Let’s talk about my upcoming vacation. The second Chris gets home from Australia I told him that we’re going to sit down and discuss Mexico.
See, Mexico means a lot to me. Mexico is a trip that seems like it’s been a long time in the making. Three years ago now I decided to take a little trip for Valentine’s Day since Chris was in Canada. That was my trip to Hawaii. Then the following year Chris and I headed to the Bahamas together on our Toilet of the Sea Cruise. So you can see how in my head I had decided that going on vacation for Valentines day had become my “thing.” I liked this “thing.” So I decided that last year Chris and I should take a trip to Mexico together for Valentine’s Day.
But I got over it. It was the trip of a lifetime for Chris, and Mexico would always be there for us to visit another time.
And that time has finally come. While Valentine’s Day weekend isn’t the best weekend for us to travel, since it’s so close to the time Chris will be getting back from Australia, we’ve decided to push it back two months—but I’ll still consider it my Valentine’s Day travel, just for the sake of it all.
I can’t really remember how we landed on Cabo. I think it may have been the photos I saw a few weeks back of a bunch of celebrities who were vacationing there. Whatever it was, I now have my heart set on Cabo, and so in honor of the impending trip, let’s talk a little bit about it.
Cabo is a city at the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, in the municipality of Los Cabos in the Mexican state of Baja California Sur
According to the 2005 census, the population was 56,8111 people
Cabo is known for its sandy beaches, world-class scuba diving locations, balnearios, and abundant marine life
It is thought that the first humans came to the southern end of the peninsula 1,400 years ago
Cabo San Lucas is less rainy than San Jose del Cabo, although hurricanes can bring heavy rain for long periods. Average rain in the year: 9.63 inches or 244.7 mm
Bis bald, friends! I’m thinking of warm, sandy, Mexican beaches on this cold, rainy, snowy Tuesday New York City night.
Munich has more to offer than you could ever imagine
About three weeks ago now I set off on a trip that was really special to me for a bunch of different reasons. Firstly, I would be taking my first ever solo international flight. And on top of that I would be spending a good day a 1/2 in Munich all by my lonesome, and I was a bit nervous, to say the least. I wasn’t sure how I would end up reacting to that. Here in the city I never go out to dinner by myself. I never see movies by myself or get a drink all alone. Would I be able to pull myself out of my comfort zone and actually leave the room, by myself, in Munich?
Turns out, I learned a lot on this trip about myself. Firstly, taking an international flight all by your lonesome is totally easy—if not pleasant. When you’re with someone on a flight, depending on who said person is, you’re always left wondering how much of a conversation you’re going to have to make. Can you sleep when you want to? What if I just want to listen to my music or read my book or watch the same show on the free in-flight television over and over again? The only time that you can truly do all of this without any worry is when you’re by yourself.
And then, when you actually get to your destination, you alone are in charge of your itinerary. Feeling a big jet lagged and want to take a nap, even though you just arrived in this fantastic new place? No worries. Want to take a shower to wash off the plane before you head out into the bright new world you’re about to discover? No worries, take your time.
All of that was fantastic. The thing that I did miss, however, was the ability to share in the fantasticness with someone. When I arrived at the airport in Munich and heard the German announcements and saw the lederhosen and dirndls (yup, even in the airport), I was ecstatic. I was in MUNICH! And yet, there was no one to share in the excitement with. I remembered arriving in Heathrow with Stephanie back in May and how excited we had been. It’s great to be able to take in a new surrounding with someone. That part I really missed.
For the rest of it, though, there wasn’t a single thing negative I can say about it. In the end I totally made it out of my gorgeous hotel (after the jet lag nap and shower), and ended up discovering quite a bit on my own that first day:
Heading to Marienplatz, or the town center
The fantastic open air markets in the town centerAdvertising in Munich=lots of pretzels and beerBeer garden haven
After a Friday afternoon and evening discovering bits of Munich by myself, I headed over to the Deutsche Museum on a rainy Saturday morning. Thanks to my handy-dandy Foder’s Munich travel book I know that if you were to spend just 1 minute checking out every single exhibit in this amazing museum, it would take you over 300 days to get through everything. Anything you can think of—physics, automobiles, flight, kites, shipping, planets, animals…you name it, there was something in the Deutsches Museum pertaining to that subject. I even took in a planetarium show—in German. Can’t say I learned a lot from that, but it was pretty amazing.
After spending a good 6 hours in the museum I headed over to my first hotel, Hotel Advokat, (I seriously recommend this hotel, absolutely everything about it was great. The rooms were tiny, but super clean and very nice—and the breakfast, which is included in your hotel fee, is absolutely on par with any restaurant breakfast you’ll get) to pick up my stuff and make the walk to our second hotel, Novotel Munchen City, where Carla would be meeting me in the afternoon.
I’d like to take some credit (any credit, really) for the hotel bookings, because both hotels were pretty great. Perfect locations, perfect prices, nice people, the whole shebang—but really, that was all Carla. Luckily this friend of mine does a lot of traveling in Europe and had been to Munich many a time before, so she was a bit aware of what we would need and want out of a hotel, and she did a great job picking them. (Also, we booked in February. Prices were drastically more expensive the closer it got to Oktoberfest, so who knows if we could have afforded the same hotels had we booked at a later month).
So Saturday night Carla and I met up and took a walk through the town center again to find a place for dinner. Being that Germans aren’t exactly known for their vegetarian fare, we ended up at an Italian restaurant, which was just as fab. It was also the site of my first ever “mass” beer:
Just trust me my friends when I tell you—it was nowhere near as delicious as it looks. I honestly don’t even know what type of beer it was, but let’s just say I had much better at later times in the trip, thank God.
After dinner Carla decided she could navigate our way to the Oktoberfest grounds, which she did very well (despite my teasing her whenever we would take a wrong turn here or there). What we found at the Oktoberfest grounds around 9:30 on that Saturday night was not for the faint of heart:
It had been raining for the majority of the day on Saturday, and the tents open around 11 a.m., so you can only imagine what thousands of drunken people can do to a campground by 9:30 at night. Still, despite the fact that it was muddy and we couldn’t get into a beer tent because they were all full and we were being groped by drunken men, I’d still say that Carla and I were happy to have at least seen the place lit up (neither of us knew that Oktoberfest is basically one big, huge fair ground with food and rides and games, and interspersed with 20 or so humongous beer tents).
So we stayed for a while and then headed back to the hotel, intent on starting over early in the morning and making it into a tent and having a fabulous time at Oktoberfest on Sunday before we headed off into the night on our train to Salzburg for our day trip. And that’s what we did:
Lowenbrau tent
Kiss, Yes! Cigarettes? No!Prost! Drink! Yes! Cigarettes? No!The first group we sat next to—the Italians
Part of the second group we sat next to—13 British boys on a bachelor partyThe beloved pretzel lady who passed out the biggest pretzels you’ve ever seen in your lifethe band
Oktoberfest is, in a nutshell, unlike anything else I’ve experienced anywhere. After our experience on Saturday night I was a little worried that it would just be one big drunken madhouse (which, to some extent, it was), and that Carla and I would have to be worried and on edge the entire time we were there—but it wasn’t one bit like that. At all. We met the most amazing and friendly people. We sang German drinking songs and danced in the aisles in between beer and pretzels. We screamed “Prost!” with thousands of others in our tent and cheered to everyone and everything. No one fought. No one was gross. The boys were all lovely (no, really!). I have decided that Munich is a place I could find myself living some day. And although my trip in Munich was short (only two and 1/2 days), I long for more of Munich, and I hope to get back there some day very soon.
But Sunday night found me pulling Carla away from the adoring Brits as we made our way back to the hotel (the second hotel in as many nights for me), to get our bags, grab a cab and head to our train to Salzburg.
But I’ll do Salzburg in another entry, because it certainly deserves that.
Well, my friends, tomorrow is the day of all days—the day that I’m heading off to Munich for Oktoberfest. So, in honor of the big trip, let’s do a little bit of research on the history of the festive event:
Oktoberfest is a 16-to-18-day festival held every year in Munich. It runs from late September to the first weekend in October, and it is one of the most famous events in Germany, and the world’s largest fair, with approximately six million people attending every year.
The festival is held on an area named the Theresienwiese, often called Wiesn for short, which is located near Munich’s centre South East of the main train station.
At the festival, participants eat Hendi (chicken), Schweinsbraten (roast pork), Haxn (pork knuckle), Steckerlfisch (grilled fish on a stick), Wursti (sausage), Brezn (pretzels), Knodel (potato or bread pancakes), Sauerkraut or Blaukraut (red cabbage), among other (a bit odd) things.
The original Oktoberfest occurred in Munich on October 12, 1810. It was part of a public horse race commemorating the marriage of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hidburghausen. It was so successful it was renewed in 1811.
Since 1950 there has been a traditional festival opening: A twelve gun salute and the tapping of the first keg of Oktoberfest beer at 12 by the incumbent Mayor of Munich with the cry “o’ zapft is!” meaning “It’s tapped!”. The Mayor then gives the first beer to the Minister-President of the State of Bavaria.
Horse races ended in 196o (that’s a shame!)
By 1960, the Oktoberfest festival had turned into an enormous world-famous festival. Since then, foreigners (such as myself) began to picture Germans as wearing the Sennerhut, Lederhosen, and the girls in Dirndl (which, by the way, I wore when I was born in Germany).
In anticipation of my first ever solo trip to another country [yes, I know. Technically I can’t really consider it solo if I will only be alone for a little over 24 hours, but still…], I’ve spent the past two hours studying my Fodor’s ‘Munich’s 25 Best’ book, its maps, the subway…everything. And seriously—I’m getting pretty excited about it all. I’ve mapped out the route from the airport to the hotel, and then from the hotel to where I will start my walking tour for the day. And in honor of my new-found independence, let’s all marvel at the subway map that I figured out all on my lonesome:
It's not so scary when you stare at it for two hours
As a person who has just recently arrived back in the United States after a trip abroad to the fantastic, magical ancient city of Rome, this recent article in the New York Times really struck a nerve with me.
“As Rome Modernizes, Its past Quietly Crumbles,” the article boldly pronounces in its title. Excuse me? What now? I was just there, I thought when I first saw this. I never want Rome’s past to quietly crumble. There are still far too many people out there who have yet to make the trek to this place that is unlike any other, still so many people who have yet to be changed by said trip, like I was.
According to the piece, collapses this past spring at ancient sites have caused archaeologists to warn about other “imminent calamities” that threaten Rome’s architectural birthright.
Unfortunately disasters like that— the natural degradation of architecture that has lasted for hundreds of years—seems unavoidable, if we are to keep these structures untouched by modern ways of preservation.
But there’s also the little problem of certain people who feel that Rome would be best served with upgrades, like modern art museums, and spruces to make the city appear more “presentable” for a potential bid as the site for the 2020 Olympics.
It’s all a bit much to comprehend. In my own humble opinion (you know, as a traveler, and not someone who has any more specific ties to Rome than that), Rome is perfect as is—sans modern museums and spruces. I love the fact that there is hardly a subway system in place in Rome for the simple fact that the Romans want to preserve their underground integrity and the “city” that lay beneath the streets. What a novel idea.
All I can say, really, is that if Rome is to advance towards a more modern age, I’m certainly happy that I had a chance to see it in all its current splendor.
Last Friday Steph and I started our day off with a blank slate.
Or, it was a blank slate in the fact that we didn’t have a tour planned or meals that would be fed to us at their specifically designated times. Other than that I had my map, and my list of suggested places to eat from my co-worker, and my own list of all the places we hadn’t hit yet on our tour from the previous day that I had decided we absolutely had to see before we left.
So I suppose it wasn’t totally blank.
Happiness is a new, gorgeous city with nothing but a map, yum food and all the time in the world.
A little Italian countryside on the train from Rome to Florence
Last Thursday, at around 11 p.m., Steph and I had made it to our final European destination—romantic, wonderful, beautiful Rome, and as tired (and sweaty and dirty) as we were, we were really excited to be there.
So remember that backpack that I mentioned back in Paris? The one that had all the travel documents in it? It also had detailed directions of which train to take from the airport into Rome, and walking directions from the Termini to our hotel, hotel Le Petit, which was only about an alleged 7 minute walk.
But the thing was, had our flight left on time, we were supposed to have arrived in Rome around 7:30 instead of 11 p.m., which would have made it a bit less sketchy for us to fumble our way around a foreign country, and find our way from the train station to our hotel (I can now tell you, having lived through this trip already, that it’s laughable how close our hotel was to the train station. Make a right, walk five minutes, make another right and you literally walk right into the train station. But at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, after picking up our luggage, we had no way of knowing how easy it would be).
So as we entered the main part of the airport (no customs, no luggage check, no passport stamp. What’s up, Italy?!), I started to wonder if taking the train was really the best idea, still (despite my detailed notes….thanks to you, Chris!).
Turns out, I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it before we were approached.
“Need a ride?” a man with a thick Italian accent approach myself and my sister.
My sister and I finally set off into the sunset on our Euro-Adventure this Sunday—although I feel like we should have been there and back about a thousand times already, with all the planning.
From back in February, when we really started searching for flights and hotel reviews and travel plans, our itinerary has morphed into something that we’re pretty happy with—but planning certainly didn’t come without its stresses.
Courtesy of my amazing traveling friend, take in the gorgeousness that is New Zealand and Thailand, seen through her eyes:
From New Zealand:
Auckland CityTongariro Alpine Crossing
New Zealand sunsetBay of Islands in NorthlandA funky New Zealand bathroomTa Mahuta Kauri trees
Mauri TempleHot Pools Rotorua
And on to Thailand: Locations include Baan Dada, Erawan Falls, Koh Phangan, Ton Sai
View from Bungalows
Ton Sai beachDeep water soloing = climbing on rocks without ropes (also = my nightmare)
As an aside, my traveling friend and her traveling companion also happen to be volunteering at orphanages and clinics along the way which, as you can imagine, also allow for some amazingly adorable photos of kids. However, for the sake of the kiddies privacy, I have refrained from posting those particular photos. It was hard. They’re adorable.
Traveling down hill in a plastic ball filled with water? Sign me up!
As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a friend who is currently traveling around Asia volunteering, camping and just generally having the time of her life. Before she left, she mentioned that I could post some updates on her travels from time-to-time. So let this be the first in a series of email entries from her months-long adventure:
Date: 4/26/2010
Just wanted to write a quick e-mail while waiting for the bus and update you girls on my travels. New Zealand was amazing! Totally beautiful (both landscapes and boys). We rented a camper van and cruised around the island in it, camping in random spots along the road. We spent a good chunk of time in the central part of the North island and went on some really nice hikes, bungee jumping, ATVing, Zorbing (where they put you in a plastic ball with water and roll you down a hill), went to some wineries and saw some Kiwi birds!
Thailand is really cool and really, really hot! The minute you start moving (or not moving), sweat is pouring down your back. We went to see some really cool waterfalls where the fish nibble at your dead skin on your feet, so I got a cheap pedi. Also went up to see a friend who is working at an orphanage on the Burmese border and spent a few days up there hanging with the kids. They were all little monkeys, climbing on everything, including us. Hanging out in a small town outside of Bangkok now, which is nice and not extremely touristy. Leaving in about an hour to head down south for the Full Moon Party on Koh Phangan, so should have some interesting stories after that.
Miss ya girls, and would love for you to join us at any point!
Muchisimo Besos xoxox
I’ve emailed said friend back, imploring her for photos and as much more info as her little fingers can type (because, you know, I’d like to live vicariously through her!) Although she can’t call or text with her international phone, she can receive texts, so I’ll be sure to remind her of my need for constant updates.
Finally, Chris’s account of his Japanese adventures from a few weeks before. Buckle up, and beware of the snowboarding stories:
14 hours later and touch down, g’day Tokyo, niced to meet ya!
Here I am, land of the rising sun, snowboard bag on my shoulder, ready to take down Japan.
Just a couple of Tokyo subway rides, a short walk and I arrive at hotel heaven… K’s House Hostel in Tokyo is exactly what you want a hostel to be—super clean, super cheap, super friendly and super location (I really stretched my vocab in that description). Seriously awesome diggs —if you’re ever in need of some great accommodation in Tokyo, I couldn’t recommend it higher!
I have this one friend (the one who I went to visit in Hawaii), whose life I covet. I mean, I love my life, but she’s really got it down when it comes to traveling. She studied abroad in Europe in college, moved to Hawaii when she graduated and did tons of traveling around there, went to South America last year and now, she’s quit her Hawaiian job and is taking 6 months to travel around Asia, which will culminate in a month-long volunteer job in Vietnam where she will be working at a hospital teaching the PTs there (she’s a physical therapist) about the methods and techniques she’s learned in her years working at the hospital in Hawaii.
Not too shabby!
At our recent meet-up during her week home before she returns to Hawaii before she and her travel buddy jet-set off to Asia, she gave me her (relative) itinerary so that I could pick and chose a place and time to meet up with her, should I feel so inclined (the answer is yes, friends, I do feel so inclined). Here’s what it looks like:
Japan for 1 week
Vietnam for a few days
Cambodia for 1 month
Nepal for a little over a month
India for 1 month
Thailand for 2 weeks
Vietnam again (where she will be volunteering) for her final month
I asked her how her family felt about all her traveling around, especially after having lived in Hawaii for the past little-more-than-2-years. She sort-of laughed. “They’re wondering when I’ll be done,” she said.
I don’t know if one ever feels totally “done” when it comes to traveling, but maybe things just tend to die down in scale? I know recently I’ve felt a travel itch to up and move from Manhattan, take to the road or air or sea, see wherever I land and start new.
I probably won’t do it, though. My friend will. That’s the difference.
So I envy her, but for now, the least I can do is watch and live vicariously through her (and beg her to send me updates of her travels every few days so I can post them here).
Oh, and the other thing I can do is visit. With London and Rome in May and Oktoberfest in September, I’m not so sure how feasible it will be, but my friend promises me that they are traveling on the cheap, and that once I’m there, even if I stay for a week, I can expect to spend not much more than $100.
Really?!
That I could do. I’m thinking Thailand might be the perfect place and time for me to visit her. Plus, there’s no Visa requirement. I’ll have to look into it.
Although she did also leave me with a note of all the shots I’ll need to travel there— Hep A,B and C, tetanus, Malaria and Typhoid. Oh my.
Well Chris has made it safe and sound to his final Japanese destination—Niseko. His journey wasn’t without its bumps, though. After finding out that he had booked his connecting flight from New Chitose to Niseko on the wrong day (arrive in Tokyo Sunday afternoon, but booked connecting flight for Saturday, rookie mistake), he had to do a bit of reconfiguring.
Anyway, after the mix-up he managed to rejigger the schedule so it looked a little something like this:
Depart JFK, arrive in Naritu
Stay at K’s House Hostel
Depart Haneda, arrive in Niseko Village
Looking at that schedule, and thinking about traveling alone, in a country where the language is not my own, combined with that subway map from my previous post— I gotta say, I don’t know if I could do it on my own. Chris’s ability to travel on his own, such long distances, to such foreign places where he doesn’t even speak the language, it amazes me.
Let this be a lesson to you ladies and gentlemen, have your ducks in a row before you sit down to plan your trip, or else it will DRIVE YOU CRAZY!
On this Valentines day, as my boyfriend traipses around Japan with his best friend, I’m sitting at my mom’s house planning out my trip to London and Italy with my sister for her graduation. Let me tell you- this is not easy. First, there’s the timing aspect. It has to be after graduation (and possibly after a graduation party to pay for it), but before she starts grad school in the fall. All of these factors combined leaves us with only a short time period to plan the trip, which also, unfortunately, happens to coincide with the most expensive time to travel to Europe- the summer.
After a lot of back-and-forth (will we stay with a friend in London for a few days? Will it be too expensive to book two separate tickets from two separate places? Will a hostel really be that much cheaper than a hotel (that answer might surprise you)). After all of this back-and-forth, I think we have a plan we can get on board with (and, hopefully, afford). It goes a little something like this:
Fly into London, stay with friend for a few nights
Book a cheap(ish) sleeper train that will take us from London to Rome (with a short stop-over in Paris, which I see as a plus, my sister is on the fence about it)
Stay at a cheap(ish) hote that got decent reviews and apparently is in a decent area of Rome to get to sites and such (NOT a hostel, surprisingly. This hotel is actually cheaper than the decent/safe hostels we were looking at, and we get our own room. I guess we’ll have to let you know how it works out when we come back).
Book a couple of day trips around Italy
Fly out of Rome back to NYC
Overall, I think it will work. This is my sister’s first trip like this, certainly her first out of the country, and it’s our first alone together. So, I think it’s safe to say we’re still in the midst of figuring out our ‘travel relationship,’ but we’re coming along quite nicely. And soon, my friends (after we actually book this trip!), we’ll be here:
And here:
So, my friends, until we actually book the flight…bis bald…see you soon!
P.S. Does this intimidate anyone else?!
I mean, I thought the New York City subway map was scary, but this is what Chris had to deal with for his trip from the first airport to his hostel in Tokyo before he boards his second flight to where his friends live. Can’t wait for that update!
