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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

Dispatches from Boston’s Chinatown

March 29, 2015 by Kristin Winet Leave a Comment

DSC_0835I recently read a story about the first Subway opening up in one of North America’s Chinatowns. Despite the overlooked fact that a Subway had crept in to an otherwise corporate-free ethnic enclave, the interesting thing was that nobody knew how to translate it. It couldn’t be the actual word for Subway, because no Mandarin speaker would have any idea why a sandwich shop was named after a mode of public transportation. There is no such translatable idea of a “sub sandwich” in Mandarin.

So what did they do?

They went with something much more beautiful: they chose three characters that, when put together, mean “better than hundred tastes.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about that yesterday when I went to visit Chinatown in Boston.

These towns of China, these glorious microcosms of Chinese food and shopping, have always been a source of curiosity for me. For one, there are a lot of Chinatowns across North America (except, sadly, for Tucson, which could really benefit from an influx of decent Asian fare, and not the trendy, DIY, “roll your own sushi” place by the university or the unfortunately-named FuKu Sushi on University Ave). Secondly, I always find myself inexplicably drawn to Chinatowns for some reason or another, aching to try the juicy pork dumplings or the fried noodles, eager to find a place that serves food like it’s supposed to be, even though deep down I know even that’s a meaningless statement in itself. Food like it’s supposed to be….food is malleable as it migrates, just like people.

To be honest, I think it’s the general sense of awe and curiosity of stepping into a place that’s meant to mimic another place while still holding on to bits of the first place that strikes me so evocatively about Chinatowns. These places, too, are often the result of difficult migrations themselves, poverty, an aching for community, blue-collar labor, and sometimes, even red light districts. They are contact zones in and of themselves, simultaneously serving as relics of the past and examples of modern globalization.

Boston’s Chinatown is no different. As I walked through it in the pouring rain yesterday, hoping to find a hot cup of tea and a warm bowl of soup, I started thinking about these mini “towns” and what the represent, both geographically and culturally. Historically, Chinatowns popped up in tandem with waves of Chinese migration, to both ease the transition into life in a new country and to preserve a sense of community that might have otherwise gotten lost. Though many Chinatowns no longer specifically function as enclaves for Chinese immigrants and have been infiltrated by tourists and city locals, there’s still something fascinating about these replica spaces.

For instance, here’s a photo of a woman eating her lunch in the Dumpling Cafe, a little soup and dumpling shop right around the corner from the hostel where I’m staying for the weekend.

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Presumably from China based on her rapid Mandarin and her ability to navigate the menu like a pro, she’s not doing anything that unusual–after all, she’s just eating and catching up with an old friend or business associate on the phone, right?–but there’s something very, well, Chinatown about it. A woman eating a spicy bowl of soup that may or may not remind her of home, a smartphone, a conversation in Mandarin, equal amounts of white and Asian customers skirting by in the background–these are all images I see when I close my eyes and I think about the busy, chaotic, weird life we live in modernity.

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I also noticed the plate setting in front of me, lemon tea, a plate unusued, plastic utensils stacked on top of each other, a menu written in two languages. Another example.

From the window, there’s a McDonald’s, infamous in its two yellow half-moons, its logo placed next to Chinese characters that curiously seem to be the translation of the word. From my research, I now know that the orthography for McDonald’s in Chinese is essentially meaningless, a transliteration of the English word’s pronunciation, but when I saw this yesterday, I couldn’t help but think how strange it was to see such an American icon–yellow against its bright-red background–next to a set of Chinese symbols that are otherwise meaningless.

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Or this, a wrapped door calling out to shoppers of 3-D Pictures (what are those?!), Luggages, a cold Coca-Cola, DVD movies, and a drowned out “Push” sign. Elements on the spectrum, some words translated, some not.

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My sojourn through Boston’s Chinatown wasn’t long, and I was too cold to really spend any good amount of time there (yes, I’m pathetic when it comes to below-freezing temperatures, even when bundled up), but when I turned the corner and went back to the hostel to warm up, I had so much more to think about than just soup.

Chinatown is centered on Beach Street in downtown Boston. It borders Boston Common and is easily accessible by the MBTA’s Orange Line.

Yours in travel,

Kristin

—

All images copyrighted by Kristin Winet, 2015.

Filed Under: Asia, Photography, Travel, Uncategorized Tagged With: Boston, Chinatown, culture, dumplings, eating, food, immigration, soup

In the Rare Book Room at the Royal B.C. Museum

March 24, 2015 by Kristin Winet Leave a Comment

Located deep in the collections of a Canadian museum is a tiny book. Its corners are frayed, its spine cracked, its cover is worn…..

This is how I started my recent article for Atlas Obscura about Captain Cook’s very rare fabric books from his last voyage. I was on assignment with Tourism Victoria and took about a thousand photos of this incredibly rare, inextricably colonizing and yet gentle book of fabric swatches and descriptions from the many people Cook met on the last voyage he took before he was killed. Chilling, really, to see a book like that up close….but so much fun to photograph.

We didn’t get to use all of my photos in the article, though, so I thought I’d include some photos here of the actual process of going through the book–lots of nitrate gloves, careful handling, and a smiling docent at the end 🙂 If you’re intrigued and want to learn more about this tiny gem, grab a cup of tea, settle in, and take a peek at my Objects of Intrigue piece on Atlas Obscura.

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A special thanks to Tourism Victoria and the Royal B. C. Museum for helping me plan this unforgettable one-day voyage to Victoria.

 

 

Filed Under: Canada, Photography, Travel, Travel Writing, Victoria Tagged With: artifacts, author, book, Canada, island, museum, Royal B.C. Museum, Tourism Victoria, Victoria

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