Dear Internet,
For the first time since I was ten, I’m not taking a big trip this summer. I’ve known since the fall this would be the case, so it’s not like I saved up a lot of money to travel on like I usually do.
This causes a great conundrum. I feel the pull to travel and see interesting places on short jaunts that I couldn’t if I were, oh, say back in Oxford for five weeks. But I also have no money. So let’s pretend for a moment I’ve met the oil tycoon of my dreams and he wants to take me anywhere and everywhere I’ve always wanted to go.
In no particular order, my top ten destinations at the moment.
1. The Sylvia Beach Hotel. On the coast of Oregon, it is a hotel where each room is themed after a different famous author or work. There are no TVs or telephones, just you and, presumably if you’ve sought out the Sylvia Beach Hotel, a bag of books and the Oregon coast to delight you. If books were putting you over the weight limit on those checked bags, they have a library and a restaurant called the Table of Contents. Though it’s most famous for the Poe room where a pendulum hangs over the bed, I think I’d want to stay in the Tennessee Williams room or perhaps Virginia Woolfe’s.
2. the Sedlec Ossuary . In Czechoslovakia, this little church is decorated with the bones of plague victims, and the chandelier is rumored to incorporate every bone in the human body at least once. Morbid? Yes. A little wacky and weird? Yes. Really reminding you about the bummers that await you if you don’t confess all your sins? You betcha. I not-so-secretly hope that one day I might get married here, or at least have a vow renewal or something. I’ve been fascinated with the ossuary since I was 16 and found out about it during one of my numerous bouts of insomnia kept me up on the internet all night.
3. The Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Painted Desert, Petrified Forest and Sequoia park. I haven’t been out west since I was seven and my family took an epic road trip all the way to San Francisco, where we lived for a summer. We hit up all these places and I’ve been dying to go back, but there’s no way to do it right without a car. I don’t have one, so these destinations are on the list not so much because of my current predicament of being poor, but because I’m saving them up for when I turn 25 and can rent a car. I’m celebrating that birthday by taking myself on a little road trip out west to see what mother nature has to offer.
4. The South Pacific. My grandparents always loved that region of the world and visited it on many cruises. I got an orchid as part of a big memorial tattoo for my grandfather and my grandmother on the other side partly to commemorate how much my grandfather loved the tropics. I’ve always wanted to see the coast of Thailand, Indonesia, French Polynesia, Bora Bora, Easter Island and whatever else is good sights out there. Since this is my fantasy list and in my fantasy I’ve married a wealthy man, my new husband has given me a sailboat as a wedding gift and I’ll be touring the South Pacific on my own little yacht.
5. Japan. I’ve wanted to go since I was 13 and discovered anime and manga and started going to conventions dressed up as Japanese cartoon characters. I always wanted to go with my grandmother, but she said she was too old to make a trip that big by the time I got to asking. I want to see it all, and stay in one of the infamous coffin hotels while I’m at it. Shinto shrines, Tokyo clubs, Harujuku, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Blue Heron castle, Mt. Fuji…you can tell I’ve been thinking about it. In my rich fantasy world, my wealthy husband not only has the funds to take me every where, but is very cultured and speaks many languages, making him the perfect travel companion and solving the main reason I don’t know if I’ll ever go to Japan– I can’t read the signs or say more than “moshi moshi” and “konichiwa.”
6. The Trans-Siberian railway. I’ve always wanted to take a trip from one end of Russia to the other. I’d like to start and see the great cities in the West and the Red Square and the Kremlin and all that and stop in the little villages and see the Volga on my way over to Siberia. I’ll be careful to avoid Chernobyl though, and I definitely want to make sure I catch a glimpse of the huge old forest that all the scientists say will have a meteor crash into it one day and the whole thing will catch on fire and we’ll all die from smoke inhalation.
7. I want to take a proper trip to a beach. I’ve never had your basic beach vacation– just popped over occasionally when visiting my grandmother down in Florida. I was supposed to go on a beach trip with friends in high school who ended up rescinding their invitation to my boyfriend and I the evening before everyone was supposed to leave. To add the cherry to the whole thing, once they got there they realized they had tons of room and felt kind of bad so they called Alex and I and said we could still drive up by ourselves if we wanted. We said no thanks and went camping instead which was great…except I’ve still never gotten to do the whole sun, surf, and lazy days thing. I want the kind of beach vacation where you have a house right on the sand and can stand on the porch eating grilled shrimp and drinking margaritas before spontaneously running into the surf, because you don’t take your bathing suit off all week and your hair is crusted with salt.
8. California Wine Country. Once again, I need a car I don’t have. I want to drive out to wine country and spend a few days cruising around from wine tasting to wine tasting and enjoy all the lush scenery with a good, expensive bottle of pino grigio or cabernet. Has anyone seen Bottle Shock yet? It really pimps Cali wine country’s scenery AND features Alan Rickman, who is supremely talent and weirdly hot no matter how old he gets.
9. Belgium. The art nouveau everywhere, a comic book museum, beer up the wazoo– what’s not to love? A good friend of mine’s sister spent a semester abroad there and found love and now lives some of the time in her adopted country with the hubby. All the stories I hear makes Belgium sound even more appealing than the websites and tourist guides I’ve checked out.
10. I’d love to go back to Switzerland, Italy and Slovenia. I went a few years ago on a trip with my poetry professor and a bunch of poetry students. The group going was weird and we had some group culture chemistry clashes but everywhere we went was so awe-inspiring, the wine so good, the food so amazing, the tiny Italian villages and Swiss mountain tops and Slovenian coasts and caves so inspiring I want to go again with more soothing company and a fresh blank notebook to try again. I would definitely want to explore more of Switzerland, since we only saw one tiny village where the American school at Leysin is. Plus I never did get enough of the delicious rich cheese dishes. I can’t wait to return to Anghiari, Arezzo, and Assisi again either. The villages have so much history and character packed into each one. The village where all the churches have wooden dolls and a whole museum dedicated to the art form, the one with the especially gorgeous town square and gellato on every corner, or the way they all seem to be perched on impossible hills. Getting back to Skojan’s gorgeous coast off the Adriatic in Slovenia would be wonderful too– we spent the best day there on a boat eating sardine meat off the little bones and diving off the side to swim around amongst some harmless jellyfish.
You could do the beach party thing in both the south Pacific and Italy, so there’s two dreams you could combine. Of course, where’s the fun in that?
You can visit the South Pacific and many other places around the world vicariously with sailboat blogs at http://www.sailblogs.com. Many sailboats post daily entries via satellite as they make their journeys. I have to warn you tho…it only throws fuel on the wanderlust fire.
ooh, sailblogs looks pretty irresistible. talk about fuel on the fire!