Category Archives: Travel

From One Extreme to Another

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Moving back to the United States, the one thing I’ve noticed are the extremes. Extreme fat people versus extreme skinnies. Extremely large cars versus Segways. Extreme hicks versus extreme snobs.

Then there’s the food portions. Two nights, two extremes.

Thursday night – Tapas night! This isn’t Spain, it’s Federal Hill in Baltimore, but oh how I craved some Spanish tapas. Mixed with having dinner with my best friend and her new English beau, the evening couldn’t go wrong. And it didn’t, with the company. I made the mistake of going to dinner starving and somewhat penniless after splurging $2,500 more than we originally intended to do on a car. But oh, the 1997 Toyota Camry in Champagne color is a beauty – a grandpa beauty, but with 115,000 miles and one mechanic in its lifetime, we are happy to have a reliable car (pictures soon) with a sun roof, oh, and did I mention it has leather seats? Who cares about the hail pellet indentations on the roof when you’ve got automatic leather seats!! Woohoo. (More importantly, we have something to drive to North Carolina next week).

Anywho, at an average of $9 a plate for half a bite of food that was mildly delicious, all four of us opted for some french fries at the local bar down the street afterwards. And I’m all for gourmet food, but Centro Tapas was good, but not amazing for the small portions they fed us.

Then I come to last night’s dinner at Carmine’s in Washington DC. It was the largest portions I’ve ever seen with tasty big morsels of seafood, veal, pasta, calamari, cannoli’s, caesar salad, lasagna – and that was just for the five of us. It brings me back to the beauty and the curse of American society – our love of extremes.

What do you guys think? What are your views of the extremities of American society?

Stag/Bachelor Weekend Done

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Weekend in Chicago is now over and we’re headed back to Baltimore.

Things accomplished these five days in Chicago:

1. No flight delays into Chicago

2. Six miles of walking around Chicago on hottest day of year. Burned those calories!

3. Figured out area we want to live – Old Town, here we come!

4. New black pumps and 2 purses bought. My wardrobe is coming back together after the 4 garbage bags we got rid of in England.

5. Jock gets lost for two hours on Stag Do/Bachelor Party. Or rather, the party loses him. He describes it as “the worst two hours of his life.” He eventually finds them and continues the drinking and partying. Oh, but before that, they get on TV at the Cubs game.

6. First Mexican meal in the states in Potter’s Bar in Naperville and some raw cookie dough with ice cream to finish it off – only in America.

7. American television – the amount of prescription drugs advertised baffles me. I forgot how much we over medicate and then brag about it on TV. Deal or No Deal, as much as I loved it in England, I will NOT be watching those annoying, loud, screaming people in America. Don’t we understand the joy of subtlety at all? Watched “Monster’s Ball” for the first time as well – Halle Berry clearly doesn’t in her over-the-top performance sex scene. She won the Oscar for that? Really?? Heath Ledger should have gotten it.

Back to Baltimore for a week to finally work on getting my book sold. Will let you know the progress of that! Finishing the query letter, finding the right agents and stepping towards the future for Jock and I.

Time Travel

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Time zones have finally caught up to me. Four in a week probably isn’t the most wise decision and never have I truly felt like I could consider myself a traveler until now. Four time zones – we are crazy. And I got up at 4:30AM with no sign of respite or back to sleep. Nope, tossing and turning had to stop otherwise a very unhappy Jock would follow today, so I come into the next room and write this blog.

Flights to Chicago from Las Vegas were uneventful – oh, except for that incredible warm, gooey deliciousness called Cinnabon. Now, THAT was an event. Ever since that sickly cinnamony smell entered my nostrils last week at the airport, I’ve been a-craving them and I finally tickled my fancy yesterday. I didn’t feel guilty, ashamed – I just felt calm like the days when Aunt Frona and Aunt Sheila would boost me up in their arms to help me pick the bun of my choice – until the sugar rush kicked in and I was bouncing off the cabin walls.

But don’t worry – you won’t find me using one of those automatic wheelchairs anytime soon with an oxygen mask attached to my face. Nope, I made sure to work out twice as hard today. But it was so worth it.

The day flew by yesterday – a quick lunch at Panera Bread in Naperville turned into a three hour discussion with the 19 year old cashier, followed by another hour of speaking with his aunt and cousins who happened to stop by. I have a feeling this might be a recurring theme for Jock and I. We seem to be entering a phase of approachability – or is that just our returning naivety to American culture?

Regardless, the 19 year old cashier/skateboarder/graffiti artist was one of the most refreshing young men we have spoken to in a long time. He had that refreshing candor and joie de vivre that perhaps comes from experiencing his best friend’s death at a young age – he set up a memoriam where they skateboard on the anniversary of his death every year and apparently over 80 people show up each time. He was so curious about life in England and how it was different from America. “Don’t hold back, I want to know what we do wrong or differently in this country. I’ve never been anywhere else,” he said. But oh, does he want to travel. Jock and he exchanged emails and unlike the days when I was younger (probably his age) and would exchange emails with just about anyone and never keep in touch – I would love to find out what he gets up to. I have a feeling he’ll do well.

Today we go into the city of Chicago and do some site seeing.

A few photos from our trip thus far:

Casual Meanderings of America

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I won’t mention the canceled flights, the overnight stay in Minneapolis or the 9 hour delay in Newark, NJ. I won’t discuss the high amount of obese people rolling around on their automatic wheelchairs through the casinos or the woman in her wedding dress getting a cosmo at the Ghost Bar at the Palms with no wedding party in sight. I won’t talk about the waiter on auto-pilot who was dead behind the eyes and didn’t even register that we were two live beings sat at a table or the man with platinum teeth falling off his chair, or for that matter, the clearly underaged girl puking behind the couch. No use in harping on fact that roads in Vegas are bigger than freeways in England or that the portions thus far have allowed Jock and I to share a couple of meals.

What I want to talk about is how amazing it was to hold my nephew, to hug my mama, to meet my sister’s boyfriend, laugh with my best friend, look into my sister’s eyes right in front of me and relish in my uncle’s company and incredible cooking. Hearing American accents around me still makes me turn my head – you can imagine how often that’s been happening. Oh and the use of a cell phone is miraculous. I can actually communicate and call my friends and family on a whim, for no reason whatsoever, just because I feel like it. That’s a great feeling.

CNN isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It seems America has grown up a bit since I’ve been gone – I say that and then I hear about the USDA official being fired over a badly cut youtube video depicting her as a racist that in no way described what she actually meant.

Oh how I’ve missed the nonchalant chit chat that goes with being in America, follows you to the grocery store, into Terry Fator’s show at the Mirage (absolutely recommend), up the Las Vegas Eiffel Tower and into Yama Sushi. The southern woman who wants to talk about her bad vertigo, the young rocker who boasts about which sushi to order or the old man who laughs at the fact that the margarita he consumed fifteen minutes before is now making its way into his brain (he doesn’t drink much normally). The casual meanderings of the simplistic and genuine American citizen floats its way back into my heart and I can feel myself re-opening up that side of me – transforming back into my louder, more gregarious person (which may surprise some of my English friends that I can become more of that – I didn’t shy away too much). But now its more accepted.

I never thought I’d be so happy to be back. I truly didn’t. The tear I felt leaving France after a year of studies abroad and the yank of incredible reverse culture shock coming back here five years ago was one of the most painful things I’ve ever experienced. Perhaps the difference is that I wasn’t ready to leave France, I felt it wasn’t my choice and that the school system’s decision to make me leave by June 1st felt unjust (even though my visa had ended and I actually didn’t have a choice.). This time I decided when I would leave, how it would happen – it was on my terms.

And the difference also is that I know I’ll be back in no time. Back then, I was a student, unsure of where my next paycheck would come from, let alone how I would ever be able to go back to the way I lived in Paris. Now, I am more settled, with beau and money – how much comfort comes from that feeling alone – for, I am not alone.

More soon. Leaving Las Vegas for Chicago today. Then back to Baltimore. Will update as regularly as I can.

Thank you all for continuing to follow my journey.

VIEW FROM MY LAST MEAL OUT IN ENGLAND, The Ship, Portsmouth:

VIEW FROM MY FIRST MEAL OUT IN AMERICA: