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Bon Touriste

Inspiring Beautiful Travels

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A Year in Review: The 9 Most Beautiful Places My Feet Went in 2015

December 30, 2015 by Kristin Winet 1 Comment

DSC_4874It’s been a weird year, to say the least. My family has this ongoing mantra that 2016 better be our year of calm, as 2015 was unusually unlucky in some ways and unusually wonderful in others. We had the usual suspects so typical of difficulties in a family life: my mom’s unexpected bronchitis that landed her in the hospital for a week and resulted in her missing my graduation…and then her persistent cancer coming back for the fourth time in eight years just a month after we returned from Russia. My husband Ryan’s uncle’s unexpected death. My sister’s toxic job environment that nearly and almost literally unraveled her. My 92-year-old grandma’s quickening dementia. Car accidents, hospital visits, decisions that became missteps. Things like that. We’ve survived them all, but I have to say, health and wellness can be damn tiring.

We had beautiful moments, too, of course. For one thing, I just returned from 10 days in Atlanta for the holidays, where my family and I crammed our week full of get-togethers, long walks, good restaurants, day trips, and late-night conversations–all the accoutrements connected with quality family moments. I reconnected with the stark beauty of the Appalachian forests. I breathed in the crisp, cool air in the early mornings and looked for abandoned birds’ nests in the trees that had lost their leaves. These are beautiful moments.

The year also marked a lot of changes for me. For one thing, my life went into upheaval in May when I finally finished the dissertation on feminist approaches to digital travel writing that I’d been writing for the past two years. Though it was one of the proudest moments of my life–nearly 300 pages of well-researched, painstakingly revised discourse on my favorite topic–it also meant that a huge stage, a transformative, difficult, and beautiful stage, of my life was over. That stage where, although I was poor as dirt and living off $15,000 a year as a graduate student, I finally had to face the hard reality that the degree I’d been working on for five years didn’t have a resulting job for me in our sweet desert home in Tucson. That if I wanted to put my degree into practice, it meant moving away. It meant that Ryan would have to leave his student job as a writer for the President’s Office and bring his dissertation along with him, wherever we went. It meant I’d take a job that would hopefully lead to professional fulfillment and spiritual growth and that would also still afford me the time to travel and to pepper my year with the occasional press trip or international voyage. It meant facing the reality that I had to do things like sign up for health insurance and a retirement plan for the first time in my adult life.

As I sit here today, in front of my computer screen, just three blocks from the beach (something I thought would bring me a permanent sense of happiness but which, in fact, has been a mere backdrop to the difficulties we’ve had here so far), I can’t help but feel a little bit cynical. I miss our desert home more than I ever thought I possibly could: the striking sunsets, the walks Ryan and I would take around our neighborhood as we learned to identify the strange plants of the Sonoran Desert, the mountainous hikes we took so often and their surprising streams and unusual flowering cacti, the community of writers I’d come to see as family (and still do!), the dear friends we had to leave behind, the students who worked diligently with our nonprofit community partners and the difference I felt I was making by bridging writing and advocacy work. By August, when we’d packed up our house on the dreams of a good life in California, I still felt unsure that moving was what I wanted. Today, on December 29th, five months after we left, I still feel that way.

But that’s for another story for another time.

New writing topics, too, entered into my life: I wrote about Rasputin’s man parts, which are supposedly preserved in an itty-bitty erotica museum in the middle of downtown St. Petersburg (verdict’s still out on whether or not it’s a horse organ or the poor man’s 11-inch member, but still.) The piece was picked up by Jezebel Magazine, which still strikes me as unbelievable but amazingly awesome. I also wrote about a museum of still-functional Soviet-Era arcade games and the whole thing went viral–I learned what it meant to have a piece of writing truly go public, and I had more emails and comments from readers than I could have ever imagined. I covered the story of a child behavioral therapist-turned-chef in a tiny hummus kiosk in Tel Aviv, and I wrote about impromptu New Orleans street music. I wrote about my usual suspects, too–odd and quirky objects, feminist approaches to travel writing, and I took a lot of pictures. In fact, at last count, I’ve taken over 10,000 this year alone (I know, I know, where am I going to put all those photos?!). I started doing more on social media, reaching out and commenting on other people’s work, and I went from 0 followers on Instagram at the beginning of the year to 3,000. My column in En Voyage magazine all the way over in Taiwan is still going strong, and I’m moving away from more advice-heavy pieces and branching out into more narrative memoir-driven pieces. I’m still writing creatively in those few spare moments.

And, I just had a birthday, one that seems particularly odd because it doesn’t really mean anything except that I definitely can’t claim I’m still in my 20s and I can’t claim that I just turned 30. What happens, really, when someone turns 32? Or 33? Or onward from there? I don’t know what life has in store for me (I mean, who does?!), but I know that I’m going to be facing some big decisions in the next year or two as I grace through the early part of this new decade: where (and if I want) to set roots, whether or not to have a family, how to finish my book, where to place my professional energies, my time, and my emotions, how to keep myself in balance mentally, spiritually, and physically, how to fit travel into my life in a way that doesn’t zap me of my passion but that keeps the little wanderlust who sits on my shoulder, like a tiny angel and devil wrapped into one, happy and playful.

Though those questions are certainly for another time, here’s a metaphorical celebratory toast to the incredible people and places I met in nine very awesome places in 2015. In and amongst everything, I still found time to set my feet aloft, and here are just a few of the places they landed.

Victoria, B.C., Canada

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My first trip of the year this year was to Vancouver, Canada, and let me tell you: What a gorgeous place to be in the wintertime. I had the wonderful pleasure of working with Tourism Victoria while I was there, and they kept me–and my writing fingers–very busy! I hopped a sea plane at dawn from Vancouver to Victoria (on Vancouver Island), and spent the day visiting the Royal B.C. Museum, where I arranged a private tour with a docent there so I could see two incredible artifacts: enormous Chinese freemason masks and one of the world’s only remaining tapa cloth books compiled by Captain Cook on his last voyage to the Pacific. From there, we walked over to the Grand Pacific Hotel and had a three-hour long West Coast high tea session. Before the sea plane took off for our sunset ride back to Vancouver, we took a quick jaunt to Victoria’s Chinatown and a lovely walk around some of the pretty tree-lined, European-style neighborhoods. I could absolutely see myself falling in love with Victoria and living here, very, very happily.

Boston, Massachusetts

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In March, I held my first creative workshop for professional travel bloggers at the 2nd annual Women in Travel Summit in Boston. It was the perfect city for a get-to-know-you networking event, as it was small enough to walk around with new friends and full of things to do. I’d never been to Boston before, and though I only had a little less than a week to explore it, what I found–quirky cafes, cobblestone alleys, tons of amazing Chinese dumpling shops, a million universities, and more Italian restaurants than I could count–filled my heart and spirit with joy.

I even stayed with 5 women I’d never met before in one room filled with bunk beds at the super cool Hostelling International Boston. It was delightfully throwback to my years as a hostel-goer but trendy (and clean) enough to feel like a funky loft apartment. Totally a do-again.

New Orleans, Louisiana

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In May, I visited another American city that I’d never been to before: gritty, spunky, sweaty New Orleans. Two of our friends had decided on New Orleans for their destination wedding, so, as you can imagine, their entire day was completely destination-driven. From their sweet ceremony at the Irish Cultural Center to the mile-long second line parade down the streets of the French Quarter (led by, of course, a three-piece brass band and over 100 guests waving white handkerchiefs) to the shrimp and grits on the wedding menu and the reception in a loft-style warehouse, I felt completely and utterly taken by the city. As part of my ongoing work with the New Orleans CVB, Ryan and I stayed in a garret room–aka, a room with no windows–in the famous Degas House, where generations of artists and writers have come to find solitude and inspiration from the city.

I loved it. The trees with huge swaths of moss hanging from them, as if suspended in time, the white wraparound porches, the humid, thick air, the delectable gumbo, the rebuilding and resistance of the city and its people in the wake of Katrina, the fact that so much of the city still needs care, the kind people with their particular New Orleans lilt, the musicians with their dreadlocks, mismatched clothes, coin buckets, and joyful faces….it all felt, so, surreal and yet entirely natural, like the whole history of one place was wrapped up in one moment, existing unilaterally.

St. Petersburg, Russia

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May held the magic of Russia. This trip was truly the trip of a lifetime, because 1) I was lucky enough to travel with Viking River Cruises on their Waterways of the Tsars outreach and 2) I got to take my mom, who, before May had never had a passport, with me. You really have to see St. Petersburg to understand its undeniable magic and its complicated history, and you’ll never meet prouder people. It’s a city of canals, of world-renowned art, of cafes and restaurants featuring global cuisine, of winding streets, of onion-domed cathedrals painted in brilliant candy colors, of street markets, a mishmash of Renaissance architecture, Communist-Era blocs, and modern Western-style apartments. It’s also a weirdly quiet city by day, making it perfect for leisurely strolls and long conversations over cappuccinos. Our three days here were three of the most unforgettable days I’ve ever had, as so much of what I thought about Russia got flipped upside-down, turned on its head, and refined. St. Petersburg reminded me why travel is so critical to our lives.

Chandler, Arizona

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In late spring of this year, I was invited to attend the Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa’s grand re-opening of its restaurant, Ko’Sin. In the Pima language, which is the native language of the people who historically lived on the river here, ko’sin simply means kitchen. At the Ko’Sin restaurant inside the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa just outside Phoenix, Arizona, where veh pug means beginning, hai chu hugimeans main course, and wamichtha means fry bread, food takes on whole new meanings here. As homage to the magnificent Sonoran desert landscape and the decadent restaurant menu, the Wild Horse resort is committed to local culture and preservation. Not only was the entire resort designed to be a place of honor and respect for the Gila River Indian heritage and culture, the architecture, design, art, and stories of the Akimel O’otham and Pee Posh tribes were celebrated in every detail imaginable, indoors and out.

A small group of bloggers, writers, and PR people joined the culinary team and the rest of the Wild Horse Pass staff for a lovely night of sample dishes, marshmallows and singing by the fire, and a hauntingly stunning sunset over the Sierra Estrella Mountain Range. As we sat and talked to the flute player, a many-generations old member of the Pima tribe and a man who makes all his own instruments, I realized that in my seven years in Tucson, I’d never really given Phoenix a chance. I’m so glad I did.

Puerto Penasco, Mexico

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When people think of going to Mexico for holiday, most people don’t think of this tiny border town on the coast of the Sea of Cortez, just three hours from Tucson, but I’ll tell you something: I absolutely adore this dusty, abrasive, desert town. It’s sandy, relatively poor, and looks like it’s been sitting still since the 1990s when problems with the border halted nearly all construction, and yet, I love it. It’s unbelievably quiet, its beaches are long, wide, and flat, its water is clean and clear, and its downtown bustles with locals buying fruits and fish and tourists buying trinkets and souvenirs. There are some delicious restaurants, too, serving up all kinds of tamales, quesadillas, and, of course, Sonoran burros (our word for the burrito out here).

Though we’ve been to this Arizona-dweller’s seaside paradise many times before, this summer’s trip was extra-special, because it would be the last time my friends and I would all drive down together before Ryan and I moved to California. The weekend held a kind of joyful magic in the air–we drank a ton of margaritas, we talked about our lives, our friendships, our writing, and our futures, we danced on the rooftop of our two-story Airbnb rental, overlooking the sea, and we cried. Against the sandy desert backdrop of modest Puerto Penasco, it was the most perfect weekend I could have imagined.

The tequila-induced late-night dancing on the beach to 1990s hip hop music didn’t hurt, either.

Long Beach, California

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The one place I didn’t really travel to, so to speak. I’ve been living here since mid-August, after having taken a job just up the hill at a small college in Palos Verdes. Long Beach itself is equal parts the funkiness of Tucson with the elegance of L.A., so I’m still trying to figure out how I fit in here. I always dreamed of living the beach life, of waking up to sea smells and blustery breezes, of coming home with sandy feet and sun-kissed shoulders after a long day of paddleboarding, of hosting the many guests and friends who would come and stay with us.

Things are, of course, a little bit different than that. I’m still getting used to the fact that houses are crammed together and that rent for a two-bedroom apartment is prohibitively expensive, that people don’t really ever say hello to me on the street and look at me in terror when I wave at them, and that our two cats Giuseppe and Luigi no longer have a yard to go out in during the long, lazy mornings. Of course, it’s stunningly beautiful here–the weather is magnificent, the beach is beautiful, the sunsets are lovely, and the restaurants, bars, and shops all walking distance from me are fantastic and represent all walks of life and cuisine from all over the world. We’ve hosted some dear friends and look forward to hosting more, and we take daily jogs on the beach. So far, Long Beach has been both kind and overwhelming, a study in contrasts.

Jerusalem, Israel

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2015 was the year I went to two of the most fascinating and complicated countries in the entire world. In October, I had the rare and incredible opportunity to visit Israel, the tiny sliver in the Middle East that seems to hold the history of the world in its small, oblong shape, along with tourism marketing organization Geoffrey Weill, the Israel Ministry of Tourism, and four other amazing bloggers and writers. We happened to go at a particularly difficult time: in the days leading up to our visit, headlines like “Is This the Third Intifada?” and “Tensions Mount in Jerusalem” captured the public’s attention and were the first hits on Google searches about Israel. The violence was real, and I went to this country in the thick of murders and heightened disagreements between the Israelis and Palestinians. And yet, in Jerusalem, I only felt a sense of serenity, a calmness that I can’t quite replicate, yet, in words, even knowing that just around the corner were violent acts, stabbings, and people afraid for what would come. Luckily, in December, we still aren’t facing another intifada yet, and one can only hope that the tensions don’t ever escalate that far again.

One thing that’s particularly worth noting about this trip, more than the memories I have that will last me my lifetime, is that it was the first trip I’ve been on in which I completely filled up my notebook–every. single. page. Exploring ancient cities, unearthed cobblestone streets dating thousands of years, boats brought up out of the Sea of Galilee from Jesus’ time….Israel will upend you, make you question everything, make you understand the depth of the world’s monotheistic religions, make you fall in love, over and over again, with hummus. It’s all there.

Dahlonega, Georgia

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My hometown of Atlanta is definitely worth visiting, but what a lot of people don’t do when they come to my home state is drive up north to some of the adorable little towns near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Dahlonega, a town of only 5,000 people with one of the cutest downtowns I’ve seen in small-town America and some of the best wineries in the Southeast, is one of these places. While my dear friend Magda, who I met in Malta nearly 11 years ago, was visiting me last week from Amsterdam, I decided to take her up there for the day to show her a bit of the south she hadn’t seen before. We ate a buffet of chicken-fried steak and collard greens at the Smith House, a historic house near downtown, shopped the cute little boutiques, stopped at The Crimson Moon and struck up a two-hour conversation with the two bartenders there, and tried a new recipe from Sweetwater, a local Atlanta brewery. We didn’t leave quietly, either: People were even waving to us as we pulled away in our quirky little rental car, an itty-bitty bright-red Chevrolet Spark.

I’d say, all in all, I had a pretty lucky year. As always, life is complicated, full of the good, the bad, and either the things we don’t want to face or the things we’ve long ignored. Travel doesn’t relieve us of our troubles, cure our demons, or make our lives easier, but it has always helped me find perspective, and for that I’m eternally grateful.

May 2016 be your year of light, with promises fulfilled, strength and patience to get through the difficult times, and lots of joy and beautiful travels!

Yours in travel,

Kristin

Filed Under: Israel, Mexico, Russia, Travel, Travel Writing, United States Tagged With: cruise, culture, encounters, food, history, Israel, Russia, Viking River Cruises, Year in review

What Does It Mean to…Settle Down?

June 23, 2015 by Kristin Winet 6 Comments

Those two words, when used together, have always terrified me. Settle + down. Settle, a word that evokes a “coming to rest,” an acceptance of things as they are, a seated position. Down, a word that means everything but “up.” What else could it mean but a snoozefest in the suburbs? A wanderlust unfulfilled? A life that’s predictable, simple, and altogether comfortable?

Oh course, I’m mostly kidding. As I transition into this new decade, the decade that comes after all the college partying, waywardness, and all-around general uncertainty, I see it happening to a lot of my friends, and I have to admit: there is something more attractive about the idea of settling down now than even five years ago when I was still knee-deep in my mid-twenties. So many of my childhood and adult friends own houses, have children, are in jobs they don’t necessarily love (or do love, if they’re one of the lucky ones!). I’ve never had any of these things, except for maybe the “job I love” part…but even my long climb to pursue a job I really wanted has made me question whether or not spending so many years in higher education as an exploited graduate student teacher making less than a poverty-level income is worth the prize at the end.

There were many restless nights, nights spent eating leftovers and fretting about my dissertation, in which I thought very long and hard about giving it up completely, about taking a new path, about jet-setting somewhere new and “settling down” at a foreign language school somewhere and doing what I do best: teach, travel, and write. Plus, the academic job market is nothing short of grueling–it takes every ounce of confidence, perseverance, and tenacity to survive it. For a hopeful academic and a freelance writer, rejection is part of the daily grind. But rejection after rejection is not easy, let me tell you.

I did, unexpectedly, have a job offer to teach English at a very prestigious satellite American university in China. The “me” five years ago would have literally jumped on an airplane with one stuffed suitcase and no regrets, and I would have had countless after countless stories to write, countless after countless photos to take. My parents would have been so proud of me (love you, mom and dad!), and my sister would have wanted to hear every detail. My dad started sending me every expat website he could find on Shanghai, and he put me in touch with friends he knows who work in Asia.

Then, when they offered Ryan a job as well, I did something unexpected: I paused.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized I didn’t think I wanted that life, that life characterized by chaos, uncertainty, excitement, and adrenaline, again. At least not right now. I wanted, for the first time in my adult life, to be closer to my family, to spend more time with my parents, to make more memories with my friends here, rather than selling everything I owned (which, admittedly, isn’t much), stuffing up a suitcase, and heading off on a one-way ticket. Having been by my mom’s side through her seemingly interminable struggle with cancer over the past seven years, I’ve thought a lot about family, about lifelong friendships, about the world right outside my door that is stunningly beautiful on its own. I’ve thought a lot about the quickness with with life passes, and about how, despite our best intentions, we can’t hit the pause button. Perhaps Shanghai could wait.

So I did something even more unexpected: I went back on the job market, and I, with a freakishly dogged persistence, kept applying. I knew my contract at the University of Arizona was going to be up in May, and I didn’t–I painfully didn’t–want to end up adjuncting for less than I’d make working at a fast-food chain or panicking every month because my blog didn’t have enough unique page views to support potential advertiser’s appetites. As I’ve learned, talent and charisma can only take you so far–the formula for success is really no more than just trying really really hard and refusing to give up no matter how many rejection letters or the sounds of crickets pile into your inbox. (Trust me, there were plenty). And for someone like me, someone who is horribly anxious by nature, this hasn’t been easy.

And then, in April, I got another offer, and during the phone call, I blurted out that Ihadahusbandtooandhe’sanacademictooandhereallyneedsajobtoo…. And they said they’d be happy to find him a job, too.

So, this settling down thing is really happening.

Ok. So I’m not really “settling down,” so to speak….we’re just moving to California.

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I’d like to think of it as an “unsettling down,” a partial settling for the two of us and our two cats….with a good amount of restlessness still in the wings. I’m confident that I will thrive in my new position as an Assistant Professor of English, and I am more than excited to be heading to a liberal arts college just steps away from the beach (with a view that is, let me just say, ridiculous!). Last weekend, we found a cute little place to live–an upstairs unit in an old-but-adorable 1920s bungalow three blocks from the harbor–and we arranged for the movers to take what little we have from Tucson to Long Beach. Marymount CA University, here we come!

We’ll be in the middle house here, with the green awnings and cute Spanish tile roof. It’s quirky, it’s got character, and it’s got just enough bungalow to remind me of Tucson.

Thanks to Google Earth–in all its awesomeness and creepiness–for snapping this for me.

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So, here we are, straddling one part of our lives, not quite ready to let go, but somehow, in some way, ready to embrace another.

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And dear Sonoran Desert, this unexpected, harsh, and lovely place I have grown to love, with all its buzzing cicadas, gigantic palo verde bugs, anthropomorphic saguaro cacti, and wonderful, wonderful writing community, I am happy, because you’ll still be just a day away.

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Yours in travel,

Kristin

 

 

Filed Under: California, North America, Reflections, Uncategorized, United States Tagged With: Arizona, beach, California, job, journey, life, Long Beach, teaching, university, writing

New Orleans Street Music

May 26, 2015 by Kristin Winet 2 Comments

Though I remember this mostly from photographs, I think I first picked up a pair of church handbells in kindergarten, of tones, I think, in B flat and C.  I remember I liked these bells because they weren’t the teeny tiny tinny ones, and they weren’t the super-heavy ones that the boys had to play, or the ones the girls had to hurl up with their whole bodies. They also got played a lot, so I never got bored standing there following the bars and wondering when I’d be able to chime in with my ring. I remember playing my small two-belled parts in some of my favorite Biblical hymns, sometimes even accompanying my mom’s 120-voice choir, sitting underneath the tiered seats, banging out those bells in a forte that was probably a little too strong.

In seventh grade, I begged my mom, a lifelong musician herself, to buy me a flute, and I joined the school band. I took lessons at a local music school. Unlike a lot of my peers at school, I loved practicing scales–the repetition of it, the predictable nature of it, the full-bodied, high-pitched trills that happened, magically, when I reached those high octaves and didn’t squeak.

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I sang, too, ever since I knew how to put words together and string them into complete thoughts. I sang throughout school, in the car, in the shower, to my favorite CDS (and then my favorite .mp3s, and then my favorite Pandora streams). And I lived my teenage years through music, as many of us do, faithfully attending every single Incubus concert I could afford in the Southeast (truth be told, I probably went to a LOT more Incubus concerts than my meager hostess salary afforded me, but alas, I digress). I attended a million punk and ska concerts with my best friend Rachel, and we followed bands around like we did trendy shoes, buying them up, wearing them for a while, and then flitting on to the next big thing. And then we went to college, where Rachel would study music business at a tiny Christian school in Nashville, the land of country music and mandolins, and I would study Comparative Literature in Athens, Georgia, where more Southern rock bands call home than anywhere else in the country. (my nostalgia recalls many a Widespread Panic and Phish concert in those tree-lined Southern streets and in the historic walls of the Georgia Theater).

Something weird, happened, though, between those high school and college years. I put down instruments and I stopped singing.

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Like many kids, it started around 10th grade, when, suddenly, it was no longer cool to tote a metal flute case down the hallway. I still wanted to play music, I desperately did, but I didn’t want the rest of the halls of my high school to know, because, unlike the rest of those band nerds, I was too cool for that (how many of us have said that before, am I right?). In an attempt to be both clandestine but still respectful to my instrument, I would stuff my flute case into my backpack, the tips of the oblong-sized case pressing up uncomfortably against the seams of the top and bottom of my already-packed backpack, and I would teeter down the hall, books in my arms instead. By the end of high school, I was second chair, meaning that I had solos in concerts, sat in the front row, and dressed up for the concerts.

And then, well, college came around and I tried to pick up the guitar instead. I was in Athens, after all; a place where the guitar is about as common a pastime as breathing. But my fingers also chapped, I could never pluck the strings fast enough, and I couldn’t catch up to friends of mine who’d been playing for years. There were banjos, mandolins, guitars, lutes, ukuleles….and lots of talented players behind their strings.

Sometime between then and now, I’d become an observer. Someone who watched, wistfully, from afar, who listened to music but didn’t participate in it. I’ve missed my music–I even see my acoustic guitar in the closet here, beside me, as I write this, and I think mournfully about all the songs that never got played.

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Two weeks ago, I went to New Orleans with Ryan to attend a wedding, and these thoughts have lingered with me stronger than ever since I’ve been back. I knew New Orleans had a magnificent music scene (I wrote about it for Perceptive Travel, actually), and I knew, from popular culture, that musicians played in the streets in the historic French Quarter. But imagining and experiencing a thing often leaves an impossible abyss….there is nothing like walking through the sweat-filled humidity of those tropical New Orleans streets, watching the local musicians set up their equipment, lay out a bucket, a guitar case, or a basket for coins and dollar bills, and catching tourists take snapshots.

In the following photos where people are featured, I always asked before I took the picture, and I always left a gift for them as a small piece of gratitude.

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To be honest, I didn’t really understand how much I actually missed playing music–as opposed to simply listening to it live–until I joined our friends’ second line to their wedding reception. From the Irish Cultural Museum to the art gallery where they had their Creole celebration set up, we marched through the streets behind a 3-piece brass band, enacting a very old West African tradition brought to Louisiana by slaves and merged with the military brass band parade traditions of the Europeans and white Americans, and I wove a white handkerchief in one hand and held my high heels in the other. As the 60 or so of us walked down those cobblestone streets, passing tourists, musicians, and other artists alike, I felt a reverence for this place and its inextricable link to music. Even know, I find it difficult to describe, this feeling of sound and place coalescing like that.

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When we arrived at the gallery’s doors, and the musicians stood outside wiping sweat from their brows, I stopped the trumpet player and said thank you. He looked up, surprised, I think, that one of the wedding attendees had taken the second to personally recognize him, and I told him how lovely his artistry was. He smiled, knowingly at me, this once-upon-a-time musician, visiting his special Crescent City.

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Yours in travel,

Kristin

All photographs by me 🙂 A special thanks to the New Orleans CVB for helping me arrange accommodations for my stay in New Orleans.

Filed Under: Louisiana, North America, Photography Tagged With: culture, encounters, history, jazz, Louisiana, music, musicians, New Orleans, street music, street photography

Just a Day in greenwich Village

April 11, 2015 by Kristin Winet Leave a Comment

What do you do if you have one measly day in one of the world’s most fantastic cities?

You go to a coffee shop and write.

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At least, that’s what I did two weeks ago when I was in the city and found myself wondering what life would be like if I lived here. So I decided to do whenever and wherever I am: I find the nearest spot where I can order a hot drink and park myself for a few hours among some strangers.

The place I stumbled upon, Stumptown Coffee, had an odd name but a huge line, so I guessed their cappuccinos were most likely up to the standards of the many literary voices and writers who’ve passed through its doors.

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As I looked around at the NYU students eagerly catching up on their assignments, the writers lost in thought, their faces lit up by their computer screens, the foreign visitors pouring over their travel guides written in Mandarin, I decided I’d park it for a while here, catch up on my people-watching (it’s kind of a weird hobby of mine—thanks, mom), and pop open my laptop and—Gasp!—write something.

I should clarify that: I mean write something that is not my dissertation.

I put on my headphones, found a playlist of happy indie music, and got to work. I pretended I was a real New York writer, with a dedicated agent, a fancy publisher, a big book deal and plans to traverse the nation talking about my amazing new memoir. I should mention that I don’t often daydream about these things, partly because I’m always so insecure and busy that I hardly ever give myself the time to daydream, to imagine other possibilities, to let my mind drift to places I’d forgotten existed.

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I felt like I was twenty again, stepping into my first creative writing classes, getting my first passport photo taken, wondering what in the world was in store for my young life. Then, I used to daydream. When we grow up, we all too often push those thoughts aside, make ourselves get back to the business of being smart professionals with illustrious careers (or at least serviceable ones). But we don’t often let ourselves imagine what we could do if we just had the time, just had the money, just had the freedom, just had the (INSERT NOUN HOLDING YOU BACK HERE). Now, ten years later, I found myself sitting at this perfect little coffee shop full of intelligent, creative people, and I was daydreaming again.

Of course, I should mention that being twenty wasn’t all glory and glitter, and that in-between feeling very out-of-place and weird most of the time, I had absolutely no clue whatsoever what I was going to do with my life. The only thing I was convinced of at the time was that I knew I wanted it to be something special.

I still don’t really know what the purpose of life is, but I still know that I want it to be something special. Maybe I don’t need a swanky book deal with a big New York publisher. Maybe it’s something else, instead. I don’t know—but at least I should keep myself open to the possibilities. Maybe that’s what adulthood should teach us: to be more open to the possibilities.

I went to the beautiful Big Apple for an interview, but though I didn’t leave with an employment contract, I left having reconnected with a “me” that I’d long buried underneath grading piles of students papers, writing freelance articles, and just plain getting through the hectic daily grind. I’d thought the job I was applying for would give me that–would free me from the monotony of writing a dissertation and being a poor graduate students–but perhaps all I needed was a day there. Maybe, at least for now, I don’t belong in New York. And that, I’m learning, is OK.

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The morale of all this? I’ve decided that more of us should park it in busy coffee shops in Greenwich Village from time to time.

Yours in travel,

Kristin

Filed Under: Food, New York, North America, Photography, Travel, Travel Writing, United States, Writing Tips Tagged With: coffee, culture, food, Greenwich Village, literary, New York, Stumptown Coffee, writers

Walking Tours & Umbrellas in Boston

April 9, 2015 by Kristin Winet 6 Comments

So, what else would a girl who lives in the Sonoran Desert (a place that is typically well over 100 degrees) do on a freezing cold day in Boston while it was snowing?

Yes, that’s right. Go out and do a walking tour.

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Sadly, my lofty aspirations to explore the far reaches of the city by foot didn’t exactly go as I’d planned (cold fingers started getting the best of me and I was too afraid to keep taking off my gloves to take photos with my camera lest I would end up with frostbite). But my self-directed walking tour, which was more of a “hey, I think there’s a park in that direction…I’ll go over there!” and less of an actual thought-out, mapped-out tour, did take me to some pretty amazing spots around what I think is one of the country’s most gorgeous—and undeniably most historic—city centers.

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First Stop:

Bundled up in my warmest coat (it wasn’t that warm), my warmest gloves (see prior parenthetical), and my warmest boots (these were actually pretty awesome), I turned right out of the hostel, made my way down Stuart Street, turned right onto Tremont Street, and ended up right on the fringes of Boston Common, the nation’s first public city park—and a place that is not, as most erroneously think, a plural commons. There were two homeless men there to greet me with some uncomfortable cat-calling and panhandling, but once I got past them, I headed past the Central Buying Ground cemetery, complete with its centuries-old trees with their gnarled branches and its 18th century gravestones, nodding in reverence to some of the incredible artists whose names are forever engraved there: Gilbert Stuart, the man who painted the famed portraits of George and Martha Washington, William Billings, the composer who wrote “Chester,” the famous colonial hymn, and Charles Sprague, one of the first European-born writers to consider himself an American poet. As I walked by, it occurred to me: where would I belong for eternity?

This wanderlusting girl has no idea. Georgia….my hometown? Arizona….the place I grew into a woman? Malta….my favorite country on Earth? Some place I haven’t tread yet that might capture my heart even more entirely?

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Who knows. Globalization has done strange things to homelands.

Second Stop:

From here, I wandered over to a towering vertical statue on top of a hill that I soon learned was the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the Flag Staff Hill. It is another space whose purpose is to commemorate the dead. Here, though, the commemoration is for the male soldiers and sailors who died in the U.S. Civil War. As I walked around the statue, read the inscriptions, and touched the delicate engraving, I wondered: Why haven’t I had this jarring kind of experience with American history before? Why have I been so critical of the United States and our complicated coming-of-age? I realized, for perhaps the first time in a long time, that like it or not, I am a small part of this place, a place that has been through war, slavery, oppression, and domination, on this strangely optimistic, weirdly American quest to justice. And that we still have a long way to go before we get there, because first we have to address the many deep-seated oppressions that happen every day with our women, our people of color, our minoritized and underserved populations. I looked up at the pinnacle of the Soldiers and Sailors Monument and I thought about how we needed a lot more statues.

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And then I thought, trading spots on the steps of the statue with two college students who had decided to go to Boston for their spring break, is it weird to take multiple selfies while standing on top of a monument like this?

I don’t know. But I took at least a handful of them, just to make sure the lighting was right. After all, both I and the statue were backlit.

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Third Stop:

Next up, I headed across the street to the famed Beacon Hill, the old neighborhood renowned for its windy streets and old homes. It wasn’t difficult to find—it’s the strip of windy, old homes sailing their way down Acorn Street.

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All I did here was walk. I marveled at the cracked streets, split apart by trees; the sometimes haphazard way the stones seemed to be dropped in place in the sidewalks; the peeling paint, the crooked windows, the simultaneous beautiful messiness and pristine preservation of historic districts. I thought about old friends, I thought about my first trip to Europe and the first time I walked proudly down cobblestone alleys in my high heels, I thought about where I was in my life—a very confusing place, as it turns out—and I thought about where I might walk next after I finished this crazy dissertation and decided where to land, at least for a little while. I coughed, and I watched my breath sail into the sky and disappear among the white wind.

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And then, more snow started to drift out of the sky, collecting on the sleeves of my coat and leaving my teeth chattering, so I walked all the way back.

My advice? When you walk Boston, don’t walk it lightly. But maybe walk it when it’s just a teensy bit warmer. Your camera-snapping finger will thank you.

DSC_0919Yours in travel,

Kristin

Filed Under: Massachusetts, North America, Travel, Uncategorized, United States Tagged With: Boston, city, Massachusetts, parks, statues, tour, travel tips, travel writing, walking, WITS15, Women in Travel Summit

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