). This process is too detailed to write about here and the U.S. government regulations change fast, so research this thoroughly before attempting it.

Money Magazine publishes a great list of 20 affordable spots you can check out. I will comment on some of their choices. Of course, there are many more than 20 wonderful affordable spots. If you do a little research on, say, Central Asia, you will find spectacular sites with relatively few tourists. Here is one such example:

registan-square-samarkand Samarkand (photo credit: TripAdvisor)

On to Money Magazine’s list… I am going to skip their U.S. destinations, as it’s not my expertise. Here are my selected comments on their international destinations:

Meknes, Morocco – My group of four did not love it. However, another friend did. Go figure. Nearby Roman ruins of Volubilus are totally worth a visit. Fez, with the largest medina in the world, is fascinating. I call Fez a MUST do, though overwhelming.
Cozumel – I dunno. I’ve been to Cancun, Tulum, and Playa del Carmen, but not Cozumel, so I’ll pass on this one.
Havana – see the first half of this post.
Montreal – not sure why it’s on this list. Your call.
Nanjing, China – I’ve been to Beijing and Xian and they blew my mind in a good way. I’ve mentioned that Shanghai is on my places to go next list, but mostly because I have a friend who is moving there, so maybe I’ll put this one on my list with it. See #10 below. However, the photos of Nanjing look promising.
Monteverde, Costa Rica – I would recommend just about anywhere in Costa Rica. One of my top 5 of all time.
Medellin, Colombia – never been.
Crete, Greece – I’ll give this one a mildly interesting. The weather was not great when we were there, so we did not go to the beaches. However, would not have changed my reaction to the ruins at Knossos. Just ok.
Prague – As I have such a deep love for Prague, I find this one difficult to talk about. From an architecture perspective, there is no place like it. However, it is overrun with tourists at all times of the year.
Tainan, Taiwan – I have not been there. However, Hong Kong’s night markets and Bangkok’s flower markets get at least two thumbs up. One therefore might assume that Tainan’s night flower market is a wonderful cultural immersion experience. But I have a no-assumptions rule. The photos I looked at online appear carnival-kitschy rather than authentic, so proceed at your own risk. And please comment below if you have been!

Look Closer

April 12, 2019May 31, 2019Kimberly1 Comment

The Blue Marble

One of the things that appeals to me about travel is that you board a metal cylinder and pop out the other end in a different world from the one you left. When I was early in my travel experiences, I found that as I traveled more, I craved even more different worlds from my own on the other end.

Growing up in the United States, my journey began with dips over the northern border (to Niagara Falls) and the southern border (Tijuana, when it still considered pretty safe). I moved to Eastern Europe for work when I was in my upper twenties. At the time, I had a two handfuls of countries under my belt. I was determined to see as much of the region as I could while I was there. After two years, I moved back home and took a job in Boston that offered opportunities to travel to Western European countries. It was not enough and after two years I took a job where I supported a small set of Latin American countries. Five years later, I went looking for a position that offered the possibility of travel to Africa. I traveled to a dozen countries in Africa over my seven years there. Then I left that organization for a gig that put me in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

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Christmastime in Dhaka. It’s freezing by the way.

Let’s stop there. One lesson that I learned during these years is that new destinations continued to stump me and cause wonder. I arrived in Mozambique expecting its neighbor Tanzania. It was not. I arrived in Costa Rica expecting Belize or Panama. It was neither. It was time to stop assuming stuff and just open my eyes and watch. One thing I’ve learned over thirty years of travel is that my journey is still a work in progress.

And then something else happened. It wasn’t a different world I was finding; it was the same. I leaned in and looked closer. People, families, meals together, a grown daughter’s wedding, a college graduation, holiday festivals, funerals. It was the same world, but it was wondrous for me and life to them.

Recently, I listened to a podcast interview of the first Iranian woman in space. I don’t think I had ever heard an astronaut speak so beautifully about the experience. When viewed from space, Earth has no nations and no borders and no tribes. We live on an orb of greens and browns and blues and whites. Boundaries are built by humans. And humans should tear them down.

Where Next?

March 31, 2019July 8, 2019KimberlyLeave a comment

Vote in the comments section at the bottom!:

Costa Rica – because of their commitment to the environment and protecting wildlife, they elected a female president in 2010, and pura vida.
Cuba – another place I loved – the art, the architecture, the food (yes, that’s improved dramatically), the dance, the people.

IMG_0981 fave?

Turkey – because after my spark had long worn down, I visited Morocco in 2017 and the food, art and architecture reignited my love of exploring new places. See Western Turkey episode by Rick Steves: From the port of Kusadasi, we wander the streets of ancient Ephesus, soak in a natural spa at Pamukkale, learn why the dervishes whirl at Konya [home of Rumi], munch lunch in a Turkish pizzeria, and cruise the Mediterranean on a traditional Turkish gulet from Antalya. Turkey is a mighty nation whose ancient heritage, Muslim faith, and western ways are coming together…and we’ll see how. And I’ve been told lots of vegetarian eating options.
Shanghai, China – because I have a friend who is moving there with the U.S. Government, I had an absolute blast visiting family living in Beijing in 2010, and I have a penchant for visiting people to get more of an insider experience.
Yellowknife, Canada to see the Northern Lights – admittedly, this one is probably a lonnnggg ways off.

My Views on Safaris (and a Few Tips)

March 30, 2019April 21, 2019Kimberly2 Comments

Yes, I am opinionated but that’s why you are here, right? I have the same general tip for safaris as I do for cruises: get off the reserve! Go to a town where actual people live! Talk to them! Eat there!

As a general rule, safari guides are an incredible lot. They are experienced naturalists who can spot a praying mantis on a branch of a 40 foot acacia tree. At night aided by the beam of a flashlight (a “torch” outside North America). And then every once in a while, you get a lemon. If a guide says it’s fine to get out of your vehicle and walk, then ask some questions. Is there an electrified fence between me and that calm-looking rhino? What time of day is it? What type of animals hang out around here? Is it breeding or baby season? Stay within 50 feet of the jeep and ask if the driver is armed.

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Let’s be clear, I am a pacifist. But a friend of mine nearly got trampled by hippos who panicked a couple hundred yards from the watering hole where they normally seek shelter. Fact: Hippos are cute (ok, opinion). Another fact: Hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal. They were on a walking safari. Why? That shouldn’t be a thing, i.e. into the bush. If something sounds stupid, it probably is. Listen to your guides, but ASK QUESTIONS. My friends had traveled to dozens of countries all over the world. They have money to afford the best travel “experience” (more on that elsewhere on the blog). They have never been frightened anywhere until the hippos noticed the strolling humans and an observant tourist (NOT the guide I will note) yelled “RUN!!” An adult hippo weighs between 1.5 and 4 tons. Also, hippos hang out in herds. The humans ran and were fortunate they had a head start. This was my friends’ first safari and they never should have been placed into that situation, but they were.

My Views on Cruises (and Recommendations)

March 30, 2019June 15, 2019Kimberly3 Comments

2005_0901Alaska0011 Alaska

I’ll get straight to the point: I am not a fan. If you’ve been reading my blog, you probably realize that being trapped anywhere with 3 thousand something Americans with no escape route is not my thing. I also have issues with 24-hour buffets, pools filled day and night with kids, casinos as a form of entertainment, and polluting, self-contained cities on water, but each of these features merits its own separate blog post. If that, however, is your thing, you will not have any trouble finding information on the internet on how to do that. I forgot to mention hospitable conditions (pun intended) for germ incubation in a massive floating petri dish. As I said, I have some issues with cruise ships. I enjoy local people, local food, local experiences, etc.

Now that that’s out of the way, there are some conditions under which I will do a cruise in a different form. Here are a few:

Alaska. I took a “small ship” cruise (= 90 passengers) on a sadly now-defunct cruise line. It allowed us to cruise into smaller, shallower inlets where the big ships could not and we didn’t have to wait on long lines to board zodiacs to bring us to shore. These small ships can be super expensive and I’m not sure why, but this line was not. Perhaps that’s why it is no longer. Here is how close in we got to view a glacier:

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The Galapagos Islands – well duh, there is really no other way to see the diversity they have to offer, and that’s why you are there. There is a wide array of prices and we took about the cheapest on offer. It took 19 passengers, so they said, but there were only 13 of us, which was lucky as I had a total claustrophobic attack in my room and they moved me – alone – to a triple. Even that was tight for one. I’ll say no more, but something to think about it you have claustrophobia problems. Needless to say, this was not a luxury experience.

Cape Horn – this was one of those “experiences” I just had to have. It was an experience. Ushuaia, the city where we boarded, was a beautiful, windswept, western frontier-type outpost. There were about 30 people on our ship. I got seasick for the only time in my life, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Albatrosses followed our ship around the horn, and people write poems about that shit.

Our ship, docked in beautiful Ushuaia. They cleared us for smooth weather and we sailed around Cape Horn. I got a little seasick.

The themes: small, no long lines, no casinos, not luxury, still some really good food, bring Dramamine.

WhyTravel

The people you meet, the stuff you eat, the sh!t that happens, the way you change