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Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category

Travel – The Perks

Posted in Lifestyles, London, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 22, 2012| 6 Comments »

It’s a good day when you can combine business travel with some personal activities. My travels in early May allowed me to catch up London Callingwith a friend in Dusseldorf over drinks, to take in the Artemisia exhibit at the Musée Maillol in Paris and to visit friends in Joberg and Durban. Go ahead and say it …I do all the time… I am a lucky girl.

And I’m also a café girl. This Sunday I will be joining friends for lunch in Covent Garden for a quick catch up. Since I’m migrating from being a prose writer to a screenwriter, I will take the opportunity to visit the London Film Museum.

I hope it will inspire me because I have come to learn that writing a screenplay is much harder than writing a book. Forget having to cram Any Color but Beige into 120 pages. I’m having trouble coming up with a “saleable” box office logline. It’s tough, let me tell you. Give it a try and you’ll see.

From London, it’s a quick hello / bonjour to Paris and before you know it three days later, I’m back home. The good news is it’s not enough time to feel jet lagged. The better news is I’ll be home in time for things like the Montreal F1 Race (where I am sure I will catch up with a breathtakingly handsome Brazilian pilot), the Jazz Festival, the Fireworks Festival and the Comedy Festival. The best news of all is that I will be able to enjoy Montreal all summer long.

photo: © istockphoto.com/ChrisSteer

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Returning to My Not So Secret Garden…

Posted in Books, South Africa, Travel, tagged , , , , on May 6, 2012| 11 Comments »

Just add water

Lots of things arrive late: spring, the mail, airplanes, babies and, yes, even me on occasion.

And so here we are well past daffodil season and lilacs are in bloom. Welcome to May and welcome back to the Café Girl Chronicles. I rejoin you refreshed, re-energized and with a renewed approach to my writing.

I haven’t exactly been idle. During the past several weeks I have been working on an outline for a screenplay for Any Color but Beige – a little at a time. Piano (slowly) piano (slowly) as my Italian friends like to say. And I can do this because the only deadline I have to meet is my own.

It’s not a bad thing to let your brain lie fallow for a while. Treat it like a garden. Turn the soil every so often. Add new thoughts, philosophies and concepts as fertilizer. Prepare it well and harvest the ideas that come.

In my case, I’ve planted a few seeds that are already bursting through this fertile soil of my mind like unruly wildflowers in a meadow. To be a good writer you also have to be a constant gardener. Sometimes friends tend your garden for you by showering you with little drops of encouragement, just enough to get you started. And so it is with me.

Ever since I arrived in South Africa a week ago, my friend Julie has been watering the garden daily, checking for signs of life. This is the same Julie who precipitated the idea that I could write a book. (See Chapter 25 in the book). So it’s only fitting that I sit at her dining room table overlooking her verdantly wild and natural South African garden bathed in sunlight and start writing again.

photo: © istockphoto.com/manley099

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Please Don’t Let Go!

Posted in Adventures, Books, Dating, Relationships, romance, Sex & Love, Travel, tagged , , , , , on January 23, 2012| 26 Comments »

I never meet interesting men on planes. Given all the flying I do, you would think the odds would be in my favor. But it seems there’s a cosmic conspiracy to keep me uncoupled and out of trouble, at least while I’m in the air. In hundreds of thousands of miles logged on various airlines I only met one intriguing man. That was a long time ago, and I must confess that I treated him rather carelessly. I lost him, and the universe has been repaying  my ingratitude for its gift ever since. Until this past weekend, that is.

The Monday morning flight from Trieste to Munich was filled with predominantly male business travelers. As most of them have little or no manners when it comes to female passengers I didn’t hold out much hope this flight would be any different from the other commuter flights I’ve taken over the years.

I waited until the very end to board. I could see my row and the aisle seat was already occupied by a man who looked like just another Monday morning commuter. I bent down and politely indicated that I had the window seat.

“It’s okay, I’ll move,” he said.

“No really, I can sit there,” I said. He was tall and probably wouldn’t have been comfortable in the window seat.

He slid over any way. Very nice, I thought. I made a note to myself. “Must remember not to generalize.”

On the flight out one hears all manner of languages and accents — Dutch, German, French, Swedish, heavily accented English and, of course, Italian. As luck would have it – my gentleman was Italian. And he was the whole package, tall, dark, and handsome. For once the universe surprised me with pleasant view both inside and outside of the plane. I stole glances at him as we crossed the Alps. He folded up the newspaper he was reading to give me a better view, and our conversation started.

The depth and breadth of his conversation amazed me. He was well read, well-traveled and well educated in the social skills department. We talked for an hour and didn’t realize we’d landed until the flight attendant asked us to leave the plane. We both agreed to stay in our seats until everyone deplaned. This way we could avoid the crush. Besides the transfer bus for the terminal couldn’t leave without us.

As the last people on the bus, we squeezed into the crowded back end. I held my purse and my briefcase in one hand and a pole for support in the other. I had all of the weight on one side of my body and felt off balance. He towered over me as I stood to face him and continue our conversation.

He smelled good, like English soap and fresh air. His breath was sweet. As the bus turned a corner, I lost my balance. He put his free arm around the back of my waist to steady me as he pulled me slightly toward him. He apologized for being so forward, but I assured him that the alternative, me falling, was worse. It was the most gallant of gestures.

I lost my balance, and he steadied me, two more times on the way to the terminal. Please don’t let go, I thought. But the bus stopped and he had to let go. It was the shortest bus ride of my life. As we said goodbye, I reflected that I may not have fallen, but I certainly did lose my balance, at least for a little while.

photo: © istockphoto.com/TerryJ

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Some Days I Really Miss Having a Man Around…and Some Days Not

Posted in Humor, Lifestyles, Travel, tagged , , , , , on January 12, 2012| 7 Comments »

Like most women I know, I am self-reliant, independent and opinionated. These are three characteristics that scare the heck out of most men my age.

I’m not a rabid feminist. If you must label me at all, call me a pragmatist. When I’m alone I open my own doors, slay my own dragons and gladly make my way in this world on my own terms. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy having a man hold the door open for me, stand when I enter a room, schlep my luggage, make me dinner or tuck me in at night. I do!  And lest the guys out there think it’s all one sided, I reciprocate!

It’s just that if there aren’t any readily available men in the vicinity – well a girl’s gotta do what girl’s gotta do.

Take this most recent trip for example. The last things to go into my suitcase are my accessories, like the colorful costume jewelry I wear to dress up an outfit. As I was packing this week, I noticed that my red rhinestone bracelet was missing a few stones. Luckily, I found the missing stones in the bottom of my jewelry box and got out the Krazy Glue.

As I was in a hurry, I performed the delicate operation on the top of my highboy dresser, standing on tippy toes and using my fingers – which narrowly escaped the fate of Siamese twins by a fraction of a second. I recalled hearing about people who glue their body parts to objects − or other body parts − then have to go to the hospital to get unstuck.

“What kind of crazy idiot does that?” I asked aloud.

I looked at my reflection in the mirror, said, “This crazy idiot.”

One rhinestone fell out of its setting, but I didn’t see it until it was too late. A little red rhinestone was solidly glued to the top of my dresser and nothing I could do would remove it, short of ruining the veneer. I tried nail polish remover and olive oil. Oh, I don’t know!  It was all I could think of at that moment. And with a taxi on its way, time was running out.

Now, I’m certain that a man would have thought of some way of removing the rhinestone without damaging the furniture. He’d figure it out just like the way he assembles barbeques, changes leaky washers in the faucet, sets up new stereo systems fully integrated with the TV, the computer and microwave so that we can watch movies and eat popcorn all at the same time.

I didn’t brood for long because I had a bigger problem: Tilda. What would my Portuguese cleaning lady do when she came later that week? She’d be dusting the dresser, see the rhinestone and try to pick it up. It wouldn’t budge. She’d pull, and push, and prod it as I did without effect. She’d apply cleaners and other concoctions as I did and still nothing.

With more time than I had and dogged determination, she might try more radical means until she perhaps would go too far and ruin the finish. Then, she’d be so overwrought with guilt and remorse for having ruined a cheap veneer finish that she’d probably have a heart attack right on the spot. And not only would I have a rhinestone stuck to my dresser, I would have killed my cleaning lady.

The clock was still ticking. I was sure the taxi had already pulled up to my apartment building.

What to do?

Oh, the pressure. Why hadn’t I performed the delicate jewelry repair with tweezers and at the table where I could see what I was doing?

So I did what any self-reliant, independent and opinionated woman in my position would do: I put a Post-it note next to the rhinestone:

Tilda,

Please do not remove the rhinestone. I put it there for good luck.   Obrigada (Thank you)

Well what else could I write? A Post-it note wasn’t big enough to explain the ridiculousness of the situation in which I now found myself. Besides I knew Tilda to be superstitious like most southern Europeans and all Irishmen.

Next, I phoned a girlfriend because I really wanted to share a laugh even if it was at my expense. Only she didn’t laugh. She took the situation very seriously and came up with the following suggestion, “Cat what a great opportunity. When you come back you go right out and buy some more rhinestones and turn that red rhinestone into a starting point for something beautiful and unique.”

Her unique approach and imaginative answer made me realize that while there are some days I miss having a man around – this wasn’t one of them.

photo: © istockphoto.com/Yuri_Arcurs

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How Travel Can Cure Writer’s Block

Posted in Adventures, Barcelona, Books, Cafegirl Books, Italy, Tango, Tokyo, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on January 9, 2012| 11 Comments »

Anyone who has ever stared down a blank page and blinked first knows how devastating writer’s block can be. I’ve read several articles

on the causes of it, but the best reason I’ve heard to date is actually the simplest to cure – the cause of writer’s block is a lack of fresh ideas, and the best source of new ideas that I know of is travel.

My favorite place to stay in Trieste

You don’t have to travel to the ends of the earth either to be inspired. A jaunt across town to a new neighborhood is just as inspiring as jetting off to Japan, and a lot more economical for those of us on a budget.

Let’s take a look at all of the potential ways local and long distance travel can inspire us.

First and foremost, it’s all about the place. First impressions can be quite powerful when you’re visiting a place for the very first time. For frequent travelers like me, who have been so many places, the challenge is to see a familiar place with fresh eyes. Armed with a seek-and-you-shall-find attitude, I’m always amazed at how many new things I can discover.

The most fascinating thing to write about is people and the cast of characters that make up the place you’re visiting. You can write about their physical appearances, perhaps so very different from your own. You can capture their mannerisms and customs, or you can dig a little deeper and find the commonalities. One of my favorite things to do is recreate conversations with the colloquialisms of unconstrained everyday conversation. It makes us feel like we’re eavesdropping.

Another thing you can do is take us on a tour of some of your favorite places and tell us why they’re your favorites. For example I’m a WWII history buff, and on almost every visit I make to London, I always go to the British War Museum. I become a time traveler. I can feel the sense of urgency, the life and death struggle of nations as the fate of democracy hangs in the balance.

Why not make up stories about your favorite places. I’m often fascinated as I walk the winding back streets and alleyways of old cities like Venice or Barcelona for example. I try to imagine the everyday life of the inhabitants of these ancient dwellings. What happens behind closed shutters, on bougainvillea-covered balconies or in local shops? I look at the laundry hanging on the balconies and try to guess, from the articles of clothing, who lives in that household. What they do for a living?

If it’s a gondolier, does he sing because he is happy? Is it a bank president having an affair with his secretary behind his wife’s back? Or is he madly in love with his wife and rushes home each night to plant a kiss on the back of her neck? Are the children bored with their over stimulated digital lives? Do they still play outdoors? Is a woman sick and dying behind shuttered window? Does she still have a burden of regret weighing heavily on her soul, pinning her to this earth like an insect in one of those shadow boxes. What was the regret and what could she have done differently?

Local culture, cuisine and customs also yield a rich harvest of stories, observations and ideas. Engage all your senses: taste, touch, hear, see and smell what the place and its people have to offer. Participate. Go out of your comfort zone and learn something new, something indigenous to the place. Mush a dog sled in Alaska, dance Flamenco in Barcelona or dive the Great Barrier Reef. Or be a tourist in your own city.

And, finally, never leave the house or hotel without a notepad and pen because Inspiration can strike at any time, curing your writer’s block in an instant.

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Help! I’ve Run Out of Clever Travel Headlines

Posted in Adventures, Germany, Italy, London, Travel, tagged , , , , , on January 5, 2012| 5 Comments »

But that doesn’t mean I’ve run out of travel destinations.  Look for posts from the road in January from the UK, Germany, Italy and Las Vegas. And although Vegas may not be its own country like the others, it is somewhat of a wonderland.  My goal is one post for every passport stamp.

If you want to suggest headlines for each destination or travel in general, I’d be happy to have a go at creating a post around it.  Just leave me a comment.  In the meantime, here’s a little something to inspire you.

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. Henry Miller

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Five Things to See or Do in a New Place

Posted in Adventures, Life Style Design, Lifestyles, Spas and saunas, Tango, Tokyo, Travel, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 21, 2011| 8 Comments »

I often find myself in new places for business and because I’m in and out of a city quite quickly, I don’t always have much time to spare. However, when I do get some downtime, whether I’m traveling for work or pleasure, I always do a bit of research before I set out to explore. I like to arrive in a place that I know a little something about, and I’m not talking about its tourist attractions. I’m talking about its soul, its character(s) and its culture.

There’s nothing more thrilling than the flash of recognition you get when you see or visit a place that has some significance  because you’ve read about it in a novel or seen it in a movie. There is a familiarity that arises from knowing a place’s “back story”. If you have that, you’re no longer visiting a stranger; you’re visiting a friend.

Let me give you a few examples of books and movies that can help you learn the back-story of specific places as well things you can do when you get there to enhance your experience.

Books

Barcelona – The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlo Ruiz Zafón. The novel includes hand drawn maps that trace the characters’ steps through plot twists and turns so you can follow in their footsteps.

India – A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth. This sweeping epic does a great job of breaking down the early formative politics of the country. Reading it will give you a better appreciation and understanding of today’s India.

Montreal – Forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs sets many of her thrillers in Montreal. I sometimes half expect to bump into her character, Temperance Brennan in one of the many settings she describes.

Movies

Rome – Roman Holiday. Follow Audrey Hepburn as she hops on the back of a Vespa with Gregory Peck to see the sights in Rome. Fall in love with both the city and the guy.

Paris / France – French Kiss. Follow Megan Ryan and Kevin Kline from Paris and Province to the Cote d’Azur in this delightful little comedy.

New York – When Harry Met Sally. For me this is the best way to live vicariously in New York.

Having read a book or seen a movie about a place gives significance to the sights in the places you visit. It makes the experience that much richer. But you can also enhance your experience once you are there.

Here are five fun things you can do.

1)    Take a class in a “native” subject. Take tango lessons in Buenos Aires, cooking classes in Bologna and an Ikebana class in Tokyo.

My attempt at Ikebana

2)    Attend a cultural event. Attend the local symphony, a dance performance or a concert given by local talent in a club or a restaurant.

3)    Take a tour. It’s a quick way to get an overview of a place, after which you can pick and choose your favorite spots to go back to and savor on your own.

4)    Treat yourself. Travel can be stressful process at the best of times: standing in long check-in lines, losing your luggage or just getting oriented. Book a massage, facial, or a wash and blow dry at a local hair salon. It lends an air of “normalcy” to a place, and it makes you feel better no matter what situation you’re facing.

5)    Sample the local cuisine. Always make it a point to try one local dish, whether it’s pizza in Naples, poutine in Montreal or antelope in Africa.

Finally as a way to relive the experience once you return home, bring back a music CD of an artist or group that you heard while visiting a place. If the music isn’t live, but piped in through a sound system in restaurant or played on the radio in a taxi, go ahead and ask the waiter or taxi driver about the singer or group. They are happy to tell you about the music to promote their country’s talent.

Once home, you can become an armchair traveler and let the music transport you back in time and place to experience those magical moments again and again.

What the teacher did

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Travel Essentials VII: 5 Things You Should Always Have in Your Suitcase

Posted in Adventures, Travel, tagged , , , on December 9, 2011| 6 Comments »

I consider myself both a veteran and inveterate traveler. There are certain travel rituals that I practice that enable me to hop on a plane with little or no notice without having to think about what to pack. All I do, in advance and courtesy of a spreadsheet is combine “mix ‘n match” pieces of clothing that can cover climates from Dublin to Durban. However, there are five essentials that don’t necessarily fit neat and tidy onto a spreadsheet. I keep these in a medium-sized mesh travel bag always at the ready that is, pre-packed in my suitcase.

1. Protein bars are essential, especially if you’re crossing time zones. A protein bar can hold you over between meals, and if you wake up hungry in the middle of the night, it saves you money and calories. Avoid mini-bar madness.

2. A Pashmina shawl works in any season. It’s a perfect extra layer of clothing if you’re traveling to colder climates in winter or air-conditioned restaurants, movies, museums or shopping centers in summer.

3. A Shower Cap comes in handy especially if there are none immediately available, and calling down to reception while you’re wrapped in a towel is not an option. More and more hotels make you request amenities, so having your own saves time and aggravation.

4. Wacoal Hope on a Hanger biker shorts feel good on you and smooth out all of the wobbly bits. They’re perfect if you’re traveling light as you can wash them up in the sink at night and by morning they are ready to go again.

5. A white cotton blouse, with a bit of elastin and princess seams, looks great over dress pants or jeans and can be laundered easily in a hotel. When you send it to the laundry, be sure and call it a man’s shirt and not a blouse because it will save you money.

Photo: © iStockphoto.com/scanrall

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Regrets, I’ve had a few…

Posted in Breaking Up, Dating, Divorce, Paris, Relationships, romance, Sex & Love, tagged , , , on November 28, 2011| 5 Comments »

Many years ago, I stumbled headlong into an intense affair with a handsome but unavailable Swede. I clearly recall walking down Michigan Avenue arguing both sides of the debate with myself, the yes / no of it all. I still hadn’t made up my mind when later that day I bumped into a male friend, who, sensing my dilemma, offered the following advice, “It’s the things you don’t do that you end up regretting.”

Looking back over the years and weighing up the have done with the have not done, I can honestly say that I feel a greater sense of regret for those things left undone, i.e. not meeting the handsome and mysterious Frenchman in Paris. A little voice in the back of my head questioned that decision the minute he stepped off that train. And he wasn’t the first Frenchmen that I sometimes wonder about.

So what about the other side of the coin? When it comes to relationships, is it possible to still do something and regret it? If so, to what degree? Someone once asked me how many of the relationships that I talk about in my book do I regret? The answer is none. I had high hopes that those magical moments would last. And when they didn’t I felt sad, angry and disappointed.

And, so, I think my friend is only partly right. I believe the regret you feel in not having done something is in direct proportion to the desire we feel for the person, object, or activity.   As for regretting the things that I’ve done, with the healing benefit of time, I realize that in spite of the hurt and pain, given the opportunity I would still make the same choices.

Singer/songwriter Adele’s song “Someone like You” expresses it this way:

Regrets and mistakes they’re memories made

Who would have known how bittersweet this would taste?

Adele is right of course, memories are better bittersweet than bland, just like dark chocolate or the skin of a plum. And I am better for having tasted them.

No Regrets

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Girls’ Nights In — Celebrating Good Times, Good Friends and a Good Book

Posted in Books, Cafegirl Books, Self Publishing, South Africa, tagged , , , , , on November 25, 2011| 4 Comments »

People often ask me, “Why did you write a book?” If they are friends who know me well, I will often mischievously reply, “I did it for the party.” And there’s a grain of truth to that response. As months go by, there have been more celebrations. Who knew the ancillary benefit to all that hard work would be enjoying the fruits of your labors with friends?

It started simply enough with a family get together in August just before I launched Any Color but Beige. My large and loving family went out of its way to host a surprise barbeque complete with a heartfelt toast from my brother Jimmy, an endless buffet of homemade Italian and American specialties, and many desserts. They marked the occasion with a present meant to represent all the hard work I’d done: a framed pen and ink drawing of black and red dance shoes, just like the one that appears on the book’s cover. Their pride was palpable, and I felt like I had just been handed the Pulitzer Prize.

Further fetes included a couple of Girls’ Nights In (GNI), hosted by friends in two places so different from one another in geography – America and Africa – and yet so similar in the comfortable familiarity of female friendship.

At the first one, I partied with Judy and her friends in the wilds of a Wisconsin, so starkly beautiful in its winter’s dress that it

Wild in Wisconsin

took my breath away. Inside we moved between kitchen and living room, eating, drinking and talking. Judy had blown up an old high-school picture and used it as a buffet centerpiece. Bowls of brightly colored M&Ms added just the right amount of color to the event as did my colorful “tales told out of school” about Judy. (See Destination:  Chicago in the book for their significance.)

The second party had the lush green landscape of suburban Johannesburg as a backdrop. Julie had ordered bright yellow helium balloons and tied them to the mailbox ensuring that no one missed the house. We congregated in the kitchen, chatting and eating and were about to move from the kitchen to the living room when Julie asked me to leave the room for a second.

From the next room I had heard a gasp and wondered what had happened? Had someone spotted a scorpion or snake? I didn’t have to wait long before they called me back into the kitchen and I saw the most amazing the sight. Leana, another Café Girlfriend, had made a cake in the shape of a book – my book. It was a carrot cake and everything, from the colorful book cover to the beautifully fashioned dance shoes was edible. I didn’t want to cut it, but cut it and enjoy it we did.

After the cake, it was time for me to talk about the book. I could have done a reading but the setting in both cases didn’t lend itself to that; it was much too informal. And so I told the “back story” about how the book came to be. And I also talked about each of my respective hosts’ role in the book. (You can find more about Judy in Chapter 3 and Julie in Chapter 25 of the book.)

Like the American Café Girls, the African girls had lots of questions and lots of stories of their own to share. Some things are universal, and it looks like Café Girlfriends are the same the world over. We’re all united by our shared experiences in life and in love. And Any Color but Beige is chock full such experiences it seems we can all relate to.

The conversation and the wine flowed freely, and everyone was reluctant to call it a night until we all agreed that we would somehow, somewhere meet again to continue our stories. At both parties, some of the girls were meeting for the first time so we ended up not only celebrating the book but also friendships old and new. I said in an earlier post that to be successful in this self-publishing business you not only have to be talented you have to be lucky. The excitement, enthusiasm and thoughtfulness of my family and friends have showed me just how lucky I am. As for the rest, it’s just icing on the cake.

A Party that Takes the Cake!

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