When I tell someone where I’m going next, statements follow such as, “How fun!” and “I wish I got a vacation!”. The trouble with these sentiments is maybe they don’t know how I have to travel, not necessarily how I want to travel. I arrive to a new place and immediately feel guilty if I waste a minute napping or hanging out in the hotel. I have to get busy sightseeing, tweeting or snapping photographs. I am forever mindful of the story I am there for, the one I need to keep afloat. Travel for me is not unplugged, leaving my home and work life behind. It is much more chaotic, hurried and stressful than any vacation. I want to be able to never say, “I have work to do” while exploring new lands.

Candice of Candice Does The World recently wrote about a trip to the Dominican Republic. She was on the island for a friend’s wedding. While trying to explain to the bride-to-be she would have to work a few hours in the morning, she was met with puzzlement. In the end, Candice shuts down her traveling work life just to enjoy being on a true vacation.

I envied her ability to let it all go, to write all the world and say do not disturb. I’m on vacation. I wish I could do that. There are certain limitations in making travel your job. While you get the chance to see amazing places and people, you aren’t always experiencing the place with open, non-tweeting or pinning arms.

A few summer’s ago, I was down in Puglia, Italy, the heel region of the country. In Alberobello, the homes are called trulli, ancient conical roofed structures with thick walls. I had rented a trullo for the night, only to find no Internet connection. When I hear the words, “no WiFi”, I become a crazy person, one I don’t want to be. I panicked. I had work to do. I rushed out to a cellphone store to buy a portable Internet stick. Little did I know, the signal would not emit from the thick stone walls of a trullo. And so, I spent my early evening not roaming this new Italian city but in the middle of a neighborhood street on my laptop, fervently typing away to meet some deadline. Locals stared at me, probably thinking this girl needs to be more Italian. I should have been living “la dolce vita”. Instead, I was living the sweet life of a work obsessed travel writer, one many think is just a life of vacations.

I can’t remember my last vacation, the last time I merely enjoyed a place without having to work at the same time. This isn’t my sob story, but rather I know one many of us, like Candice, are living. We bring our work and home lives with us in our suitcases. We spend time talking with friends and family back home when a whole new world is beyond the Skype screen. Travel doesn’t become an escape, but rather a continuation of life. While I don’t think travel should be all puppies and lollipops, I do believe it should be enjoyed at times without agenda, without worry and without any sort of email checking or cell phone monitoring.

I don’t know what it feels like anymore to truly go on a break, to have nothing but that place on your mind. I am always worried about deadlines and articles past due. In this age of social saturation, I think it’s all time we promise each other to truly take a vacation. I am going to challenge myself and resist procrastination. I always strive to get all of my work completed before going somewhere, but that never occurs. I want to change this pattern. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to check a pinging email inbox. I want to let it all go and truly take a vacation.

On the next plane ride I take, I promise to be committed to my destination. Rather than romancing an Internet connection and my computer, I want the place to take me, sweep me off my feet and tell me to always go unplugged, at least on occasion, when I travel.  We only have so much time to see the world.

In search of my next vacation

Do you find it hard to unplug when you travel? When is the last time you truly took a vacation?

When someone tells me what to do, in any area of life, my reaction has long been to do the opposite. Perhaps it is my weakness, but I hate unsolicited advice. If I didn’t ask for your opinion, I probably don’t want to hear it. I am a stubborn redhead after all. It’s practical built into my genes. This is the excuse I tell myself.

Parental advice and travel is something that always tends to be advice I resist. It is the 14 year old in me in some regard. (Parents? I don’t have those.) When a pending travel opportunity came on to the scene for me this summer, I told my parents. Naturally the first questions are “How much do they pay?” and “Can you take someone with you?”. They don’t want me to be broke and alone, advice I resist, but understand at the same time. They’re parents. Years of traveling alone or with someone I believe prove I can handle travel. It is more of a comment on trust, but I still know, they are just being parents.

With Mother’s Day in the U.S. a few days away, it’s hard not to consider our moms. My Mom has been reminding me it’s Mother’s Day on the 13^th for several weeks now. While I don’t think one day is adequate to celebrate mothers, I do know that I tend to travel like my mom, with or without her. And while it might annoy me to no end to hear, “Be careful” and “Wear your sweater” at almost 25 years old, I know she means well. And when I travel, I tend to go how my Mom would. Perhaps it was her plan all along.

The Woman in Question

Take Breaks To Soak In The Scene

Last September, I was able to treat my Mom to a little three-day trip to New York City. We were hosted at some of the best hotels I have ever stayed. We took a movie and television tour of the city. We ate schnitzel sandwiches on bank steps with business people. We were New York City.

While the trip was a grand success, my Mom reminded me that travel should not be go-go-go constantly. You need to take time for breaks. In a city seemingly devoid of benches, we found Grace Plaza and took a break from it all. We stopped to people watch and rest throbbing feet. When I travel today, I am reminded of this saving Grace Plaza, that no matter how much I need to see and do, my Mom would call for a break and so should I. Take time to soak it all in. It sounds simple, but it is a traveler’s saving grace.

Soak in the scene

Get Excited About Packing

The packing love-hate relationship is a common conversation I have with people. They hate packing and I love it. I have long loved to pack for trips and I suspect my Mom has something to do with it. Weeks before she is set to go somewhere, she is already considering what outfits to bring. She thinks about the destination and what would be appropriate.

I have always believed that many travelers forget how important physical appearance can be when you travel. Throw on those cargo shorts and bandana and you are good to go. The places of the world don’t need you to look fashionable. However I strongly disagree. How you present yourself to the world can be a powerful, stereotype-breaking tool. Dressing for the place rather than dressing how you want is the utmost sign of respect to a destination. I believe my mom always gets excited about packing not just for potential outfit pairings, but to show appreciation. Why would you complain about an experience you are blessed to have?

The Much Debated Plane Outfit

Be Chatty

While I have rolled my eyes on more than one occasion when my Mom starts a conversation with a stranger while traveling, I admire her audacity. In New York, she chatted up the Schnitzel and Things food truck owner. She uncovered a story so undeniably New York, one of making it in the big city by feeding schnitzel to the masses.

When I was traveling around Ireland by myself, I had to become my Mom out of survival. If I didn’t get chatty with café owners and bed and breakfast employees, I would be completely alone. All of that pent up lack of conversation would have driven me crazy. I would smile and say things I probably never would say if I were traveling with someone else. In the process I learned not being chatty when you travel is a hurdle you must overcome to have the truest of experiences.

Go When the Going Gets Tough

Most mothers will tell you to stick out situations even if they are difficult. However I don’t believe in staying in places that make me miserable, advice I picked up from my Mom. A little confused after graduating from college, I went to go be an au pair in Italy, only to find a hallway as my room and no privacy. I left, much to the advice of my mom. I was completely miserable and unhappy. I packed up my bags and left for my Italian mother, Loriana, who welcomed me with open arms.

Those motherly qualities are universal. From my Italian host mom Loriana to my own Mom, they hate to see their kids unhappy. We only get one life and a set amount of time. Why spend it traveling to places that make us horribly unhappy? I go when the going gets too tough to bear and I have no embarrassment doing so thanks to the advice of my Mom.

Do you find yourself traveling like your Mom? What lessons on travel has she taught you?

The French Quarter is just three miles away from where I stand and yet, I feel like I’m in a different world. There is a sobering photograph in front of me: a picture after Hurricane Katrina and a little arrow pointing out, “You are here”. Back in August of 2005 if I had been standing under the arrow’s point, I would have been completely submerged in water and debris. A man mows an empty patch of property nearby, one where you can see the foundations of a house, the place a family used to call home.

I am in New Orleans’ Lower 9^th Ward, an area of the city that was hit the hardest by Hurricane Katrina. Over 4,000 homes were destroyed by the hurricane due in large part to a faulty levee breached by the storm’s waters. Over one thousand lives were lost in it all, a great tragedy I can only very superficially try to relate. Half of the people who died in Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana were from this very neighborhood. 

I’m not here to gawk. I had heard about Brad Pitt’s Make It Right organization and their work in the Lower 9^th Ward. While there are many other organizations helping rebuild New Orleans to this day, I wanted to see for myself the unique architecture and design of the Make It Right homes, built for those who so desperately needed them. Two years after Katrina, Brad Pitt was in disbelief that these families, friends and neighbors in the Lower 9^th Ward were still living in disarray. It appeared their own country forgot them entirely and their lives were swept away with the memory of one of the worst hurricanes in U.S history. 

Pitt set out to build 150 green, affordable and storm resistant homes for the families who lost it all in the hurricane. As I approach the area, I can see the shine of solar panels on many homes with very unusual designs. As I get closer, I admire where lives were fortunately not forgotten. While not the New Orleans you think of when a tourist visits the French Quarter, the architecture is strangely fitting in the city.

Pitt called on countless award winning architects to construct these homes for his Make It Right organization. The idea is to make it right the first time, to build homes that can weather the storm, homes that can save residents money and in the end, lend them better lives.

I wander from block to block in the very neighborhood of Fats Domino and one of the first schools in America to be desegregated. While the new buildings, the work of those who stopped to care about these people, provide such beacons of hope, it is the ruined homes I can’t wipe from memory.

I keep thinking about my own home, where I was raised, where I grew up. If a shoddy levee broke right in front of my front lawn and a hurricane of colossal proportions ripped through my neighborhood, I wonder what would remain. I wonder if anyone would help, my own country included.

I love so many things about travel, but there are also days where I shudder uncontrollably. I feel sick at what I am observing and yet at the same time hopeful for the glimmers of change. I am angry that my own neighbors in the Lower 9^th Ward have either had to leave their homes for good, or wait for someone to notice their mess, 7 years after the storm.

The U.S. pours an obscene amount of money overseas, as we try to police the world. We spend and we spend. I am angered today that we have forgotten these people in our very backyard of the Lower 9^th Ward. Luckily there are some like Pitt in positions of power, influence and wealth that do, as they should. They extend an arm of help when one’s own country will not.

I came to the Lower 9^th Ward to hopefully, in some small way, make a difference, to show those who just head to the French Quarter of the city and think it all must be fine and well here that it is not. Our country doesn’t appear to be taking care of their own. It is left up to individuals to help our country pick up the pieces of natural disasters and levees that should be built right the first time. I also came to the neighborhood to see the hope of help, of beaming faces from porches built to last. I notice a family on their green dream of a porch, clearly happy to be alive and have a roof over their heads. They might also be beaming for they have seen Brad Pitt in person.

I make my way out for dinner on the edge of the French Quarter. A tourist and a local have an exchange while waiting for an open table. The tourist asks the woman if she was affected by the hurricane. She says she is from the Lower 9^th Ward, lost her home and simply had to rebuild, slowly and surely. Luckily for exchanges like these, perhaps someone will notice, volunteer, donate and in the process help those who are forgotten with the next passing storm.

For more about Make It Right and how you can help, visit Make It Right online.

Stevie Nicks belts out “Dreams” countless times on the radio during my long drive down to New Orleans. It is a song, like most I gather, about wronged love, dreams foiled and hope at the end of the storm. One line sticks with me most, “Like a heartbeat drives you mad in the stillness of remembering what you had and what you lost.” I don’t feel my heartstrings tugging over a wronged relationship, but rather my heart beats for the road. It drives me almost mad as I search for reasons to be on the road, the zaniest of roadside attractions. These roads come into my travels, I have them for a time and I quickly lose them in the rearview mirror. And still, I prefer to travel by car, heartbreak and all. When New Orleans can be within a two-day road trip, I will gladly get up early to hit the road.

I begin in Arkansas. Coming from Colorado, where as my Dad bluntly put it, “Only the dumb trees start flowering in March”, it was a vision to see brightly colored flowering trees along the side of the road. These stunners are southerners. A March frost isn’t a part of their reality as it is in Colorado. There reality consists of being pretty in fuchsia for all those behind car windows to see.

In case you don’t know my traveling style very well, I tend to seek out oddball attractions. I’m not sure what that says about me, but I will search through the corners of the Internet on my phone for just the mere chance the next town I’m passing through has the “world’s largest” of something. Watermelon, beer can, easel, I don’t discriminate their meanings. The road down from Arkansas to Louisiana presents an odd opportunity this oddball couldn’t resist, standing in two states at the same time.

I tack on 15 extra minutes to my otherwise long drive to see and do these zany things. In Texarkana, the city’s attraction is its very location. Set in Texas and Arkansas with a great State Line Avenue dividing the two, I see an end to riding the line in sight. I spot Texarkana’s Courthouse and Post Office, right on the state line. Supposedly this is the only building the U.S. to do so, fraught with indecision as to where it wants to reside, Texas or Arkansas? Standing in two different places at once sends a thrill through this road tripper. While I have no reason to be in Texarkana, its very positioning lends the city and myself a purpose. And they say you can’t be in two places at the same time.

After touching my toes in Texas, I make the long drive back of mere seconds to Arkansas. The next oddity on the road isn’t far away in the town of Fouke. The southwestern town is home to the legend of the Boggy Creek Monster, a southern Sasquatch of sorts. In the 1960s and 1970s, people began reporting a monster of around 7 to 10 feet tall roaming and harassing the area. A low budget movie even tackled the myth or mystery.

Finding the Boggy Creek Monster was much easier than I had thought. No, he wasn’t lurking in the creek or spooking some farm animals. He stands in giant wooden cutout form for people like me. I put my best monster face forward and quickly realize I couldn’t pull off Boggy Creek Monster brunette.

Crossing into Louisiana, a pelican welcomes me on the state sign. The landscape turns more swampy, making it seem entirely possible that a Boggy Creek Monster could very well cross the state line for swampland. Rather, I just catch second glimpses of what I think are gators in the water surrounding the road. Perhaps they enjoy going by road too.

Before you reach New Orleans, you might come by way of Baton Rouge. I detour yet again, tacking on those extra fifteen minutes to my long drive. I have to cast my eyes on the building in the city commanding all attentions with its size. The Baton Rouge Capitol Building is an Art Deco confection, attempting to touch the sky with its 34 stories. Manicured acreage hugs the capitol building, lending a fine place to stretch the legs.

While the evidence is undeniable that I can’t resist stopping to stand in two states, a meeting with a monster, spotting a gator, gazing all the way up a capitol to the sky or the fuchsia flowers on a blooming tree along the road, these oddities add up to a thing of normalcy for me. Traveling by car takes me back to the first moments I learned what travel was all about. I might be less annoying to travel with than I was at four years old, but I am still ever spirited when I hit the road.

New Orleans is waiting, a city that doesn’t seem to wait for anyone.  Crowds convene in the city especially this time of year, when spring break and Bourbon Street collide. It is the destination for many, but for me, it is the beginning. I almost forget where I am going amidst the monsters and wacky roadside stops. The road to the attraction is a sight for these eyes.

Do you love road trips? Have you ever forgotten about your destination and found yourself wrapped up in the journey on the road?

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us.” –John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

 Every time he left his backdoor, a new adventure presented. In his early years, he was more adventurous, leaving all inhibitions behind in search of the unknown. In light or darkness, he would travel, encountering the most majestic of landscapes and the harshest, depending on the season. He gave new-age traveler types, those who say you only need what a backpack contains, a run for their money. He didn’t need to travel with a single material possession, just his nose for adventure.

Traveling through his backdoor wilderness at a young age caused him to grow up quickly. Bad experiences with coyote-types, those I akin to groping TSA check points making their way on to the scene or a tussle with bad hospitality, hardened him a bit on leaving the comforts of home for the world’s backdoor. And yet, he never complained. He traveled through the good and bad, nearly dying on his adventures along the way. He spoke with fellow travelers and even locals, gathering their stories in small snippets of time. Still, he kept his stories to himself and moved on when he would return home. No one likes a travel braggart after all.

Middle-aged travel brought more hesitation, but an undying sense of spirit. After learning from his youthful errors, he developed his own path for traveling the world. Time after time, he would travel this path, so much so that you could see where he went and how he returned, like the contrail of an airplane. Suddenly, you could track the very steps of his journey. And while a silent type, this was his way of memory, this was his way of knowing where he had been, what he had seen and what he had learned along the way.

The elderly years of life brought fewer trips out into the unknown, but a new traveling companion helped spur youthful adventure in an old man. He was forced to abandon his solo travel ways and learn how to share his world with another at this stage. With arthritic knees, the journey, the adventure just outside the door, was much harder to traverse. So he retreated with dignity indoors, where the comforts of home are best appreciated. When you have seen the world at its best and worst, home is a safe haven, where the constants of reliable meals, water and lots of familiar faces make leaving a life of travel easier to bear. He had so much love in his life, and yet just outside, he could still gaze at his travel memories, his adventurous path and past.

Sadly, the most adventurous traveler I know died today at around 105 years old, in dog years that is. Mr. Shanks was a miniature schnauzer with a backyard dogs probably dream about. Roughly over an acre, he was free to roam, encountering those coyotes and skunks along the way. He did travel in a certain manner in this backyard wilderness, so much so that he did in fact create a path around his world, one you can still faintly make out today. It was his trail.

Travelers including myself bemoan not being able to travel as much as they would like. It could be a job tying us to one location or a lack of funds. But I ask you to consider the lives of most dogs. Most dogs like Mr. Shanks travel very little by human standards, usually just out their backdoor or down to the park. A select few will go on planes and be spooked by what they see in cargo. However, the majority of dogs have very constant lives. They find adventure in small moments outside, even if home is 20 feet away.

The next time I catch myself complaining about a bank account not allowing for as much travel as I would like or a suitcase not filled with enough travel clothes or even a tiresome encounter with bad hospitality, I will stop and think of how Shanks traveled. He traveled just with his being. He stayed true to himself when he left the porch. Joggers or strangers from another world were met with that suspicious eye, and of course, several loud barks. Not everyone liked him and he didn’t like everybody, but he loved the people who loved him. He didn’t trust the world outside easily, but he did throw himself into the experience, skunk spray and all. He would return home and do as most travelers do, sleep until the next adventure. He didn’t brag about his travels. He just chose to remember them in a defining path wrapping around an acre. To a human, an acre is a tiny speck of the world. To a dog like Shanks, that was the world.

Do you have a dog or pet and sometimes find they are far more adventurous in their travels than you or travelers you know?

It was the best of times, and yet the worst of times so far on my European trip. I faced the simple spring of hospitality from a hotel and the winter coldness of another. My intuition tends to cry out to me especially when I doubt an upcoming hotel choice. Yesterday morning, I woke up and began re-researching where again I had booked my next night in Croatia. The complicated driving directions had me worried, along with the fact that the accommodation website had completely different pictures than the booking agent I used. Again, my intuition was in alert mood and I suppressed it.

I arrived to freezing Rovinj, Croatia, what is said to be the most photographed city in the country. Its beauty was clear upon arrival. I made my way through the pedestrian-only zone for my allotted 30 minutes to have a car, just to drop off baggage. I found my accommodations, but they had not found me. Several buzzes at the door went unanswered, a traveler’s worst nightmare when you are ready to check in and relax. Aimless waiting outside in the biting cold produced a few stares from locals. Finally I dug through my purse to find the phone number of the owner, only to get no answer. I was beginning to think I would have to find other accommodations in a mostly boarded up city for the winter. This should be interesting.

Left out in the cold...

I went back down to the car to get warm and give my accommodations until 4PM to call. At 4PM on the button I received harsh phone call. The owner didn’t apologize and merely said she missed a call from this number. Who was it? (Obviously one of only two guests probably staying the night.)  I explained how I had rang the bell and had been waiting for 45 minutes. She told me she had been there and to come to the house. Put off from her rude response and lack of apology for not being present, I pressed for an apology.

Lugging my luggage back up the stairs, I met the ill-present owner and still no apology. So I said, “I was beginning to think I would have to find other accommodations since you didn’t answer.” Her response, “Oh! It wasn’t that bad. You didn’t wait that long in the cold. I was helping another guest with their satellite TV.” As I stood probably with a gaping mouth, shocked by her response, she quickly hurried me up the death defying stairs, no wider than a pre-teen.

By the time I was in the room, I think she could sense my dismay. She said, “Ma’am don’t be mad. I apologize”. I explained how off-putting it was to have someone in the hospitality industry not apologize to a guest for literally leaving them out in the cold. I had arranged my arrival time beforehand so she knew when to expect me. Suddenly she seemed to turn the tables, making me feel as though I was wrong in speaking up. She basically told me I could leave and she wouldn’t charge for the night. I said I would think about it, now visibly upset. As I sat in the room for a few minutes, the cold set in. Even with full hat, scarf, coat and gloves, the temperature matched those outside. I was faced with sleeping miserably physically and mentally in a place I did not feel welcome.

Quite the contrary to my first hotel in Rovinj, my welcoming hotel room in Munich

An hour later, I left for a hotel down the road, one I booked just minutes prior. Before I could even reach for the door handle, a woman was opening it for me with a giant smile on her face. I had clearly interrupted her dinner, but she didn’t bat an eye. She was ready for me, even though I had just given them a surprise 6PM booking. Checking in was efficient and I made my way to my heat radiating room.

While dated and lacking the bells and whistles of the first accommodation, I realized what truly matters in accommodations for me: clean sheets, good WiFi, heat, and most importantly hospitality. It was truly the day of two types of accommodations, one with all of the stainless steel appliances, grand art illuminated on the walls and owner who had never heard of apologizing to guests, and the other, simple, dated and yet covered in kindness from every staff member I met.

What I discovered from this unsettling exchange is that travelers should speak up when they are wrongly treated. Inspiring Travelers have also stressed the need for travelers to speak up if there is a problem. If we sit back and let hoteliers treat us poorly, shell out our money for rudeness, we are only contributing to the problem.

And so my night in Rovinj, I went to bed hungry. Unsettled, I just wanted to get some sleep at 8PM. It was the best of times and the worst of times. I woke up to a new day, a day I was proud of standing up for myself and travelers across the globe.

A new day in Rovinj, Croatia

Have you ever encountered such bad hospitality? Is it worth it to stand up for yourself or just avoid the confrontation when you travel?

Two years ago this month, I decided to buy my name, online that is. While I had a Blogger blog long before, buying my domain name and starting this travel site proved to be much more official, much more real. I was opening up myself and my travels to whoever was willing to listen.

Luckily, enough of you decided to listen to this redhead. My motto from a young age was,  “I’m not the oldest, but I’m the loudest.” I guess I have taken a bit of that motto and used it here. I might not be the biggest of travel blogs, the most popular or unpopular, but I share travel. In the end, after two years of doing so, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

It seems almost weekly I get emails asking how to start what I started here. These emails usually take me the longest to reply to, not because I am all-important but due to the fact that they are the most flattering of emails to receive. I want to give them the proper time. I haven’t been to the moon and back. I don’t know SEO, as I probably should. I have good traffic days and horrible traffic days. I have articles that bomb and articles that boom. The fact that someone wants my advice about anything is gratifying.

The only advice I can give to those starting something similar to what I have here is to make it about travel and experience. I really don’t care how someone goes about traveling. I care if they try to go. I care about the emotions of travel. Anyone can pen those to paper or to the computer screen.

The problem with most things in life, especially travel, is that there is generally a hesitation to do so. We worry we don’t have enough money to make it work. The airfare keeps going up and up. And despite traveling for my job, I still reach those moments when I am forced to bite the bullet, to travel or to not travel.

When I haven’t traveled in awhile, I tend to get cranky. A depression comes over me that my routine is truly becoming routine. As I rang in New Year’s Eve with the flu, I decided it was time to stop making excuses about not traveling. I decided it was time to do something drastic, runny nose and all. And so I did what any respectable traveler ultimately does. They lose all practicality and book a ticket out of town. They push aside the many reasons not to go and find just one reason to click purchase.

I leave January 28^th for Munich, Germany. While I will only be gone two weeks, I plan on heading east to explore (hopefully) Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary and possibly Romania and the Czech Republic. While I know that sounds like quite the itinerary for two weeks, I will work out the planning in the next few weeks. I haven’t sorted everything out and in the end, I think that is what travel and blogging should be.

I don’t know all there is to know about either area, but I am doing both the way that works for me. Travel is personal after all. We find connections in experiences so different from one to the next. They merely fit together from one style to another because we go. So Happy Blog Birthday to me! Thank you all for reading, promoting and commenting on this site. Here’s to more travels, experiences and stories from this redheaded temperament.

Have you been to central/eastern Europe? Do you have any suggestions for me on what to see and do?