WANDERLUST: Kyoto

I'm dreaming of a food-based journey to Japan.

Inspiration: Roads & Kingdom's excellent article on Japan's food fighters, who have launched a campaign for UNESCO to designate Japanese cuisine (washoku) as intangible cultural heritage.  Although a final determination must wait until December, the proposal recently made it through the final wicket before the conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.

When: The UNESCO proposal highlights New Year's celebrations, though they are by no means the only time of year that washoku is practiced.

Where: Japan in general, though the article calls out Kyoto as a "food-obsessed town."  Specifically, travelers might find these food traditions in a ryokan (traditional inn), though ryokan tend to be in rural settings.

How: Kyoto is served by Osaka's Kansai International Airport (KIX), 50 miles away.

What to do while there: 
Take a cooking class.  Uzuki offers small classes and individualized attention, starting around $45. Haro offers the same, starting around $60 and adding $40 for a trip to the Nishiki food market. 
Visit Kyoto's temples and shrines, also on the World Heritage List.  Near Nara, 26 miles away, there are two additional sites: the Buddhist monuments in the Horyu-ji area and the historic sites of Japan's
8th century capital. 

I don't quite have the money to fly to Japan right now, so instead I'll be pulling a recipe from japanfoodaddict.com this week.  Anyone have recommendations?

Why I Ditched Times Square and Now Celebrate New Years Overseas

T-2 months to New Years......time to plan a trip!

My sophomore year of college, I spent New Year's Eve with a college buddy and a high school best friend - both named Brian.  We went to Times Square. 

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  We planned to get into the City by about 6 pm, grab some food, then walk from Grand Central over to Times Square.  We kept on getting shuffled uptown, though, because streets were closed off and security wasn't letting us through, finally crossing to 7th Ave in the mid-50s.  And there we stood for the next five and a half hours.

Oh, we moved.  The police would occasionally open the metal barriers and the crowd would rush forward.  I had to grab Brian and Brian's coats, so as not to lose them in the stampede.  We could smell the pizza joints that were earning cash hand over fist from the groups who had called in a pepperoni pie order for delivery to the sidewalk.  For us, there were too many people in the way who'd sneaked in plastic flasks to guzzle their potent potables.  We were jealous, until they started complaining about the lack of toilet facilities around ten. By midnight, we were bored, shivering, still eight blocks away, unable to hear the concerts and barely able to see the ball drop.  It was anticlimactic, and we still had a train ride home.

For a while after that, I'd celebrate with small groups at home (pro: cheap champagne), or meet up with friends at a bar (con: inability to hear the television countdown).  For all the hype, I thought it would be more fun.

And then we went to Aruba.

Aruban New Year, complete with fireworks, party hats, and a sarcastic musician who allowed us to buy his least favorite tunes.  The elderly gentleman from Guadalajara on the left is Tiffany's new best friend.  The piano man is on the right.

Suddenly, I was liberated.  Without a boyfriend in tow, there was no expectation to have someone to kiss.  Dick Clark's Rocking New Year's Eve wasn't on television, so I could look away from the television, down my drink, flirt with some Vancouverites, and dance with abandon at the tiny piano bar we'd adopted as our own. 

Admittedly not my finest moment.  (Thanks, Emily Mooren.)

For New Year's last year, I hopped a flight to Europe.  I was in love with Munich from the moment I arrived at the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) in the early dawn.  Tipped off about Silvester by Markus, an industrial designer and volunteer firefighter that I'd met when his fire department invaded my Irish pub the previous night, and fortified by glühwein, I thought I was ready for the celebration.  I was not. 

Shortly after dawn at the glühwein (mulled wine) bar next to the public ice skating rink, Karlsplatz, München.  It was about here that I realized Markus had not been talking about his buddy Sylvester's week of partying, but rather the Feast of St. Sylvester - a 4th century pope.  Our patois of German and English was perhaps not as effective as we thought.

At midnight, with a ragtag crew of international hostel kids in tow, I arrived in the center of the city.  I couldn't hear voices - every twenty feet, another group was setting off fireworks in the middle of the street - so I just twirled.  My neighbors uncorked a champagne, dousing my hair with the spray, then included me as they passed around the bottle.  Above me, the long yellow-white fuses that I call weeping willows were tracing arcs across the sky, punctuated by bright white corkscrews and red and green globes.  A quick pop behind me and confetti suddenly started settling on my head.  I grinned. 

Christoph (South Africa), Matt (Australia), and Yulia (Russia) hop onto the bar just before midnight.  Everyone else leans over the bar and out of the frame to get the bartenders' attention.

The apparently unregulated mix of explosive devices, alcohol, and children gave me an overwhelming satisfaction.  It was not "America safe," nor the structured entertainment of Times Square, but it was a pure and authentic celebration.  It engaged my mind and my spirit.  It made me feel alive.

I chase that feeling, so this year I'm looking at going abroad again.  My best friend votes for Banff or Jasper, Alberta.  It should be pretty close to a new moon at the turn of the year, so we can hope for the Northern Lights to appear as we ice skate on a torch-lit lake.

Where would you go?

The Lack of Female Road Narratives...and Why I Shouldn't Care

Yesterday, I read Vanessa Vaselka's essay about female road narratives, which discussed in depth how the archetypal young man is finding himself on the open road while the archetypal young woman is running away from something horrific at home.  When a woman travels alone, the thinking goes, she is setting herself up as a victim, perhaps even of rape or death.  Some of her commenters disagreed, providing Hollywood narratives and personal anecdotes of positive experiences on the road.

Intriguing.

I've traveled a fair amount as a solo woman.  Unlike Vanessa and many of her readers, I don't hitchhike and I carry a nice camera and purse, so my experiences are skewed with the knowledge that I look like a better target for theft than anonymous murder.  I am confident that I can handle that threat.  I know I have the memory to describe a thief accurately and the wherewithal to notice one in the first place.  I can get out of sticky situations that threaten me physically.  I believe that, generally, people are helpful and well-intentioned.  Most of the time, they are.  Still, I always have that niggling voice in the back of my mind telling me to look out for danger.

Road Trip: Let's Go Red!

Ah, spring break. Most people would be daydreaming of lounging on cocktail-strewn sand someplace warm. I was pulling out my game-worn hockey jersey, grabbing my warmest red and white gear, lining up at the box office for student tickets, and preparing to lose my voice. It was the conference championship. I couldn't let my boys down now.

Susan and I whipped over the hilly two-lane highways between Ithaca and Albany, braking only to pass through hamlets with known speed traps. On the way, we studied the opposing rosters.

Tim Plant - Vermont forward.
Plant him on the bench!

Chris Smart
Still at a safety school.

Kevin Du - Harvard center.
Duuuu nothing.

Dov Grommet-Morris.
Hmm. He's good. We'll just have to pull out the usual goalie cheers - Give me a G…R…O…M…M…etc. What's that spell? Sieve!

Four games later, we had passed out cough drops, received invitations from players' parents, cheered for the Harvard-Colgate semifinal to make it into triple overtime ("Our team's sleep-ing!”), watched Cornell advance to the national tournament, celebrated post-game, accidentally locked ourselves into the parking garage, imposed on the hospitality of people we'd met that evening, and gotten a written citation on our way out of town. A question lingered. Would we cut our skiing short and go to the national tourney?

Of course we would. To Minneapolis we went, in one crazy 17-hour burst. Vermont and Massachusetts went quickly. New York was familiar. The monotony of Ohio and Indiana could only be overcome with copious energy drinks. Then there was Chicago. Our road atlas was not up to the task of Chicago. Several unexpected tolls and a few detours later, we left Illinois poorer but refocused. We quickly reverted back to boredom, as Wisconsin’s main attraction appeared to be the dark lumps beside the road that might have been haystacks. In the early dawn, we crossed the Mississippi on I-35 and pulled into a parking garage for a nap. We were there.

Jittery from sugar and caffeine, giddy from excitement, Susan and I met the prior weekend’s hosts outside Mariucci Arena. Cornell's Lynah Faithful have a camaraderie, but the bond is intensified the further you are from Ithaca's Lynah Rink.  At 1100 miles, we hugged and laughed with people we barely knew. Together, we Cornellians walked into the home of the Minnesota Golden Gophers – and realized we were 100 amongst 10,000. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers had but one goal.

Make ourselves known.

WANDERLUST: Ragnar Relay

Last week, my Facebook feed started populating itself with pictures of tutus and custom signets, motivational running quotes, last-minute pleas for a runner, and the back-and-forth typical of any large group traveling to a new city.  Who's in town?  When and where should we meet for dinner?  What are you guys doing anyway?

The Ragnar Relay.  200 miles (more or less), 4-12 friends, 2 vans, 2 days, 1 night.  My lovely, insane friends were about to run from the Rocky Gap State Park in Flintstone, MD (think Western Maryland, beyond the narrowest part) through Hagerstown, Frederick, Rockville, Bethesda, DC's Rock Creek Park, Virginia's Arlington and Alexandria, and across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to National Harbor, MD.  And because this is the type of event that encourages fun, and because the team name was "Red, White, and Tutu," they were going to do so in red, white, and blue tulle.

Fun on a Furloughed Budget

I live in DC. This morning, the U.S. federal government shut down. My military friends went to work as usual. My federal employee friends went in to work to sign furlough paperwork. Battered by sequestration furloughs all summer long, they took yet another hit to their salary. Some of them are deemed essential personnel, meaning they are now working for free. Some are being turned loose on the streets. This sucks.

But hey - where there are lemons, make lemonade. (Or limoncello, if you’re attending one of the many government shutdown day-drinking parties my Facebook feed is telling me about.) And in that spirit, let’s recap the free or nearly-free things to do in the DC region this week. No longer tied to the office during daylight hours, but definitely on a budget, the furloughed can finally explore the city!

FREE

Visit Congress
The Capitol is affected by the shutdown like everything else – there are no official tours and the visitor center is closed. However, the House and Senate Galleries are open. Call ahead to your senator or representative, arrange to pick up a gallery pass (you’ll likely get a pass to each gallery), and enter the galleries via the Capitol Visitor Center. Prepare for long lines, be ready to leave your bags outside the gallery, and expect to be encouraged to leave after about 15 minutes. Sitting in the Gallery is rarely participatory, but you’ve already made your views known when you picked up the passes, right?
UPDATE: Given the shooting at the Capitol and the reduction in a lot of staffs, you MAY not be able to get passes to the galleries.  Call ahead.

WANDERLUST: Sivrice Deniz Feneri Kütüphanesi (Sivrice Lighthouse Library)

I just read an article about a lighthouse, that’s also a library, that focuses on lighthouses. The Sivrice Deniz Feneri Kütüphanesi (Sivrice Lighthouse Library) is collecting all the books about lighthouses ever published, and it’s publishing some of its own. Amazing.

I’m in love with lighthouses. I grew up sailing on the Connecticut coast, and the slow movement across the water gave me a deep appreciation for the rhythmic sweep of a lighthouse’s beam at night. Reading the light itself and deciphering the symbols on a chart places me and keeps me off the rocks. White, white, white, red, in a thirty second cycle, means I’m looking at New London Ledge Light in the middle of the Thames River. Cross-referencing it with the red flash of Race Rock Lighthouse every ten seconds points me safely down Fishers Island Sound, towards Avery Point and Latimer Reef lights.

Race Rock Lighthouse, Fishers Island Sound, NY

When I’m away from the water, I tend to read about lighthouses: stories of keepers, stories of builders, stories about the Coast Guard selling the houses to private organizations who can maintain the structures. There’s something inspiring about the people who live a harsh and solitary life for the safety of others and those who maintain maritime history.

So now, I want to travel to a cape about halfway between the Dardanelles and Izmir – totally out of the way – to go read books about one of my favorite topics.

When: Summer only – the library is closed in winter
Where: about 10 miles east of Babakale, Turkey
How: Drive about 8.5 hours from Istanbul (via Izmit, Bursa, Balikesir, Edremit) or 5.5 hours north from Izmir along the coast. Bus available to Babakale, ferry ports nearby.

Have you read anything recently that has inspired a new addition to your travel list?

Coffee. I need coffee.

The conductor shakes me awake. “Next stop New London, miss. 5 minutes.” I peer bleary-eyed at my watch and inwardly curse. Delayed in Washington, the train has somehow made up the time overnight, stealing an hour of rest and dropping me in a city that’s still asleep. I have an hour and twenty-six minutes to kill before my ferry leaves at the relatively gentlemanly hour of 7 am. Yawning, I consider my options.

Coffee. I need coffee. I awoke too late to have gotten a cup in the café car in Old Saybrook, and the station itself has nothing more than a few vending machines. I hitch my bags up, turn away from the ferry district’s locked gates, and trudge uphill.

The businesses at the foot of State St. are shuttered, without the neon glow I know from evenings grabbing a pint at Stone Fleet Tavern or a grinder at Captain’s Pizza. I’ve boycotted the Subway on the corner of Bank St. ever since they dropped that southeastern Connecticut term in favor of the blandly generic sub in the early 1990s. I turn left, and the shush of water falling from the whale fluke fountain near the station fades into an eerie quiet a few steps up Bank St.

I’m hoping Muddy Waters, my aunt’s favorite place to grab some wifi over a cup of deep-roasted Arabica, is open. From the back of the café, I could watch the ferry crew arrive with their own steaming mugs, flip on the lights, and pull out the folding chair the reservationist will use. “Lane 2, behind the blue Subaru. Lane 6 for standbys, please.”

Alas, the hand-printed sign indicates Muddy Waters will open at 7. I readjust my increasingly heavy luggage and glance around. The Exchange’s pizza ovens are cool, their live music long gone. They may not serve coffee ever, but they certainly don’t at 5:43 am. Onward, to Bean & Leaf, a few blocks inland.

A single beat-up car can’t hide that the outside tables are stacked, an ill omen. The normally bright colors are washed out in the dawn light, and while I can see the beans in their glass jars, I can’t see a soul. My dream of a creamy, chocolatey, caffeinated Brazilian brew isn’t going to happen til Bean & Leaf opens at 6:30. For about five minutes, I convince myself that pulling my sweater closer will ward off the chill of summer fog as well as coffee would. At 6, I give up.

Nearing the corner of State and Green Sts., I dismiss Mangetout, a vegan joint that won’t open til brunch. Dunkin Donuts, beloved by New Englanders everywhere, is nine or ten blocks farther away from the Thames. I stand, indecisive. The sudden rattle of a muffler shakes me out of my solitary reverie and reminds me that the docks have opened during my silent quest. Conceding defeat, I follow the pick-up downhill. Perhaps what I need is not coffee, but a nap, stretched across a ferry bench.

[Note: Bean & Leaf is now on Bank St, a few blocks down from Muddy Waters. It's still delicious, and it still opens at 6:30. Le sigh.]

Go West, young (wo)man

The road less taken.  No regrets.

When I graduated from high school, my father asked if I wanted to take a gap year.  Silly Dad, I said, I'm American.  Americans don't take gap years, and besides, I've already received scholarships for next year.  I can't defer them!

When I was in college, Dad asked if I wanted to go abroad.  Dad, I said, I can't.  I switched majors, and now I won't finish my requirements in time if I go study in France/Egypt/the UK.

And when I was ensnarled in an office job in DC, but on vacation with my parents, my American father offered this previously unknown story about his own gap year:

"A bunch of us Americans were in similar programs in London, and we decided to hire a van and go to Istanbul."  

Really?  That's quite adventurous in the pre-EU days.

"Well, you see, we all had two weeks off at the same time.  The van wasn't very well kept, though, and the driver was what you would call sketchy."

What do you mean, Dad?

"We're pretty sure he was smuggling."

Say what?! 

Six Tips to Beat the Crowds at the Cherry Blossom Festival

A few years ago, I posted an open invitation to join me at the Cherry Blossom Festival on my Facebook page.  My friend Jess came, with husband and baby in tow.  We were so excited...until we hit the crowds.  All of a sudden, instead of letting our thoughts drift away with the blossoms on the breeze, most of our attention was focused on simply not losing each other.  As a lovely afternoon in the sun became a chore, we lost our enthusiasm, cut our losses, and vowed to be better prepared next year.

Fast forward, and another friend, Kelly, and I decided to meet at sunrise and commute into the District for an impromptu cherry blossom date.  And it was magical.

Who knew Wednesday morning under the cherry blossoms could be so magical?  Obviously, this well-prepared fairy.

Lesson learned.  Actually, six lessons learned...