Category Archives: Budget travel

Fears of Flying

Here is a photo that summarizes my trip-planning progress:

I depart in 15 days. I am in full-blown “What if?” mode.

What if I get pickpocketed in Rome (not a far-fetched scenario—my nephew’s wallet was stolen in Rome last year). What if I’m packing too much into this itinerary and I won’t be able to appreciate it all? What if I miss a flight/train/bus? What if people feel sorry for me, a woman traveling alone? What if I forget my phone charger? What if I show up at a hotel and they have no record of my reservation and no rooms? What if I rent a car in Spain, and I forget to ask them to give me an English-language GPS, and my Spanish isn’t good enough for me to follow the directions? What if my son doesn’t water my plants while I’m gone and they all die? What if I fail to blog along the way, which means I’ll have schlepped my laptop all over for no reason? What if I trip and fall into a cistern at Pompeii and it gets dark and no one knows I’m there and … are there wild jackals in Italy?

So you see, I have been busy. I really should have pursued a career in disaster planning. I would have been a natural at it.

I laugh kindly at myself as I observe the endless chain of what ifs come and go. I will prepare as well as I can. I will resist the urge to over prepare, because that would allow no space for spontaneity. I will deal with anything unexpected as it arises.

—

On Friday night my sister joined me and some friends for happy hour. Long-time readers of this blog will remember that while my son was in prison, there was plenty of additional excitement in my life. It’s never just one thing, is it? There was a plumbing problem in my apartment which caused me to have no kitchen for six weeks. I tripped and sprained a knee ligament and was on crutches for about the same six weeks. My mother was her third major car accident, which caused micro fractures in her spine and led to her giving up driving.

And then … my sister was battling Stage 4 colon cancer. She went through hell. She’s been cancer free for a year and a half but she’s still dealing with the lingering effects of it all—the surgeries, chemo, radiation, and all the other aspects of life that are affected by a life-threatening illness—finances, keeping up with a house and yard, two teenage kids, getting her strength back. The list goes on.

How is this connected to traveling? Because at happy hour we talked about the phrase “You’re so strong.” My sister hears it a lot. I used to hear it a lot when I was a single mom pulling myself up by the proverbial boot straps. Other friends had been through trials and had heard it too.

We all agreed that we hate the phrase.

“What choice did I have?” my sister asked. Right. I had thought the same thing many times when people had said “You’re so brave!” What choice did I have? I admit I had occasional fantasies about dropping my son off at my mom’s and running away to Florida. I know there are people who abandon their kids, and people who avoid getting treatment for serious illnesses because they’re in denial or afraid. But the vast majority of us just do what needs to be done because the alternative would be hurtful to ourselves or others.

“Being strong is when you are afraid of something,” said a member of our group, a psychotherapist who is also a cancer survivor. “And you do it anyway, even though you could choose not to and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”

And that’s how this relates to travel, especially for someone like me who travels solo a lot. I do have anxious thoughts about getting lost, being swindled, being disappointed. But I go anyway. The fear of regretting that I never saw the Amalfi Coast is stronger than the what ifs.

Red (and White) Flags

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In one month I’ll be in Malta, a tiny country most people have never heard of.

Here is a representative sampling of travel books available in the library for the three countries I’ll be visiting: Italy, Spain, and Malta. There was a whole shelf of books about Italy, a half shelf for Spain, and one slim volume about Malta. This should have told me something about what a hot (not) tourist destination Malta is. But once I get something fired up in my imagination, there’s usually no turning back.

Of course Vatican City is technically a country—the smallest in the world. I’ll be visiting the Basilica of St. Peter and the Vatican Museum and I’m sure there are entire books about them, but I don’t need books to tell me I’ll be seeing a lot of paintings of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus.

Someone at work laughed about me going to Malta and suggested that since I would also be visiting Vatican City, I could make this a grand tour of tiny countries. You know, the ones that send one athlete to the Olympics—an athlete who doesn’t stand a chance? I could have gone to San Marino, which is surrounded by Italy; and Monaco, which is on my bucket list. Liechtenstein would be a bit further north in Europe, but not as far as the other five that round out the Top 10 List of tiny countries, which are all tropical islands: Nauru, Tuvalu, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Maldives, and Grenada.

—

The lack of interest in Malta may have something to do with how difficult it is to get there. I will be leaving from Sorrento, where I will have spent three days seeing Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast, and Capri. You would think, from reading the one book about Malta, that you could just hop a train to Naples and fly right to Malta. Boom—easy! But alas, this was the same book that told me I must see the underground, 5,000-year-old catacombs on Malta, the ones that are closed for renovation until 2017. The book also said it would be “easy” to take a ferry from Italy to Malta. However I need to get to Madrid afterwards and it would take two days to get to the coast of Spain by ferry.

All the flights from Naples left at either 6:00 in the morning or 4:00 in the afternoon. They all connected somewhere else, which meant that reasonable-sounding 4:00 p.m. flight would get me into Malta at 11:30 at night. And the 6:00 a.m. flights were much faster; I seriously considered one that had a 6-hour layover in Paris. Finally, I decided to fly from Rome. This will require me to get up early—but not quite as early as the 6:00 a.m. flight—catch a train to Naples, then connect to Rome, then catch the express to the Rome airport, then fly at 11:00 a.m. to Catania—which is on Sicily, then finally arrive on Malta at 3:30 in the afternoon. That is, if nothing goes wrong on any of the five legs of the journey.

—

Another puzzle has to do with baggage. The flights to and from Malta are cheap—if I am willing to travel with only a carry-on bag weighing no more than 22 pounds. I spend some time researching ultra light bags; I could get a nice one for $70. Or I could just pay RyanAir $75 for the privilege of bringing a real suitcase with me.

I toy with the idea of traveling light. It would be easier to get on and off all the trains and buses and planes. I’d be less conspicuous, since my regular suitcase is purple. It could be kind of a cool challenge to wear only two outfits for a month, to say “no” to buying clothes in Italy, and eschewing souvenirs. Plus I would be doing my small part to save the planet!

Nah. I’ll bring my purple monster. I like to have options.

—

I contemplate these “problems” knowing that countless refugees are attempting the crossing to Italy in rubber rafts before the sea gets too rough in November.

Malted

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I go through three stages of planning a big trip.

First, a caveat: I am keenly aware of how fortunate I am to have any of the following “problems”—first-world problems, as they say.

First I pore over maps, getting more and more excited but less and less focused. “If I go all the way to Thailand, I might as well go to Laos and Cambodia and Vietnam, right? And Burma! That’s not touristy yet. Japan wouldn’t be that far away. It’s only a few thousand miles more. Then there’s Australia; I’ve always wanted to go there, and New Zealand is so close ….”

At this point I am looking at a $20,000, three-month vacation. But it’s fun to dream.

The second stage is getting real and picking something. In the current case, my friend Lynn suggested meeting in Spain and traveling around the sunny south. I said yes. Since I have been stockpiling my vacation time, I thought I’d go early—to Rome, then Malta, then on to Spain.

I spent a couple weeks reading guidebooks and researching plane fares and hotel rooms. I had to wait for some big expenses, like a new refrigerator, to work their way through my finances like a capybara in a boa constrictor. Finally, the day came when I had the spare dosh to buy my ticket. The fares had gone up by $300. I tried all the tricks, like waiting until Tuesday at 3pm Eastern time, and burning the effigy of a 747 under the full moon, but in the end the budget boa had to swallow another very large expense.

But on to stage three: Nailing down the small flights, hotel reservations, and tickets to popular sites.

I must say, RyanAir makes Delta look like a paragon of transparency. RyanAir came up as the cheapest flight from Rome to Malta, and really it was so cheap I wondered how they can stay in business. That becomes clear when you actually book the ticket. Would you like to bring a bag? That’ll be €18 for a carry-on sized bag and €35 for an actual suitcase. You know, those things tourists take on planes?

How about a seat upgrade for more leg room? Only €15. No thanks, but there’s an unavoidable €8 charge just to choose a seat—any seat. Being an obstinate person, and since the flight is only a couple hours, I chose not to choose a seat. I will probably regret it. I will probably get a middle seat between a snorer and a crying baby.

Thank goodness I don’t have an infant of my own, because the infant fee is €20. I’m not kidding. Then there are fees for musical instruments, golf clubs, bikes, and therapeutic oxygen (€50), which you need after running the gauntlet of the RyanAir website.

Finally, I went to check out. There was a €2 fee for paying. RyanAir really puts the ire in Ireland. This charge for using a credit or debit card makes me want to fly to Ireland, march into RyanAir’s HQ, and try to pay for my ticket in cash. They would probably charge me €3 for that.

Next, I went to book my carefully-researched hotels in Rome and Malta. Yes, they were both fully booked for the times I wanted. I will therefore be staying in a convent in Rome and at a hostel in Malta. That’s okay. It’s an adventure, right?

The convent beds have those super-cheap bed spreads that appear to be made out of plastic that you see in Latin America and third-rate motels in the US. Ick. This tells me that the sheets will also be threadbare—if they are even made of thread. Maybe I can fit a nice cotton sheet into my suitcase, and leave it behind when I fly to Malta so I don’t have to pay a fee for the extra 2 ounces of weight.

Well. The convent is dirt cheap.

Next, booking tickets to the Hal Soflieni Hypogeum, the 2,500 B.C. catacombs the 2016 Malta guidebook raves about and which is kind of my Holy Grail on this trip.

Noooooo! It is “Closed for Renovation until 2017.”

On Our Last Leg

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This is the last post in a series of 32 posts about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Why are there so many anti-Abortion billboards in Minnesota? I don’t know. On this road trip we passed through nine states, including Minnesota. Some states had a sprinkling of anti-abortion billboards, but mainly they had billboards for adult superstores.

“Southern X Posure.” Get it? Do you get it? I love the euphemism “Gentlemen’s Club.” Really, no actual gentleman would step foot in one, right? But seeing these every couple of miles makes you wonder if there are any gentlemen left.

Why was it okay to advertise porn in Tennessee, one of the most conservative states, while in Minnesota—one of the most liberal states, we were bombarded with anti-abortion billboards? Maybe the social conservatives who live here feel outnumbered, and therefore that they must fight harder than if they lived in Tennessee.

—

The route from Albert Lea, Minnesota to the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport wasn’t very interesting, just a straight shot up Interstate 35. We passed more towns with old world names, like Geneva, Manchester, Kilkenny, and Dundas. There was the sadly-named Hope, Minnesota. Had the founders, in their denim overalls, chin beards, and gingham frocks, engaged in some magical thinking? “If we name our settlement Hope, surely the Good Lord will cause us to flourish!”

Here is Hope’s claim to fame: “Hope had a depot on the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad. A post office called Hope has been in operation since 1916.” Hope is an unincorporated township, which means the U.S. Census doesn’t bother listing its population, so I can’t tell you whether it is tiny, miniscule, or sub-atomic.

—

We crossed the Minnesota River as we approached the airport. The Minnesota originates in Big Stone Lake, near the South Dakota border, and flows east until it merges into the Mississippi. I let Lynn believe we were crossing the Mississippi one more time—after gazing out over it in Memphis, New Orleans, and Hannibal.

In 11 days, we had driven 2,660 miles (4,280 kilometers). If we had followed the Mississippi, we would have driven 4,640 miles because it meanders. Some day I would like to take a meandering road trip.

Don’t get me wrong, we saw a lot and had a great time. We saw cranberry fields and went to a Native American pow wow in Wisconsin. In Chicago, we saw the world’s largest Tiffany glass dome and one of the iconic painting, American Gothic. We were moved to tears in the American Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. We spent five days in New Orleans with friends, heard lots of music, and ate lots of Cajun and creole food. Lynn and I spent six days in a Mini Cooper and were still speaking to each other. We had the chance to try pickled pigs lips. Instead, we ate at a Cracker Barrel.

We did go off piste a few times, but it would be great to take a road trip with no time limits.

Instead, I dropped Lynn off at the airport at 7:00pm to catch her 9:00pm flight, and drove home.

—

It was good to be home but it also felt weird. I had bought this condo so my son would have a supportive place to live when he was released from prison. I had told myself that I was buying a condo because it made financial sense, and maybe it did, but underlying the decision was my desire to give him a fighting chance of making it once he was released. (My apartment landlord wouldn’t have allowed him to live with me.)

And Vince was making it. He had a job, he was sober, and after seven months he had moved out to his own place—the day before Lynn arrived. So now I stood in the doorway of the empty bedroom. I felt a little sentimental, but I was mainly happy for Vince and for me that we both had our own space.

The next day I went back to work and got down to writing proposals to fund torture rehabilitation—and banking more paid time off for the next holiday.

Endless Iowa

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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There was no time to visit any of the Mark Twain historic sites, so Lynn and I rolled out of Hannibal and headed north. Even though Minnesota borders Iowa to the north, and Vince lived in southern Minnesota for years, I had never crossed the state line into Iowa. All I had ever heard about it was that it was flat and full of corn fields and pigs. That you could actually smell pigs on a breezy day. That did not appeal to my sense of adventure.

But there was no other way to get from Missouri to Minnesota, so I lost my Iowa virginity. How bad could it be? I prefer landscapes of woods and water, but fields must have their own beauty.

Here is what I imagined:

Here is what we saw for five hours:

It was early spring and everything was still brown. And flat, flat, flat.

Desra had given me some very good advice. “Iowa has half the population of Missouri, so there aren’t as many towns. If you think you’re going to need gas, don’t wait until your tank is almost empty.” She was right. In the hundred miles between Cedar Rapids and Waterloo, the two largest cities we passed, there was only one exit of note, to a place aptly called Center Point Travel Plaza. The other exits led off into corn fields.

I’m sure Iowa is beautiful in the spring, when the bright green corn shoots up from the black earth. I’m sure there are many fine people in Iowa, and it’s a great place to raise kids. That’s what people say when a place is boring, “It’s a great place to raise kids.”

It’s not like I live in some mega city like New York or Shanghai or London. Most people outside of the U.S. have never heard of Minnesota. Most people on the coasts sneer at the Midwest, which includes Minnesota and Iowa. We are derisively referred to as “fly over country.” But I’m never bored in Minnesota. I think I would kill myself if I had to live in Center Point, Iowa.

Why do people think places like Iowa are good places to raise children? Because they’re safe, probably. But children are also able to create their own adventures wherever they are. In fact, the less there is to do, the more inventive they become. Winters are long on the prairie. They force people to create entertainments and art out whatever is at hand, like fabric scraps and seeds:

I’m afraid kids raised with screens won’t have the patience to create great works of art like these.

—

And so we crossed Iowa, and I began to feel like I was in a trance because there was nothing to look at and no variation of the landscape. There weren’t even any billboards, probably because there wasn’t enough traffic to entice advertisers. I could see how people dozed off and ended up in a corn field.

We stopped to get gas and bought snacks to tide us over instead of having a meal. I got my standard road trip meal—teriyaki beef jerky and a Diet Pepsi. I whined about how boring Iowa was the whole way, to help me stay awake. Lynn must have found that pretty boring.

We killed an hour talking about some sort of test she uses to assess what roles people play in work meetings. Obviously no one fits neatly into one role every time. There are the obvious ones like the Leader, the Compromiser, the Ideas Person; and the unhelpful roles like the Avoider and the Clown. I consider myself a leader with ideas, and I think others are stupid if they don’t immediately see the brilliance of my ideas. Hmmm…that may actually make me a Show Off or an Autocrat.

Finally we crossed the border into Minnesota. I had imagined it would be dramatically different—Minnesota would be gently rolling wooded hills dotted with sky blue lakes.

But no, for at least an hour it was the same as Iowa, with the addition of anti-abortion billboards.

Wayside Waylay

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Our last day, and it would be a long one. Eight and a half hours of driving, not counting stops. Lynn’s flight left at 9pm, and we had been hearing how long the lines at the airports were. It seemed like a good idea to not push our luck by dawdling along the way.

I did want to stop in Hannibal, Missouri, which my mom and her husband had described as quaint and which was the boyhood home of Mark Twain. But that was at least two hours out of St. Louis and we hadn’t eaten breakfast. I stopped at a wayside rest to get some advice on where to eat.

If you’ve never done a road trip in the U.S., wayside rests are located about every 100 miles and have their own freeway exits. They vary from just a gravel parking lot with a pit latrine to a gleaming air conditioned building with vending machines. But there are no museums or gift shops or restaurants. I like them because you can get in and out in five minutes without getting distracted. Usually.

This one in Missouri was the rare wayside rest with an information desk. The woman was very friendly and a font of information. Well, more like a slow-motion geyser. She spoke with a slow southern drawl. “Ya’ll could drive along the river, it’s very picturesque.” She handed me a map of the Scenic River Road. We didn’t have time, sadly, for the scenic route. She highly recommended we take some extra time and go to a small town whose name I can’t remember. She handed me five maps and brochures. Looking at the map now, which town was it? It couldn’t have been Mexico, Paris, or Florida—I would have remembered those.

“It’s a historic town with an absolutely darling downtown and a famous restaurant that serves throwed rolls.” She handed me another brochure and tried to explain what throwed rolls were but I couldn’t get the concept. “It’s only 20 minutes off the interstate. Ya’ll can get cheese grits, and buttered corn bread, and….” Mmmmmm.

People think that providing lots of choices is a good thing, but after 11 days on the road I was done making decisions, even about where to eat.

“We’re kind of in a hurry, I’m afraid, so it’ll have to be somewhere right off the highway.”

She handed me more maps and brochures for restaurants and scenic attractions. She must get mostly retired people who had all the time in the world. Lynn had abandoned me. “I’d better check on my friend,” I lied. “She gets upset if I keep her waiting.”

The info lady looked disappointed. “Just a few more suggestions,” she pleaded. More brochures, more maps. It must get lonely working in a highway wayside rest.

“My friend has to catch a flight to London,” I said, backing away as if the flight was imminent.

—

Meanwhile, I kept getting texts from Air B&B and the Quality Inn urging me to “Write a review of your stay!”

“Do your own marketing,” I muttered. I am definitely happier when I get breakfast.

—

Lynn insisted she wasn’t hungry, so rather than look like a whining hungry weakling, I drove straight through to Hannibal.

This is a postcard depicting Hannibal:

This is what Hannibal really looked like:

Dilapidated houses, block after block after block. Was this a result of the Great Recession, or a longer term decline? There was no signage directing visitors to a historic district, but by just following the streets downhill, I eventually hit the river front, where a couple natives out for a walk pointed the way.

The downtown was quaint. It consisted of about four blocks of antique stores, a boarded up theater, a couple restaurants, and half a dozen Mark Twain historic sites.

We settled in at Becky Thatcher’s Diner, and the food was fantastic. Really fantastic, not just because I was starving. Lynn had corned beef hash for the first time and I had a huge omelet with potatoes. Neither of us talked much, unless you count “Mmmm” as a word.

Who Doesn’t LOVE?

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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After re-gifting the doughnuts to our neighbors, Lynn and I drove off laughing. “Who doesn’t love doughnuts!?” That was our topic of conversation as we drove downtown in search of breakfast and the famous arch.

“People assume that everyone loves whatever they love,” I said.

“Yes,” replied Lynn, “Who doesn’t love chocolate?” Lynn is allergic to chocolate.

“Who doesn’t love ice cream?” I asked. “I don’t like cold food, in general.”

“Neither does Richard,” said Lynn about her husband. I always keep his meals warm in the Aga or he’ll whinge that they’re cold.

Aga—the iconic British range. Whinge—a British term similar to whine.

“Who doesn’t love candles?” Lynn said next. “I don’t understand this obsession with candles—artificially fruit scented. ‘Natural’ pine. Apple pie.”

“Doughnuts!” I offered. Then, “Who doesn’t love kittens? People who are allergic to them, that’s who.”

Then—it couldn’t be avoided—I asked “Who doesn’t love dogs?” Lynn has seven dogs, and I don’t care for dogs. I could write several posts on this, but I worry about the hate mail I would get. There is a secret cabal out here of people who don’t care for dogs, but we keep our mouths shut until the dog’s nose is in our crotch or it’s jumping up on us with muddy paws. It seems acceptable to make jokes about killing your kids while bashing people who don’t love dogs. Here is one of the more tame Facebook posts I’ve seen on the subject.

Wow. Really? I don’t have a soul because I don’t care for dogs? That seems harsh. And the fact that I love my family and adore little kids and have lots of friends doesn’t make up for it? Oh that’s right—those are just people, and people are hard work.

Anyway, Lynn seems to accept me anyway, although she may wonder if I have a soul.

—

All this time we were driving into downtown St. Louis, or Sen Louie, as Lynn pronounced it. We hadn’t seen anything that my mom’s husband had recommended, but there just wasn’t time. This was going to be our big miles day—almost 600 from (965 kilometers) from St. Louis straight to the Minneapolis/St. Paul International airport via Iowa.

But we had to see the Gateway Arch, which was built to symbolize the westward expansion of the United States. It’s 630 feet tall (192 meters), and it’s beautiful. I thought that Lynn, having worked and lived off and on in Finland for years, would appreciate that it was designed by a Finnish-American architect, Eero Saarinen.

I had been to St. Louis decades earlier and took the elevator to the top of the arch. I don’t remember much about it. Apparently there’s a riverside park and museum at the base. But we never saw any of that, because the construction and traffic in downtown St. Louis was horrendous. We spent a precious half hour driving around in circles and waiting at excruciatingly-long traffic lights for nonexistent cross traffic. We caught glimpses of the arch but there were no signs indicating how to get to it.

Finally, I found a parking lot with a good view of the thing, we snapped some photos, and left town.

Note to self: I need to learn how to erase ill-placed streetlamps such as in the photo above.

My vision had been for us to have a solid breakfast at some nice café at the foot of the arch with a view of the Mississippi. Instead, I had a protein bar that had been in the back seat of the car for 10 days and Lynn went hungry until we got to Hannibal, two hours north on the Mississippi, past Chesterfield, Troy, Eolia, Bowling Green, and New London.

“New London!” said Lynn, studying the map. “I’m sure it’s rich in culture and history.”

“We’ve got one in Minnesota, too. There’s probably a New London in every state.”

“Well they had great hopes, didn’t they, these people who started places like Oxford, Mississippi and New London, Missouri? They really were very brave and idealistic.

“But let’s not stop there.”

Notes from an Anglo-Irish-German-Czech-American Jewish Atheist

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Desra gave us a ride back to the Air B&B. Inside, Lynn said pensively, “If I went to dinner in London with someone who was Afro Caribbean, I don’t think the subject of race would even come up—but we spent the whole dinner tonight talking about race.”

Of course they don’t have African Americans in England. The race labels were confusing when I lived there, especially who was covered by “Asian.” In Minnesota, Asians are Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, and Thai. By far the largest group, the Hmong, are mountain tribes people from Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and China—where they are called the Miao. That’s pronounced “meow.” Our newest arrivals are the Karen, an ethnic group from Burma/Myanmar.

In England, an Asian is most likely from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh.

Lynn herself is Anglo Indian because her ancestry is English and Indian. Note that the Anglo comes first, whereas in the U.S., we say “African American” or “Muslim American.”

This labeling is all very fraught with the peril of offending one side or another.

“What if you were having dinner with a Pakistani or other Muslim?” I asked Lynn. “Would race or religion be a theme in every angle of the conversation?”

“Hmmm…maybe,” replied Lynn. “Yes, that might be it. It’s not that we don’t have prejudice in the UK. But I think it’s the Muslim population that’s getting the brunt of the suspicion and animosity, especially since September 11 and seven seven.”

July 7, 2007—the day on which 52 people were killed and 700 injured on the London transport system in an Islamist terrorist attack. I remember watching it on the news, in Spanish, from my bed in a hotel in Cusco, Peru, where I was vomiting my guts out into an ice bucket after eating some bad guinea pig. That’s a story for another post, but here’s a free tip for you: never use a hotel ice bucket for ice.

—

We reference so much with these simple dates: 9/11, 7/7. So much has changed. In the U.S., half the population—the conservative half—replaced its constant fear of a mass attack by communists with fear of a Muslim attack, which has made possible the rise of a demagogue like Donald Trump. The strange thing is, they don’t fear the white guy next door with 50 guns who just lost his job and his wife and is acting strangely—just “the Muslims.”

—

The third major terrorist attack in the west was 11-M, the train bombings in Madrid on March 11, 2004. Almost 200 people were killed and 2,000 were injured. I don’t remember where I was that day. But I do vividly recall being in Spain sometime after 9/11 but before 11-M studying Spanish. I was chatting with a British woman and somehow 9/11 came up.

“Now you lot know what we’ve been living with all these years from the IRA,” she said casually about the attack in which nearly 3,000 people died.

—

Back in St. Louis after a good night’s sleep, Lynn and I were preparing for our last day on the road.

“What do we do with the doughnuts?” she asked.

I carried the box out with us, thinking I would take them home to Vince. Then I spotted a kid on the porch of the house next door and approached him.

“Hey kid, want a box of doughnuts?” He was chubby and his eyes said Yes as he also backed away from me toward the door and called, “Daddy!” The father came rushing outside, looking panicked. I could just picture myself at the police station: “No officer, really! I just wanted to give him the doughnuts; I wasn’t trying to lure him into my car.”

I offered the box to the father, who looked inside to make sure they really were doughnuts (I wonder what else he suspected could be inside? Snakes?). He looked up at me with a grin, thanked me, and the two of them hurried inside, where I could hear the boy calling out excitedly, “Mom! We got doughnuts!”

Smoked, with a Side of Shouting

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

—

Desra was waiting in the Shaved Duck when Lynn and I arrived. I immediately noticed that the music was deafening. The tiles floors and tin ceiling didn’t help. There was nothing else in the vicinity and Desra had picked the restaurant so I didn’t want to dis her choice, plus I didn’t want to be one of Those Old People who complains about loud music.

I wasn’t sure what the concept for the Shaved Duck was. Was it code for something? “Shaved duck” suggested something vaguely naughty.

On the back of the menu it stated that the place was “a smokehouse and gathering place.” The menu featured Slow Smoked Duck Breast, Smoked Meatloaf, and Loaded Smoked Potato Wedges, which were essentially French fries covered with pulled pork, baked beans, bacon, white cheddar cheese, and Bourbon barbeque sauce. As is the trend, there was a fancy version of macaroni and cheese, this one topped with duck and jalapeño chili. I was pleased to see an iceberg lettuce wedge salad on the menu, a classic that’s making a comeback. The one at the duck added bacon and cherry tomatoes and came with ranch dressing; in my opinion it should just be really fresh, crisp iceberg lettuce with Roquefort dressing.

I had a vegetable and smoked Mozzarella sandwich, and we shared some buttermilk cornbread and crab cakes. What I really wanted was shrimp ‘n’ grits, but my health-conscious conscience was saying I should ease back into my healthy eating habits. I keep myself on a pretty tight leash. But I still had two days left of the vacation. Why couldn’t I just order what I really wanted? Sigh.

—

I caught up with Desra, who I hadn’t seen since we finished grad school 10 years earlier. Her master’s degree was in Urban Planning and mine was focused on Foreign Policy. She reminded me she had run for Minneapolis City Council, which isn’t for the faint of heart. She then led a nonprofit neighborhood association until she met her husband and moved to St. Louis a few months earlier. Her husband taught African-American history at a community college and was working on his PhD, which I assume will get him onto the tenure track at a university.

She had a huge, blindingly brilliant diamond ring which I admired. I sighed inwardly when she mentioned how old she was—the same age as Vince. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if my son could meet such an accomplished, upbeat, beautiful bride?

I hadn’t realized she was originally from New Orleans, so Lynn and I talked about that—or rather shouted. I described our visit to the civil rights museum, which she hadn’t visited yet. We talked about real estate prices in St. Louis vs. Minneapolis. Desra was job hunting and seemed positive she would find something soon.

The duck was packed, and there was a raucous group near us with one woman who kept braying loudly, “Har, Har, HAR!” Do restaurants crank up the volume to create a festive atmosphere? Or maybe they want us to hurry up and leave so they can turn more tables?

Sometimes if I am on my own turf I will ask a server to lower the volume. But again, I didn’t want to be an old fogey. I also began to worry that maybe I had some early hearing loss.

Much of the conversation touched on race issues. All the subjects above—from a recent Minneapolis electoral race to real estate to the higher education system. This brought us to the question of fraternities and sororities.

“Yes,” asked Lynn, leaning forward to make herself heard, “We don’t have them in the UK. What’s their origin? Were they designed to exclude black students?”

I could hear one out of five words Desra said. She hadn’t belonged to a sorority, but there were certainly black sororities and fraternities, so the Greek system wasn’t inherently racist, but of course it depended on the campus.

We exited the restaurant Desra exclaimed, “I can’t believe how loud it was in there! I feel like I’m deaf now!”

Doughnuts!!!

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This is the latest post in a series about a road trip to New Orleans that starts here.

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Inside our Air B&B, there were a dozen doughnuts on the kitchen table with a note: “Welcome to our Air B&B! We hope you will enjoy your stay in St. Louis!!!”

Now I’m sure the owners of this place are very nice people. However I have to say that the overuse of exclamation marks is bordering on an epidemic. Just the other day, I read a brochure from Ramsey County about recycling and it contained seven exclamation marks. I’m guilty of over punctuating myself. In my defense, everyone else does it, so if I don’t end my emails to coworkers with exclamation marks, I feel like I’m being a bitch. If I don’t end garnish every Facebook post with an “!” I fear I’m not as enthusiastic about cats in clothes dryers as I should be.

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“Who doesn’t love doughnuts!” I said with gusto.

“I don’t!” Lynn exclaimed.

“Neither do I!” And it was true; we both find them disgusting. I don’t understand the obsession with doughnuts. When Krispy Kreme opened in Minnesota it was bigger than a Springsteen concert.

“But what will we do with them?” Lynn looked worried. If we don’t eat them, they’ll think we were unappreciative, which of course we are but we don’t want them to know that.

“We could dump them in the trash behind some other house,” I suggested. “But that seems wasteful.”

Lynn was perusing the hand written notes on a bulletin board on the kitchen wall.

“Dear Yuri,” she read. “Thank you so much for sharing your home with us!!”

She paused, then turned and looked at me. “They’re all the same: Thank you for sharing your home with us … thank you for opening your home to us … but … this place isn’t free, is it?”

“No! I paid $125 for the night,” I replied. “It’s very nice. It’s worth $125. But they aren’t sharing it, they’re renting it out. I don’t know why it’s called the sharing economy. That makes it sound like you’re doing it out of altruism. Uber’s another one—Uber drivers don’t give free rides. My sister is an Uber driver and she’d never do it if it wasn’t for the money. Maybe we’re just old and we don’t understand.”

“Very strange,” Lynn pronounced. “Well it was very kind of them to leave the doughnuts, but I rather wish they’d left a bottle of wine.”

—

We walked toward the botanical gardens and arrived just in time to be told, “We close in one hour, so you’ll have to hurry.”

Since we could never see it all by hurrying anyway, we took our time and walked through an enormous domed structure. It held several different environments, from tropical rain forest to Mediterranean. There were Dale Chihuly glass sculptures throughout. Chihuly is really prolific. We’ve got a massive sun sculpture of his at the entrance of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The Chicago botanical gardens features quite a few. Now I admired more. Not bad for a guy who is blind in one eye, eh?

I loved the Mediterranean garden, which reminded me of a long, long hike I took along the Mediterranean coast of France. How is it that you can be in one place and enjoy it because it reminds you of another place?

The gardens were a great way to decompress after the drive, and I later learned that they are considered the best botanical gardens in America.

Next, my plan was for us to walk to the restaurant where we would meet a woman I’d gone to grad school with for dinner. On the map it looked like it was a couple blocks away. I asked one of the botanical garden employees, just to be on the safe side. She was extremely friendly but suggested it was too far to walk. Well! Too far for some people, maybe, but not me.

“Are you okay with walking?” I asked Lynn.

“Shhure…” she said, uncertainly. And so we walked, and it turned out to be two miles, but we’d worked up an appetite by the time we arrived at the Shaved Duck.

Breaking Free

Living Well, Despite what Life Throws at You

Category Archives: Budget travel

Fears of Flying

Red (and White) Flags

Malted

On Our Last Leg

Endless Iowa

Wayside Waylay

Who Doesn’t LOVE?

Notes from an Anglo-Irish-German-Czech-American Jewish Atheist

Smoked, with a Side of Shouting

Doughnuts!!!