In Lieu of Postcards

Kenmare, Ireland’s Hidden Charms

This summer marked my fifth trip to Ireland. Why, when there are so many places to go, do I continue to choose the Emerald Isle? For one, traveling to Ireland has been a formative experience for me. It was the first country I ever visited outside of North America, and the place where I spent a semester studying abroad 20 years ago. At this point in my Irish travels, there aren’t many major sites I haven’t seen. But in this place where I feel so many memories and connections, I tend to take pleasure in the mundane – walks to take, places to eat and drink, gardens and shops and inviting quaint streets. Sure, there are things I haven’t seen: despite living in Dublin for six months, I never went to the Guinness Storehouse, and I have never been to the EPIC Immigration Museum. I’d prefer instead to stand on the street in front of Kehoe’s with a pint in my hand, or to lounge on St. Stephen’s Green to watch Dubliners of every stripe intersect. Or, maybe head down to County Kerry for a slow amble through Kenmare.

The Must-Be Philosophy

I suppose I can sum this up as such: instead of “must-sees”, I gravitate toward a philosophy of “must-bes”: I must be back there. I must be in a moss-covered forest; I must be in the back of an Irish taxi with a witty driver; I must be sat at a table in front of the perfect toasted special; I must be in a pub where a fiddle is harmonizing with a concertina; I must be surrounded by slate-gray stone walls and ungainly bleating sheep and muddy crying skies. For this trip, these must-bes were converged in the small town of Kenmare, co. Kerry.

Kenmare, just off the Ring of Kerry with a population of around 2,500, is not exceptional among Irish towns, but it has long retained something of a mythical glow in my mind. It was one of the first places I visited on my first trip abroad at age 18. While my family only stayed in Kenmare for two nights, using it as a base to Killarney National Park, it was the first Irish small town I experienced, and it left such an indelible impression that I returned twice – for just one night in 2016, and then this summer for a whole week. I wrote a bit about Kenmare previously when discussing Kerry through Stephen Rynne’s cheeky book All Ireland, but after my third and longest visit, I wanted to delve more deeply into what makes this town such a delightful base for exploring one of Ireland’s most beautiful counties.

Escape from Killarney

As I wrote in my previous discussion of Kenmare, insofar as it is mentioned to tourists, it is usually as a more “cosmopolitan” alternative to neighboring Killarney, which has gone all-out in pursuit of American tourist dollars. In 2001, we stayed in a bed-and-breakfast called The Brass Lantern that I do remember as being quite elegant. It was run by a French woman named Colette, the showers were skylit and waterfall-like and the breakfast was a health-conscious platter of fruit and yogurt. This time, though, we acquiesced to modern convenience and stayed in an Airbnb (and a walk past the Brass Lantern suggests that though it is still ostensibly functional, is it not actually Xanadu), which was very close to the town center and let us explore Kenmare thoroughly in a week’s time.

Though the town has clearly grown since 2001, it retains its low-key charm, managing a nice balance with tourism that doesn’t impose on daily life. Is it boring? A little. But that’s the point. Tourists often say they want to live like the locals, but they don’t really mean it. In Kenmare, ordinariness – and straightforward, non-pandering Irishness – is the attraction.

Take, for example, the walk to town from our accommodations: we pass a field with a few grazing, wooly sheep, then walk along a river guarded by a stone wall and lush green trees. I run my hand along the wall, touching moss as soft as a shag carpet, feeling the ridges where stones were stacked, diligently, sometime in the distant past. (On one walk I managed to drop my scarf on the path; when I returned it was waiting for me, casually draped over a low shrub by a thoughtful passerby.) We spy a lone donkey eating languidly on an adjacent hill. A flower-adorned coffee shack, The Bean and Batch, beckons us across the street, and we perch on brightly colored chairs with flat whites and pain au chocolat (it’s Kenmare’s singular bastion of hipsterdom, but the clientele of sixty-somethings and young families are hardly intimidating). Just past this, the town begins: there’s a square and park that’s bustling with citizens and Kerry Way hikers making a pit stop. From there, two central streets branch out with shops, pubs and restaurants painted bright “Tidy Towns” colors, café tables spilling optimistically into the streets on the chance of a sunny day. Just a 10-minute walk and there, already, so much Irish charm.

Things to “Do” in Kenmare

You might be thinking that colorful buildings, mossy stone walls, and relaxed animals are all well and good, but what does one actually DO in Kenmare, aside from drive away to Killarney National Park, or other stops on the celebrated Ring of Kerry?

Attractions

First there’s the Bronze-Age Stone Circle, which I wrote about previously. The circle is probably Kenmare’s biggest tourist attraction, notable for being one of the few stone circles located in a town, rather than down some long and winding road in the middle of nowhere. The only issue is that while these circles are traditionally placed for their view, someone decided to plant trees in a ring around it, perhaps to set it off and protect it from the road. The result is an incredibly tranquil experience though one that isn’t exactly true to the intentions of its creators. There is also a souvenir stand, manned by an eager teenage boy selling plush sheep and Guinness knick-knacks aplenty, if that’s your cup of tea. But visit late in the day, with the crowds gone and the stand shut, and you can feel the hushed, almost mystical vibe of the place.

From the center of town, you can see the spire of a church rising just off the main square. This is Holy Cross Catholic Church, the most visually striking of the town’s churches, consecrated in 1864. In Ireland, there are interesting churches everywhere, and while this one is not particularly old or architecturally notable, it sits next to the former Poor Clare’s Convent founded by one of the town’s most famous residents, “The Nun of Kenmare,” Otherwise known as Sister Frances Clare (otherwise known as Margaret Anna Cusack). She was a prolific and especially intellectual nun: scholar and Irish nationalist, she established the convent and proceeded to write an impressive 35 books in the 1860s-80s.

A fairy fort in Reenagross Woodland Park, Kenmare.

You can learn more about this super-nun in the homespun and delightful Kenmare Tourist Information Office, which doubles as a history museum, chronicling the town’s industry, notable figures and daily life. I love small museums like this one that tell the stories of ordinary people (Nun of Kenmare aside) in ordinary towns. It might seem boring in the abstract, but its street-level humanity fosters a more intimate connection with a place.

Nature

Reenagross Woodland Park is the best nature one can see in Kenmare without a car. Like many beautiful Irish parks, this one is attached to a property designed for the wealthy, the 5-star Victorian-era Kenmare Park Hotel. Behind the grand stone structure are manicured gardens that dissolve almost imperceptibly into forest. Knobby trees perch over ferns and moss-covered stones, and gravel paths run along the edge of Kenmare Bay. While it’s no match for the spectacular views as on the Beara Peninsula or Ring of Kerry, it feels like a fairy-tale forest just a short walk from the bustling town center.

It’s these natural, magical edges of Kenmare that I found myself drawn to the most during our stay. Walk through the town center, take a left at the pizza place and proceed up the hill, and you’ll cross the River Finnerty, the tiny river that gives Kenmare a large part of its charm. Further up the road you’ll find Cromwell’s Bridge, an improbably steep structure that was built in the 1800s (though there was a similar structure here as far back as the 11th century). The bridge is unfortunately named for Oliver Cromwell, the English politician who led a bloody conquest of Ireland in the mid-1600s resulting in mass killings, land theft and forced servitude. The naming of the bridge is a mystery; Cromwell’s war did not even enter Kerry. The historical marker hopefully suggests that the name of this bridge was simply a mistake – the Irish-language word for “moustache,” alluding to the bridge’s rainbow-like shape, sounds like “Cromwell.” Name aside, if you’re a sucker for dry stones covered in moss, you’ll find it as enchanting as I did. Nestled on a small green surrounded by wildflowers, it’s the kind of place you can imagine reclining on a lazy afternoon.

Near Cromwell’s bridge is another of those especially Irish attractions: a shrine to the Virgin Mary, settled against a stone wall and tall hedge. This was one of Ireland’s “holy wells,” a site of folk religion during the period of anti-Catholic penal laws in the late 1600s-1900s. This well’s origin is not known; it may have begun as a site of pagan worship, then was blessed and turned into a Christian site. For pilgrims or simply curious onlookers, it’s another pocket of Kenmare enchantment.

Eating and Drinking

Lamb stew and Guinness at Coachman's — Lamb stew and Guinness at Coachman’s in Kenmare

As illustrated by these examples, life in Kenmare is not lived fast. It is a town for wandering, without expectations, and seeing what you’ll find. But while I may be making it sound like the humblest backwater, it should be known that the “cosmopolitan” label isn’t all spin. The town has quite a few fine pubs, restaurants and shops for its size; unlike other places I’ve visited in Ireland, its choices for dining and drinking are fairly numerous and high-quality. The Horseshoe, the town’s best-reviewed mid-priced restaurant, offers delicious food in cozy, candlelit surroundings. For a more ebullient dining experience, the touristy-looking O’Donnabhain’s was better than expected, offering a huge menu of well-executed Irish classics by similarly precarious candlelight (Kenmare is really not worried about people setting their hair on fire). Here the setting is a bustling pub environment soundtracked, at least when we were there, by a hipster college student alternating between affecting folk songs and improbable covers of “Dancing Queen” and other radio hits. Another standout, The Coachman’s, lacked in as much atmosphere but served an amazing Irish stew.

Atlantic Bar, a no-frills institution with a blue façade on the town square, became our go-to pub for lunch. With its perfectly presented toasted special (a hot ham sandwich with aged cheddar cheese and onion on robust buttery toast, served with golden chips), delectably fluffy Guinness, and cheerful proprietor, it was the platonic ideal of the Irish pub. Each time we visited, local workers of various professions laughed together and mingled with a few tourists enjoying a slower meal. On our second visit, we sat next to two friends on holiday from the UK, who engaged us in conversation on issues ranging from Paul McCartney to British and U.S. elections.

Traditional music session at Crowley's Bar — Trad session at Crowley’s

At night, the pubs come alive, and many try to offer live music, at least in the summer when tourists are around. This is highly variable; “live music” could mean a true Irish session, a solo accordionist, or an earnest young man playing “Wonderwall.” (Granted, the latter style can still be appealing; my husband and I did enjoy a pint in front of P.F. McCarthy’s as the band inside played a fine cover of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon.”) Crowley’s Bar is known as the place for “real” trad sessions, though Kenmare is not celebrated for its music scene like Dingle or Doolin. But the crowd packs in, and the festive atmosphere accompanied by lively fiddle, guitar and mandolin is irresistible. Elderly tourists holding iPads aloft seem to come out of the woodwork for a trad session, but a pervasive atmosphere of good cheer envelopes everyone anyway. During our visit, an Irishman visiting from another county treated the audience to a beautiful Sean-nós performance of the traditional tune “Little Saro.” His clear voice rang out in the hushed room, stopping for a moment the extroverted environment of the pub and turning inward – an old song and a new emotion.

Embrace the Boring

We made quite a few day trips from Kenmare, to beautiful and impressive surroundings (recommendations below). But when traveling anywhere, I’ve learned not to take for granted the ordinary experiences that aren’t on anyone’s bucket list. Next time you’re staying in a humble town, even one that’s never been labeled “cosmopolitan” or “colorful,” I recommend plunging yourself into the mundane, the boring, the every day. These are the things that make the essence of a place, and these are the things – as evidenced by my 23-year-pining for Kenmare – that you’ll remember.

Things to see near Kenmare

Gleninchaquin Park & Uragh Stone Circle: This breathtaking private park and neighboring stone circle on the Beara Peninsula is like something out of a dream. It’s a long drive on an incredibly narrow road, but worth it.
Kissane Sheep Farm: For animal lovers, a sheepdog herding demonstration on this picturesque farm is a delightful way to spend a morning.
Killarney National Park: This one’s obvious, but a hike in KNP is a must-do if you’re nearby. Tourists tend to flock to Muckross House and Castle, but the trails are peaceful and wooded. Arthur Young’s Walk was our choice; a lovely trail along the lake.
The Ring of Kerry: Another obvious one. There’s a lot to do on the Ring, but I’d recommend choosing a place and staying a night or two, rather than driving the whole thing in one day. See my previous post for discussion of Cahersiveen and its surroundings.

Rome, Even When It Rains

I just finished a devastating novel called Last Summer in the City. It was published in 1973, the first novel by a screenwriter named Gianfranco Calligarich, and it is the Catcher in the Rye-style tale of Leo Gazzara, a journalist adrift in Rome on the eve of his 30th birthday. When I started reading it, we had just arrived in Arezzo, Tuscany after three whirlwind days in Rome, and Calligarich’s descriptions, animated by my experience, leapt out from the page. Though this was my fifth visit to Rome, my time there is usually brief. But even I’m aware of the city’s reputation as a knotty, frantic place: plagued by loud traffic, besieged by the worst kind of tourists, famously garbage-strewn. Last Summer in the City‘s protagonist, a Rome transplant from the north, seems to feel Rome as both a cresting wave and a whirlpool: capable of lifting you to euphoric heights or sucking you down, drowning you.

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

He writes, “Rome by her very nature has a particular intoxication that wipes out memory. She’s not so much a city as a wild beast hidden in some secret part of you. There can be no half measures with her, either she’s the love of your life or you have to leave her, because that’s what the tender beast demands, to be loved” (9).

He continues to explain that if you love Rome, it opens itself up to you:

“You’ll have summer evenings glittering with lights, vibrant spring mornings, café tablecloths ruffled by the wind like girls’ skirts, keen winters, and endless autumns, when she’ll seem vulnerable, sick, weary, swollen with shredded leaves that are silent underfoot. You’ll have dazzling white steps, noisy fountains, ruined temples, and the nocturnal silence of the dispossessed, until time loses all meaning, apart from the banal aim of keeping the clock hands turning. In this way you too, waiting day after day, will become part of her. You too will nourish the city.” (9-10).

This rumination concludes on a slightly less hopeful note: “Until one sunny day, sniffing the wind from the sea and looking up at the sky, you’ll realize there’s nothing left to wait for” (10).

Calligarich’s story is one of deep alienation and sadness, though the point of the novel is not that our protagonist is destroyed by Rome — instead, Leo sees in the city’s own vices and volatility a reflection of his own. His inclination is to get away, but he ultimately realizes that no city is more suitable as the backdrop to his self-destruction.

*View from our hotel of the Baths of Diocletian, Rome.*

Once I finished this haunting novel, I couldn’t help but think a bit more deeply about the Rome I had just experienced. Does Rome really encourage the darkness and despair that Leo thinks it does? Is it the type of city one must fall in love with or leave? Are all the world’s major tourist destinations this enrapturing and also cruel? Similar things have been said, after all, about New York and Paris (just for two examples). When in Rome this summer, even before my thinking was infected by Calligarich’s bitter prose, I had been trying to wrap my mind around the average Roman tourist’s intentions and impressions. Why visitors flock to this city is obviously, but what do they hope to find, to feel, once they get there?

Faces of Rome

I’ve been every kind of tourist in Rome, and it seems to show a different face each time I visit. I’ve rolled in as a clueless undergraduate backpacker in 2004, thrilled by the ease of wandering through the Forum (no ticket required in those days) and dutifully visiting the Colosseum and Vatican. In 2011, my longest stay yet, I enjoyed a quasi-insider’s view from a friend’s apartment up a hill north of Piazza del Popolo, dining with hipsters in Pigneto and drinking clandestine champagne at the foot of a monument on the Isola Tiberina. I’ve stayed, in 2018, mere blocks from the heavy tourist district and strenuously avoided it, passing a two-day idyll in the Doria Pamphilj and Barberini Galleries and walking the Jewish Ghetto at night. And in 2021 I braved the tourist areas again with a study abroad program, for the first time in the smartphone era, only to find them delightfully half-deserted in a post-pandemic hangover. I suppose Leo Gazzara would say I loved Rome, for each time I had to leave it I felt disappointment rather than relief.

This summer, however, again accompanying a student group, I found myself carried along by circumstances beyond my control, thrust again into the heart of summer tourist Rome and somewhat stunned by the ferocity of its crowds. It was this year, exposed to the ugliness of overtourism, that for the first time I felt perhaps an inkling of relief upon leaving. I thought I had loved Rome, but which Rome? If I only love Rome with its most hellish tourists redacted, does that even count? What follows are some reflects on my most memorable moments in Rome – with still much more enchantment than misery.

Trevi Fountain Terror

First up: the Trevi Fountain. It is, perhaps, the biggest obstacle standing between me and an embrace of the eternal city. Completed in 1762 and thus fairly new by Roman standards, the fountain was popularized with tourists in the 20th century when it was featured in a series of films set in Italy, including the middling 1954 Clifton Webb feature Three Coins in a Fountain, which introduced the idea of—you guessed it— throwing coins in the fountain. (Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the classier film to prominently feature the fountain, encouraged the now-illegal practice of jumping in à la Anita Eckberg.) For some reason, people enjoy throwing money in fountains, even better if a movie has imbued this action with a sense of superstition. At least it is less harmful than attaching locks to beautiful old bridges.

*I wasn’t in the frame of mind to photograph the Trevi, but witness the crowds around the Pantheon and you get the idea.*

And so despite being one of Rome’s more minor attractions, the Trevi is a tourist magnet on par with the Colosseum, (and it’s particularly popular now that people are not allowed to sit on the Spanish Steps). Tourists clamor to get a seat near the fountain’s cloudy blue waters, and others simply gather around to take photos, throw coins and then ultimately stand, some jostling strollers of crying children, to stare into the heart of tourism for tourism’s sake. It is here, on my second day in town, that I started to wonder what tourism was really all about. I looked around at the tense, sweaty faces, the iPhones held aloft, the dripping, overpriced gelato cones and the beleaguered families settled at tables outside cynical tourist cafes with congealing pizzas in the windows, and I wondered if anyone was having any fun. But maybe “fun” is not what tourists, trained by Disney to adopt a theme park mentality of ride-hopping, are really looking for.

To wit: Too many minutes near the Trevi Fountain is detrimental to a love of Rome or even a love of humanity. Too many minutes near the Trevi Fountain, and nothing makes sense any more.

Piazza Navona Splendor

*Beneath the blue skies and ivory awnings of Piazza Navona*

But then! Once one extricates oneself from the Trevi Fountain, hurries past the snaking line to get into the Pantheon, ignores the husbands with sour faces ignoring their wives and the bossy Americans trying to return cheap puro lino clothing, one can break free into beautiful Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona, which never did anything to anyone (except overcharge them gratuitously for cocktails and coffee). Piazza Navona, where the history is casual and the feeling of the sun on your shoulders is priceless.

Piazza Navona has fountains, but seeing as no one ever made a movie about them, people don’t clamor to see them. These fountains are coinless, and one of them—La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi—is a baroque masterpiece by Bernini. The piazza is big enough to absorb the impact of crowds and retain its sunny sense of calm, a silent smirk barely visible behind its cream-colored awnings. The cafes are host to tourists but don’t pander to them, and there’s always an empty chair in a sun-dappled setting for those who can accept a 10 euro cover charge.

In some of Last Summer in the City‘s more hopeful passages, Leo Gazzara makes the journey to Piazza Navona to meet his doomed, drunken friend Graziano:

“‘I’ll wait for you here,’ he said, ‘it’s a real beauty.’
The beauty was Piazza Navona, and when I got there I had the usual stupid idea that the sky was more beautiful there than over the rest of the city. I spotted Graziano immediately. He had on one of his legendary white shirts and was sitting in a small armchair at Domiziano’s, his pale face turned to the sun, his eyes shielded by a pair of dark glasses. He’d let his beard grow and both his hands were occupied, one holding a glass of beer and the other a glass of scotch” (66).

When he’s feeling down, Leo Gazzara often seeks refuge in Piazza Navona, and once you’ve been there, you can see why. During my visit to Rome, after I escaped the Trevi Fountain, I too sought refuge in Piazza Navona, where I sat on a bench and waited for my husband and our friends to emerge from the Pantheon. Piano, piano, as the Italians say, the sun came out. And we settled down in a cafe and everything was suddenly coated in a soft, hopeful light.

Peaceful Palazzi

The Doria Pamphilj Gallery

Which brings me to my favorite place in Rome, to date, for seeking refuge: the Doria Pamphilj Gallery. The Doria Pamphilj is a private art collection housed in a 17th-century palace that sits mere blocks from the Trevi Fountain and Pantheon and a short walk from the Roman Forum. Given its location and its high quality collection, featuring major works by Caravaggio, Titian and Velazquez, among others, I was shocked when I first visited on a sunny morning in 2018 to find the place nearly deserted. Wandering its incredibly still, grand hallways lined with painting and sculpture, adorned with chandeliers and lit by tall windows and gilded mirrors, I felt a sense of awe over this tranquility in the heart of such mayhem — an awe on par with any I had experienced over Rome’s more attention-getting landmarks.

Of course, this is not to say that the Doria Pamphilj is neglected. Each time I’ve visited (now three times in total, including last week), I am in the company of a small handful of art lovers. But the gallery’s great strength is that despite being in a palace, is it not clearly visible from the street. To enter, one must locate a small sign that leads up a long corridor to the ticket office. After that, you proceed through the garage where the heir to the Pamphilj fortune keeps his sports car, and then scan yourself in through unmanned turnstiles. It’s kind of like waking up alone at a rich person’s estate and being granted access to wander through while they’re out shooting clay pigeons or yachting (or whatever it is people who own a palace might be doing). It’s one of Rome’s many under-appreciated treasures.

The Barberini Gallery

Rome’s neighboring Barberini Gallery offers another opportunity to see excellent art in a palace atmosphere, but no doubt due to its splashy signage and grand presence on a major thoroughfare, it lacks the Doria Pamphilj’s degree of quietude. It is also somewhat aggressively overstaffed, with ticket-scanners popping up repeatedly during one’s journey through the labyrinthine palace grounds, inordinately concerned that one might be sneaking in (though it seems unlikely anyone ever has or would, especially considering the modest price of tickets). But nevertheless, the Barberini offers a similarly enchanting atmosphere to the Pamphilj; once while wandering through I witnessed a string quartet practicing in a gallery, preparing for some event, and this time I was happy to discover a room in which lounge chairs were lined up in front of a grand display of tapestries, inviting guests to sit awhile and study them, as though looking up at the night sky.

These two galleries call to me each time I’m in Rome, and they illustrate the fact that this city is simply brimming with arts and culture, so much so that despite its massive amounts of tourists, there are still plenty of incredible places you can discover, peacefully.

The Rain and Revelations

To conclude this lengthy post, perhaps my tolerance of Rome’s weather is an ultimate sign of enduring love. In the past I’ve staggered up hills in record-breaking heat, seeking refuge in the Borghese Gardens and learning to embrace the sticky-skin feeling of July and August. This year’s visit, alternately, was hampered by periodic downpours. These have the desired effect of scattering the tourist hordes, but cut short the kind of exploratory walking I enjoy.

*Ponte Sant’Angelo leading to the castle*

Naturally, Roman weather plays an outsized role in Calligarich’s novel, which begins on our protagonist’s bleak, waterlogged birthday. He observes the rain’s impact on the city:

“Torrents of rain hammered down on the decapitated statues of the Forum, the collapsed columns, the palaces in the paved squares, the desolate afternoon arenas, the ornate churches, and, absurdly, the overflowing fountains. For a while I waited in a doorway, splashed by rain and cursed at by passerby — other castaways seeking salvation, like me, in the dark, cavelike entrance — then, taking advantage of a break in the weather, I ran, hugging the walls, until I reached a small movie theater nearby” (18).

I had to smile when reading this, as it was almost exactly what we experienced during our Roman visit. Buoyed by our time in Piazza Navona, our group ambled out on foot to the shores of the Tiber, winding our way to the Castel Sant’Angelo with its magnificent bridge. (It is on this bridge that, fresh off the plane in 2011, my husband, friend and I bought beers and joined a number of young revelers in drinking and taking in the sunset.) Realizing that the afternoon was waning (we had a group dinner with the students later that evening), we followed the river back up just as the first drops of water began to fall. Far from our hotel, we decided to wait in a taxi line until, after a few moments, we realized that no one was coming or going. Taxi plans abruptly abandoned, we embarked upon our 30-plus minute walk back. The downpour that quickly ensued was much like Calligarich describes, and seemed to bring the city to a standstill.

Like Leo Gazzara, our group sought refuge in the doorway of a particularly down-and-out looking cafe, and I was pleased to find that Romans, unlike Americans, don’t particularly care if you loiter in their place of business and don’t buy anything (at least when it’s raining, and all bets are off). The proprietress was a dramatic and charming woman who jumped at each loud crack of thunder and joked in Italian and English with her international clientele. After about five minutes of the rain continuing full throttle, we gave in to the charms of this strange tourist dive and settled in to a booth on a raised platform at the back. We ordered some of the world’s cheapest wine and shook out our raincoats as our hostess infected everyone with good humor; I began to hope the rainstorm wouldn’t end, so attached was I becoming to this quirky little place and this warm company.

Conclusions

The more I visit Rome, the more I start to understand how challenging it is, and also how multifaceted. Rome is not a theme park, despite tourists treating it as such; it is not, as Calligarich’s novel emphasizes, the Happiest Place on Earth. It has a garbage problem and a drunken tourist problem and traffic problems and a lack of taxicabs; but it remains, even to the most casual visitor, an absolute wonderland of history, art, culture. It’s a place at once peaceful and chaotic, solemn and gregarious, and it’s hard, really hard, not to love it.

Penitent Magdalene by Caravaggio, Doria Pamphilj Gallery

A casual tourist can’t really know a place, and our memories our selective: upon each visit to a city, there are parts we choose to remember and those we choose to forget. I choose not to dwell on the obnoxious, unhappy tourists I encountered, the long lines and the sad pizzas and the glowing smartphones. I choose instead to remember the knockout skies of Piazza Navona; the still, gold-flecked hallways of the Doria Pamphili; Caravaggio’s Penitent Magdalene bowed with hair flowing; the rain ricocheting off centuries-old statues; the greasy cafe with the sticky floors and the warmth that carried us off into the night.

Travel in London: A Collection of Moments

Anyone who has traveled knows that it’s hard to predict how you’ll feel about a place until you’re there. You can swoon over photos and vlogs, savoring the feelings conjured by golden-hour cobblestone streets or mysterious neon-lit night cities or lush green forests, but those feelings belong to photos and vlogs alone. Once you arrive at your destination, it will be different — and you’ll realize it’s not something you could ever preview, or capture.

It’s equally hard to predict the feeling of revisiting a place you’ve been. Every time I visit Dublin, the foreign city in which I have spent the most time, it feels different than I think it will. For it is changing and I am changing, always. And the subtleties of these changes are only felt through the process of exploring the city anew. When returning, I often flash back to my first impressions of Dublin as a study abroad student. In these memories, the city is upside-down and backwards, a blur of second-rate pubs and shoe stores and cold-rainy gray-ness, the places I was thrust into when I had no understanding of its geography, people, and culture. Through the changes I encounter with each visit, those earlier versions are always still with me.

Which brings me to travel in London, a city I wrote about on this blog years ago. When my husband received a grant to conduct research there this summer, I was happy but not sure how I would spend my time. I’d been to London a few times in the past, so I felt not quite like a tourist. But the city was still somewhat upside-down and backwards to me, like Dublin in those early days, and I wasn’t sure if I would take to it.

But because these things never turn out as one expects, of course I was wrong. My travel in London ended up being immensely enjoyable in a way I almost can’t put my finger on. It was a rather nebulous idyll, made up of potent moments. I spent a lot of time out and about not doing much of anything, and therefore was able to soak up the charm of the London scene and its people (When did they become so friendly? I frequently wondered). A town I’d dipped in and out of in the past became, over the course of ten June days, a city of friends and kindred spirits.

It wasn’t the kind of experience one can capture in a travelogue or typical list of highlights, so instead I’ve written up a series of moments which, linked together, have come to summarize my understanding of this city, one which seems to glow with greater warmth (both literally and figuratively) each time I visit.

Fragments of a City

Out in the World

First, I immerse in the leafy stillness of Highgate Cemetery. The dark cool of the vaults. Two inquisitive ladies in linen, a gentle guide with a David Brent accent and boat shoes. He likes the grave of Michael Faraday best. Implies others, which go unnamed, are overrated.

Travel in London: Highgate Cemetery. — Highgate Cemetery.

George Michael is buried here. People didn’t know that until recently, in part because his grave is labeled appropriately with his real name, Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou. Everyone takes pictures while our guide holds in a sigh. I’m not sure why we take photos of graves.

Travel in London: Walking across the Millennium Bridge. — Walking across the Millennium Bridge.

On a Sunday, walking across Millennium Bridge with jangly playlist pumping into headphones, I feel the cool wind off the Thames and take in the splendor (and constant construction) of monumental London. As a teen, this was the kind of thing I always envisioned doing as an adult. And it’s the rare thing that’s just the way you envisioned it, every time. Am I uncool for loving this? I wonder, surrounded by strollers and selfie-takers and souvenir-buyers. The Thames whispers back: Maybe.

Toulouse-Lautrec painting from the National Gallery, London. — Toulouse-Lautrec, *Woman Seated in a Garden*

I walk though the National Gallery in a half-daze on my first day in London; some of it is deja vu and some of it isn’t. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed strikes me while his paintings of ships leave me cold. Toulouse-Lautrec’s Woman Seated in a Garden is so refreshing — his dance-hall portraits get all the hype. Plus his portrait of Emile Bernard never goes unnoticed. Young Emile was really my type — he was also quite well-adjusted considering the company he kept.

Later, I visit British Museum, nestled in Bloomsbury, one of my favorite London neighborhoods. The thing is: I can’t enjoy the British Museum. I’ve tried twice and failed. Colonialism looms; the Empire is unappealing to me. The collection is amazing, but it’s like Epcot Center — a showcase of conquered cultures. I creep upstairs to the nearly empty drawing and prints gallery (most of the others are downstairs with the mummies) and have a nice time looking at drawings by “emerging British artists” and some inscrutable Czech prints.

Pubs and Clubs

The Dog & Duck pub in Soho. — The Dog & Duck.

We watch the drunken hordes in Saturday Soho, sunburned and in woozy search of a toilet at the Dog & Duck pub. We stare at a misspelled homage to George Orwell on the wall. Someone has tried (and failed) to scrub out an extra “l” in “allegorical.”

We find a pub, The Betsey Trotwood, that proves to be “our place.” It is plunked down in the middle of the road on a strange jutting median. They are dead polite and have chips and a stereo softly playing Brinsley Schwartz.

The Betsey Trotwood advertises a music night called Oh Trotwood, Up Yours!! Featuring the music of X-Ray Specs, Wire, Patti Smith, Television Personalities and more. We go to the basement and found a small cluster of people in their fifties (with one clump of younger men, possibly someone’s nephews). No way out now, we pay our 10 pounds for raffle tickets. “Number 14 for you,” announces a gent in a bowler hat brandishing a paper number, “which appears to be your age, my dear.” I am well at home in the company of aged hipsters. We win the raffle, of course we do. The prize is a mirror bearing the likenesses of Laurel and Hardy.

Betsey Trotwood pub in Clerkenwell. — Our Xanadu.

The DJ, who might be over 60, is prickly when I make requests. They always are. But he asked me to pose with his Patti Smith LP for a toothy photo that’s now in the universe, somewhere.

On our last night in town we go to a Jon Spencer show in Hackney. Before the band even plays, the fashion show of aging rockabilly couples, mods, and people who wear sunglasses at night indoors is well worth the price of admission. The opening band is a trio of college lads dressed in frightening costumes who fiddle with their instruments and produce squeaky, pseudo-experimental noise. The crowd applauds politely, and it reminds me of a band in an amazing book I’m reading called This is Memorial Device that positions mannequins onstage while tape plays behind a curtain.

Home Base

We stay in King’s Cross, a distinctly unglamorous crossroads of international travelers, and possibly the noisiest place in the world. There is trash and sweat and urine and there are charming cafes and perfect Vietnamese food and converted old churches and fashionably dressed youth. In a clammy Mailboxes Etc., fully expecting to be treated harshly, I am helped by a lovely man and sent out into the street with a cheerful exhortation to “enjoy the beautiful weather!”

St. Pancras train station at night, London. — King’s Cross/St. Pancras at night.

The English breakfast is so satisfying with its hash browns fried into neat triangles and beans poured into a round, orderly crock. I order a vegetarian version with a fried halloumi that is nothing short of amazing. Halloumi is undervalued in the states. We prefer gooey cheese that stretches out everywhere and soaks greasily through bread.

Vegetarian English breakfast with halloumi.

Sometimes you put a load of towels in a British washing machine and select “economy,” which has a leaf next to it implying environment considerations. And then there’s nothing to do but wait four hours for it to finish.

McGlynn's pub near King's Cross, London. — McGlynn’s pub near King’s Cross.

Just streets away from our incredibly loud accommodations on King’s Cross Road is a startlingly peaceful neighborhood. It seems its rows of soft brick buildings somehow block out all the motorcycles and trucks and ambient shouting. We gather on a golden evening in front of McGlynn’s pub and feel like we’ve done something right, on accident.

Books and Records

Travel in London: Gay's the Word bookstore in Bloomsbury. — Gay’s the Word in Bloomsbury.

I had a daydream of going to Gay’s the Word bookstore in Bloomsbury and buying volume one of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper comic and immediately reading the whole thing on a bench in Russell Square. This dream came true. I also bought the uncensored version of The Picture of Dorian Gray and a tiny Pocket Penguin containing Truman Capote’s profile of Marlon Brando and the clerk could not have been more charming.

Ad for a dance night at the Phoenix. — *How does it feel to be loved?*

I spend a day trailing after Robert to record stores. We’re both aware that buying records and getting them home is nearly impossible and yet we do it anyway. I find a Creation Compilation from 1984 and Cherry Red one from 1987 with daisies all over the cover. They both feature the softest, most raggedy dreamy northern indie pop a person could stand. Pale youths with fluffy hair and oversized blazers gaze out of fields in the liner notes.

While we’re in Sounds of the Universe I spot a flyer advertising a indie-pop dance night featuring a leaf-framed photo of the young members of Orange Juice in mod attire. I’ve never wanted to be part of something more, but alas it’s held on the third Saturday. We leave on the third Friday.

Traveling Italy…on the Edge of a Pandemic

I haven’t written for this blog since 2019. And there’s no mystery as to why—a global pandemic has a way of both bringing us all together and keeping us all apart. I’ve been one of the lucky ones in a number of ways, healthy and vaccinated and ready to travel beginning in June. For the past month, I’ve been traveling in Italy, a country just emerging from the throes of the pandemic, where my husband is teaching a study abroad program that we somehow managed to eke out despite restrictions.

And yet I sit here in front of my laptop, looking out the widow onto a cluster of medieval buildings, and I try to think of what to write. How to explain what it feels like to travel at time when I’ve just been reminded exactly what a privilege it is? At a time when hallmarks of climate change are cropping up everywhere, and the damage done by travel is present in each 100+-degree day, in the tall grass turned brown and crispy, in the omnipresent No Grandi Navi (no cruise ships) graffiti on alley walls in Venice? At a time when we’re just been knocked flat and grounded by a pandemic more widespread and serious than anyone living had ever seen?

Like most people, I’ve spent the past year sticking closer to home than ever—working at my little desk overlooking the backyard bird feeder, puttering around in the front yard, watching TV with my husband and listening to records and cooking and spending most nights in the same 1100 square feet of house. There were no restaurants, bars, films or concerts. There were limited gatherings with friends, outside even in the cold, wrapped up in layers and six feet apart. And there were walks—most evenings, I took to walking a two-mile loop around my neighborhood, a routine that now leads me to be recognized around town, like some local eccentric: Haven’t I seen you walking?

How to explain what it feels like to travel now, so far from home, when it seemed like we’d never leave again?

The Pantheon in Rome, Italy with post-pandemic crowds, summer 2021 — The Pantheon in Rome, with a smaller-than-usual crowd outside.

A Little Surprised to Be Face to Face with a World So Alive

This unwieldy heading is one of my favorite lyrics from my favorite song by the band Television, and while in context it’s about drugs and friendship, it also applies nicely to the experience of emerging from one’s COVID cocoon and into a world that feels like new. Everywhere, my home city included, things feel brighter, more exciting, vibrating with months of pent-up emotion and energy, ready to be released (for better or worse, considering the Delta variant).

The great thing about Italy is that to me, as a repeat visitor, it always feels this way—that whole la dolce vita thing, with the nightly passeggiata (evening stroll through the town to see and be seen), the gathering in piazzas for aperitivo (happy hour), the people in storefronts chatting at all times of day, reveling in their community even while tourists like us arrive to gawk at it. What I’ve hoped, as people have continued to get vaccinated and the U.S. has “opened back up,” is that we can become a little bit more like Italy, with more outdoor dining and events, more emphasis on community and the social aspects of daily life. (It remains to be seen whether late capitalism will allow it.)

This Italy study abroad trip was a new experience for us: while we’ve led programs before, this summer’s was the most comprehensive, with an action-packed first week-and-a-half hitting Rome, Pompeii, Sorrento/Capri, and Venice, before settling in to our university’s home base of Arezzo, situated in the hills of Tuscany near Florence. With a 0-60 start, our trip was exhilarating if a bit destabilizing after all those months at home, but as I write this, we’ve settled into a lovely, languid pace as we ride out the final days in Arezzo.

So has the pandemic changed Italy, at least in the eyes of a tourist? I’m happy to report that it hasn’t—not in the important ways. It still maintains that sense of public life, of community, of slow, relaxed living that is somehow also loud and boisterous. Due to lingering travel restrictions, the number of worldwide tourists is mercifully fewer, but that fact is only noticeable at the big attractions—Venice’s Rialto Bridge, Rome’s Vatican City and Forum, Florence’s Uffizi Gallery. Italians and European tourists have more than filled any kind of void with palatable energy, brimming over from packed outdoor cafes and public parks. It’s the same Italy, but I’m not the same in it—after a year and a half of pandemic, I’m a little bewildered, and perhaps more observant and grateful.

A canal in a quieter Venice, Italy post-pandemic, 2021 — A canal in a quieter Venice post-pandemic, 2021

Post-Pandemic Travel Pressure

I was thinking recently about how the experience of travel changes when you become responsible for yourself. On our study abroad trip, much of what the students do is planned out and pre-arranged, and they spend many days on guided tours and in the classroom, learning about what they’re seeing. In some ways, this is an incredible opportunity to really learn about the art and culture they’re soaking up, but they are missing a bit of what it means to travel as an adult—when the responsibility of communicating and navigating and connecting rests entirely on you.

I think back now to when I first fell in love with traveling, as a teenager going places with my parents, and how enjoyable it was to just go along with whatever they had planned. As the wife of an instructor on a study abroad program, I could do that again. But it doesn’t hold the same appeal it used to, especially as the pandemic and climate change have made leisure travel feel endangered. Now I’ve got a voice inside, telling me to seize the opportunity, to get all I can out of this, to appreciate it while I can. It’s a bit aggressive, this voice, and so much of this trip has been a mental balance for me—I take the voice’s point, but I also want to indulge in some of that slow living I mentioned. Floating along is not mere laziness; it also invites spontaneity.

Lively Piazza Grande in Arezzo, Italy, 2021

Seizing the Day in Italy

For better or worse, then, I’ve approached this summer’s travel with a rather serious mentality. We’ve all been anxious the past year, thinking about things like isolation and connection and community more than ever, and I’ve brought this baggage with me to Italy. I want to connect this time, I thought to myself, pouring over my pitiful Mango language lessons prior to departure. I’ve tried to be less shy and self-conscious, to use my minimal Italian and hold my own on the streets, to not become dejected when the inevitable confusion ensues. The thing about really making an effort as a traveler, though, is that it can be harder. If you take responsibility for yourself, it’s more frustrating, with benefits that are not often recognizable until much later (perhaps the next time you travel, when you will find yourself feeling more comfortable for reasons you can’t put your finger on).

But this time around, I have tried to revel in small the small moments of confidence and ease—for example, when my broken Italian has been rewarded head-nods of understanding, even the occasional beaming Certo! Or the time I bonded with the bartender in a tiny cocktail lounge in Rome by complimenting the music he was playing, an overture that was met with great enthusiasm. Or when I attended an Italian indie rock concert with local friends and felt like a real part of life in Arezzo (even when an uptight superfan “shushed” me, the loud American, between songs).

One thing that has always felt especially frustrating to me is grocery shopping in a foreign country; grocery stores all seem very much alike, and yet there are hidden rules that will embarrass you if you’re not careful. The Italian supermarket Conad has struck fear into my heart since the day two years ago when I was castigated for standing in a closing checkout line (a light was blinking, apparently). But this year I encountered a kinder, gentler Conad—and not just because I’d already learned the rules. It was there in the supermarket, putting on my plastic gloves to weigh the produce, that I realized the pandemic itself has actually had, in a small way, a positive impact on how we relate to each other in public life.

The streets of Sorrento, Italy, just reopening after the pandemic, 2021

COVID Confusion: The Great Equalizer

This realization came following challenges in Sorrento, which had just reopened the week before we visited. Everyone was hungry for business while also taking precautions to the extreme. I decided to do some shopping one afternoon before a group dinner with our students, and with my mask secured over my face, I thought I knew how to approach the situation. But upon entering a linen shop, a saleswoman began following me around as though I might shoplift, pulling out clothes and showing them to me until I left hastily in confusion. What had I done wrong? I wondered. Were they that desperate for business, or did I look like I was about to make off with an overpriced tunic?

The answer didn’t occur to me until we had our hotel breakfast the next morning. The breakfast was on a buffet table, but instead of helping ourselves as we had in the past, we were required to line up and tell the beleaguered young employees each thing we wanted heaped onto our plates. The system was strange and slow, but illuminating: I realized with embarrassment that what I had seen as an overzealous saleswoman was actually someone, confused as I was, trying to follow a tangled web of COVID protocols. We could not touch buffet food and we could not touch merchandise. As I thought about it more, I realized it was sad—those shop owners so excited to finally reopen, only to be told they could not allow customers to browse.

Confusing? Hell yes. But these experiences made me realize that travel in pandemic, in some ways, has made daily interactions LESS scary. Before, you see, I thought I was the only one who didn’t know the rules—that is how we tourists typically operate, concerned about looking like a fool with one false move. But now, with increasing complex pandemic restrictions, no one knows the rules. We’re all fools, and we’re all trying our best (well, most of us—I’m deliberately ignoring the belligerent anti-masking folks here). There’s a graciousness that wasn’t there before, a bit of understanding from both sides that this world is not so easy to navigate, and never has been.

Mid-afternoon shadows on a medieval building, Arezzo, 2021

Bringing It All Back Home

To try to summarize these stray thoughts, I have to say that for me, travel in the age of the pandemic includes perhaps a bit too much overthinking, but also a sense of awareness and generosity—I’m more aware of my own privilege and others’ generosity, and in turn more generous in my interactions and reactions.

I’ll admit that when we finished the first leg of our rapid-fire tour through guidebook-Italy and settled at our apartment in Arezzo, I was at a bit of a loss. I felt like I’d seen it all before but also like I was a tourist for the first time. What did we just do? I asked myself. Who am I in this context, trailing after a group of students, pinging around from St. Peter’s Basilica to Capri’s blue grotto to the Peggy Guggenheim to the Uffizi? Who am I now, leisurely reading by day in a Tuscan garden and congregating over deliciously sour white wine at night in a piazza beneath an astounding old church?

I’m lucky. I’m guilty. I’m an interloper. I’m a visitor. I’m a participant in life, here, in this place.

A participant—as a traveler, that’s really all any of us want to be, isn’t it? And when I’m sitting in my room next to an open French window and I hear the clinking dishes from the apartment next door, the voices in the courtyard, the church bells from the duomo which looms over it all, I have to remind myself that this is it. You’re here, and that’s all you need to be. It applies to traveling of course, especially when that aggressive voice pipes up, imploring you to make the most of the experience, see everything, do everything. But it also applies to our lives back home.

It reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is Water” speech, something I’ve assigned to students for its uniquely incisive take on a modern dilemma: we ignore the good things that are right in front of us, and this leads to a lack of compassion. Something many have learned during COVID, I think, is that participating, being here is not just what happens when we’re on vacation. It happens any time we think to notice it. I’m here. This is the world. Isn’t it glorious.

Mayo, Ireland: Ordinary Heritage, Preserved in a Bog

This June, I had the opportunity to spend nearly three weeks in Ireland – see my previous post on Dublin – always a welcome experience. And because my parents were coming over and meeting us for the trip’s second half, we couldn’t resist returning to County Mayo (in Irish Mhaigh Eo, meaning “plain of the yew trees“), home to ancestors on both my mother and father’s sides of the family.

We stayed in the lovely town of Westport and put together a plan to explore areas we hadn’t on our previous visit 15 years ago, like beautiful Achill Island, the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar, and Céide Fields ancient site. After a few days in Mayo, we would head up to Sligo and Donegal to finish out the trip. Put together, our experiences in Mayo and Sligo prompted me to think more philosophically about this unique stretch of land and my connection to it.

Beach at Achill Island on a gorgeous day.

Land of the Blanket Bog

County Mayo — particularly the western part of the county — is covered extensively in blanket bog. This means the ground is layered with partially decayed vegetation called peat, which has historically been harvested and burned as a source of heat. Mayo’s landscape is not very useful to people trying to survive, and poor topsoil for farming has made this a site of struggle for thousands of years. But the bogland does have some good qualities. For one, peatlands act as carbon sinks, which makes them useful in slowing climate change (however, peat extraction — on the decline but still ongoing in Ireland — counteracts this with large emissions). Squishy to walk on and covered in golden-hued flora, the bogland is also an astounding historical archive: archeologists have found evidence in the bog of early civilizations, even well-preserved human bodies, which tell the story of this land as far back as 5,000 years.

Bogland in Ballycroy National Park, County Mayo

The bogland, it turns out, holds onto things. It holds within it a staggering history, but one which documents simple lives — what those in our contemporary society, lovers of conquest and great wealth and great wars and intellectual innovation — might call mundane. It’s a history of pastures divided up by stacking stones, of basic thatched-roof dwellings, of hard labor on harsh land. It’s a history of small, eccentric traditions. It’s not extraordinary in any way, really, aside from its perseverance.

A poetic description on a signpost in Ballycroy National Park, Mayo

What have we found in the bogs? Stone ruins, animal fossils, tools, books, jewelry, the bodies of young men (human sacrifices dating to the Iron Age — the most exciting bogland happenings you’ll ever hear of), and butter. That’s right — great heaping, towering portions of butter, looking fluffy as marshmallow creme, pulled out of bogs throughout Ireland. Turns out, the Irish have always been good at dairy.

This verse from Seamus Heaney’s poem “Belderg” comes as close as any text to capturing the awesomeness of the bogland:

When he stripped off blanket bog The soft-piled centuries
Fell open like a glib; There were the first plough-marks, The stone-age fields, the tomb Corbelled, turfed and chambered, Floored with dry turf-coomb.
A landscape fossilized, Its stone wall patternings Repeated before our eyes In the stone walls of Mayo.

My Unshakeable Mayo Roots

I know how annoying it is when Americans prattle on about their “Irish heritage” — and yet I too can’t help but give in to the desire to feel connected to my ancestors. My great-grandmother came from a town in Mayo called Crossmolina, a tidy-but-drab burg about which nothing much has ever been said. As far as my parents know, further back most of our ancestors on both sides in fact from this same hardscrabble land — Crossmolina and the more cosmopolitan nearby Ballina. I’m a full three generations removed (and even then only connected by the single thread of my great-grandmother), but I do feel a connection to this land. Is it real, or am I fooling myself? Is there any way to really know?

My great uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo. — My great-uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo.

This feeling of connection could be due to associations from fragmented stories half-told; to daydreams of Ireland conjured in my mind before I even set foot on the island itself. Maybe it stems from those old color slides I’ve seen, taken by my great-uncle the priest (always addressed properly as “Father Devitt,” never “Uncle Gene”), who visited in the 1960s and was invited in for tea by unidentified relatives whom he later photographed, unsmiling, standing in a pasture beside a donkey. (My mother says not to assume they were unhappy; it was rather more likely they were self-conscious about their teeth.)

But in a more metaphysical sense, could it also be the bog itself, that meticulous preservationist, soaking memories and identities into its spongy surface? Holding them intact like great gobs of butter and ginger-haired bogmen, revealing a whiff of them each time a farmer cuts away a new shaft of peat? I wonder too if my grandmother, who never had the chance to visit her own mother’s homeland, might have felt an even stronger pull of some nebulous connection, from a people who shared a similar perspective, perhaps, or gait or countenance or manner, or in fact a similar approach to life and family, work and community.

Céide Fields neolithic site in north Mayo, bogland which contains the oldest and most extensive field systems in the world.

Yeats & the Lure of the Land

Does the land merely preserve the physical — that which can be seen or analyzed? Poets certainly don’t seem to think so, particularly Irish ones, who write about the land like an oracle, keeper of secrets and holder of grudges. Sligo, where I recently spent a few days, is considered the adopted home of the poet W.B. Yeats — a fact of which one is constantly reminded via statues, murals and the tourist-attraction grave of the man himself. Yeats wrote famously of the strong pull he felt toward the Sligo landscape, including the Lake Isle of Innisfree, which to any clear-eyed observer most closely resembles a mound overgrown with brush, inelegantly plunked into modest Lough Gill. “I will arise and go now,” he wrote, off to his personal utopia, a slice of his soul there preserved.

Downtown Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland. — Downtown Crossmolina on a Sunday, County Mayo, Ireland.

My Own Ordinary Innisfree

I forgive Yeats his hyperbole, because I get where he’s coming from. Crossmolina, after all, is my Innisfree, my own mediocre island with an otherworldly pull. On our way to (the magnificent and extremely well-run) Céide Fields, my parents, my husband and I stopped in Crossmolina for lunch, walking to the cemetery to look at the gravestones and try to somehow understand by osmosis who our relatives were and if there might be any left. It was our second visit to the sleepy town; 15 years earlier my parents and I had met with a genealogy specialist who said something about great-grandmother Mary Munley who was actually Munnelly, and about some spinster sisters named Quinn who might share some of our genes and donated a statue to the church when they died.

A closed-down Crossmolina business, possibly owned by some relations of mine.

Suffice it to say the findings would remain sparse unless we ponied up some more Euros. But we didn’t, because that’s not what it’s about. People conduct genealogy tests to reveal connections to extraordinary people who did interesting and glamorous things. But in County Mayo, in the bogland, we know what our ancestors did (bog finds detail the more ancient past, while recent civilization is captured in the comprehensive and truly immersive National Museum of Ireland – Country Life). They toiled on the land, farming and raising animals; perhaps someone owned a pub, was a grocer, a tradesmen, or a member of the clergy. They were (mostly) faithful Catholics, attending mass and community gatherings and weddings and funerals, putting on a fine Sunday lunch on occasion for the parish priest. They were ordinary.

A view of Croagh Patrick through a heavy fog, Crossmolina. — A view of Croagh Patrick, Mayo’s mountain pilgrimage site, through a heavy fog in Crossmolina.

I Will Arise and Go Now

And here I am, a woman from a small, Midwestern American town who has always strived to be different, assured that my circumstances didn’t suit me, that I was destined for more excitement, more glamor, a somehow more interesting life.

But the bogland preserves; it records. And here in Mayo, the land tells me otherwise.

So walking along the road to the cemetery in Crossmolina, catching fat raindrops on my nose and running my fingers along stone walls, I think about who I came from, and how they’re in me more than I may think. I can smell it in the ozone, on the contentment that rises in me despite the fact that I’m spending a rainy morning in a cemetery in a boring-ass town with a handful of pubs, a few churches and a library, in a county where it rains cold stinging pellets 280 days per year.

I guess what it is, as it was with Yeats and his god-forsaken overgrown oasis, is a sense of belonging. It’s a feeling of nothing less than identity, I suppose, corny as that sounds: the call of “I will arise and go now,” beckoning from the bog.

“Dublin” on My Heart: In the Drizzly City of Contrasts

My third visit to Dublin began with—of all things—a discussion of the city’s tram system, Luas. Chatting with our taxi driver on our way into the city from the airport, my husband and I recalled the chaotic Luis-related construction we encountered during our most recent visit in 2016. This came as a surprise as we assumed it would be done—way back in 2004 when we were studying at University College Dublin, the project was already beginning operation. So what happened? All told, our driver explained, the project took a turbulent 13 years (it’s finally finished): first city government decided on two separate city centre lines; then they decided to join them; next they realized the tracks were two different sizes and needed to be redone; and eventually the 2010 recession stalled the whole endeavor. Hence the 2017 completion date.

Our new friend from the north side put it like this: “In this city, we prefer to do something wrong the first time, and then spend ages fixing it.”

This little motto seemed even more apt days later, when we stopped in at the National Gallery of Ireland. Upon our last visit to Dublin, the museum was in the midst of a laborious, drawn-out renovation that pushed some of its most celebrated art into storage. But when we returned these three years later hoping to finally see the beautiful (supposedly complete) new wings, we found them shut down once again, for “essential maintenance.” Those Jack Yeats paintings will have to wait until our next visit, I suppose.

Dublin: City of Frustration?

I’ve spent more time in Dublin than perhaps your average tourist—around 7 months or so total—but I can’t claim to know it, of course, like people who live there. And yet the great thing about being a repeat visitor to any destination is the ability to see different sides of it: you observe its changes over time, but you also can’t help but change your own perspective on it. This time, I feel like I’ve I’ve shaken the stars from my eyes a bit and started to see what the locals see—that in some ways, Dublin is a frustrating place.

George's Street, Dublin, Ireland — George’s Street, Dublin

As countless poets, novelists and songwriters have observed over the years, Dublin spends much of its time being gray, drizzly and smelling of exhaust, the traffic is a nightmare and stalled building projects seem to glare from every corner. Like many other 21st-century metropoles, the city of Dublin has a problem with poverty, homelessness and drug addiction, and gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs haven’t helped. Perusing local independent paper the Dublin Inquirer, I read stories on rising noise levels in the city, the housing crisis and other myriad city problems. Being a Dubliner, never easy, seems to be getting even harder. So why do I, why do many of us, love this city so incredibly much?

“Dublin” on Our Hearts

James Joyce allegedly once stated that when he died, they’d find the name “Dublin” written on his heart. It’s a sentiment you’re likely to hear from others who have spent any amount of time in the city, even (perhaps especially) those given to griping over daily annoyances. I think perhaps what makes the city near and dear to so many are in fact its contrasts; this juxtaposition of the frustrating and the inspiring.

There’s the way those gray, rainy mornings can open up into sunshiny, optimistic afternoons—the kind that call post-work crowds to sunbathe on St. Stephen’s Green or congregate chattily in front of pubs with friends and pints in their hands.

And maybe it’s that feeling when you enter Merrion Square, and the shocking green of the vegetation seems to throw the city into technicolor, and its statue of Oscar Wilde, artfully slouching on his rock, half-smiles as if to say not too bad, is it?

Or those times when you enter a crowded, cozy pub, with its snugs and panels of beaten wood, and just when the barman has topped up your Guinness a few generous lads get up and leave you the perfect table.

The Winding Stair Bookshop, Dublin, Ireland

Perhaps also it’s the seemingly endless number of great bookshops to duck into, swearing you’re just going to browse until you encounter the carefully curated tables piled with enchanting works and the shopkeeper from central casting with the owl-eyed glasses (and 100 euro later you stagger out with a stack and a tote bag and a new lease on life).

And it’s noisy, yes, but in such a way that heightens one’s appreciation of the quiet places, like the medieval sanctuary at St. Audeon’s Church, the dignified stacks in the 18th-century Marsh’s Library, the dusky elegance of the Central Hotel’s upstairs Library Bar.

St. Audeon's Church, Dublin, Ireland — St. Audeon’s Church

Library Bar, Dublin, Ireland — Library Bar

Finally then there’s the way the noise seems to fall away on a Grafton Street Sunday morning, when the street’s occasionally tacky cover-song buskers make way for a singer-songwriter with startling talent, and people crowd around and listen as though they were in church.

David Owens on Grafton Street, Dublin, Ireland

Postscript from a Smitten Tourist

There’s a lot I could say to you about Dublin, about the ways I like to walk the city, its hidden charms and jagged edges, the off-the-beaten-path attractions, the food, the pints, the wit and wisdom of its people. But these few points of description really say it all. Dublin is a city of frustration, grit, poverty, occasional violence. But it’s also a city of tender moments, of beauty and softness, of light breaking through heavy clouds and bright colors on Georgian doors, of a group of friends and a song and a pint in your hand on a summer evening.

Ha'Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland — Ha’Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin

Dublin Recommendations

Books:

Books Upstairs, 17 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2
The Winding Stair Bookshop, 40 Lower Ormond Quay, N. City, Dublin 1
Ulysses Rare Books, 10 Duke Street, Dublin 2
Hodges Figgis, 56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Pubs:

Library Bar at the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2 – Go up 1 floor for the bar. This is a great place to have a pint by yourself with a book, though I’d recommend going before 5 p.m. to get a good spot.
The Long Hall, 51 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 – Classic Victorian Pub that’s small but always seems to have room for you. It’s faded Dublin elegance at its best.
Palace Bar, 21 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 – Another Victorian bar with a cozy skylit room and outdoor street tables. Midcentury meeting place for journalists from the Irish Times.
Mulligan’s, 8 Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2 – Storied 18th-century pub frequented by James Joyce and Irish poet Seamus Heaney, nicely hidden near Trinity College.
Bruxelles, 8 Harry Street, Dublin 2 – A Dublin institution frequented by musicians and featuring a statue outside of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, one of Ireland’s biggest rock stars. Go downstairs and you’ll have your choice between a cocktail lounge (the Zodiac Bar) and the Flanders Bar, a pub for aging punks and what Bruxelles’ website calls “rock heads.” I’d highly recommend the latter.
Kehoe’s, 9 Anne Street South, Dublin 2 – Traditional pub that draws large post-work crowds. Stand outside on charming Anne Street for a view of beautiful St. Ann’s Church.
Whelan’s, 25 Wexford Street, Portobello, Dublin 2 – Dublin’s best music venue, with a pub in the front and a club in the back.

On Losing Yourself: Preparing for a Trip Abroad

After a long hiatus, I’m excited to resume my writing about travel! As much as I enjoy writing about travel all times of the year, I’ve gotten out of practice due to work, other creative projects and various life events (including having to unexpectedly move), not to mention the fact that I haven’t done much Traveling with a capital “T.” But my husband is teaching a study abroad course in Italy this summer and attending a conference in Dublin beforehand, with me along for the ride. (He noted that he did not even tell me he applied to such a conference until he received his acceptance because, apparently, I tend to get unduly excited about such prospects.) So I currently find myself, for the first time since my spring semester abroad 15 years ago (yes, I am now OLD), preparing to spend a substantial amount of time (two months) abroad. It’s pretty cool, and I feel incredibly lucky that we (barely) have the money and the flexibility to pull it off. But I do have one small worry: that my anticipation, high expectations and tendency to over-plan juuuuust might be my downfall.

Born to Itinerary

The thing is, I am a great planner. I love planning a trip, something I didn’t realize until I planned my first, our honeymoon to Dublin (where we met) in 2016. I was drunk on the freedom of deciding where we would go and what we would do, thrilled by the ability to put together pieces on how we could get to each place and move smoothly from one thing to the next. The truth is, I was probably born to be a travel agent (but not really, because the idea of dealing regularly with airlines makes my palms sweat). But this tendency doesn’t necessary help one enjoy travel; in fact, it can have the opposite effect. While I strive to take a slower pace and avoid the marathon sightseeing of the stereotypical tourist, I have to admit that the kind of planning I do – writing down in a notebook everything I’d like to do, reading restaurant and coffeeshop reviews and the best hive-mind recommendations – is not exactly a recipe for the more romantic and immersive aspects of travel I claim to love.

The Beauty of Being a Know-Nothing

When I think about the experiences that solidified my love of travel, after all, they were not those that I had written beforehand in a mini-notebook or booked through Trip Advisor. During my semester abroad in Dublin, for example, I pretty much knew nothing about anything, bouncing around to whatever bars and clubs that I heard about from my peers (quite a few of them trendy hell-holes), wandering the streets not knowing where or what the historical, cultural or other tourist attraction were, but rather learning as I came across them. (My brother loves to tell the story about visiting me a few weeks into my study abroad experience and having to point out the Spire of Dublin to me, which I had never noticed despite standing right next to it.)

When I returned to Dublin (and I will again this summer), it was with a mind of correcting that behavior a bit, learning more history and culture and trying to go to “good,” “authentic” and “historical” places. Did I see interesting things and eat good food? Yes, of course. But was it more impactful and enriching than the first experience? Absolutely not. Sometimes to really immerse in a culture, you have to try losing yourself, ignoring that pesky controlling voice within. Sometimes, I suppose, you’ve just got to go to some trendy hell-holes to see the light.

Yet with our two-month European adventure – to Ireland, England, The Netherlands and Italy – just a few days away, I’ve already written way too much in my little notebook (and the impulse remains to write more). The travel agent in my head wonders if it isn’t a good idea to look up a few more London restaurant recommendations, to pour over my Dublin map and find out what route I might take on a meander (yes, I’d still prefer to call it that) through the city. You really should review a map of Venice, it says, despite the fact that I’m not even going there until July, and I’ll have my laptop and phone with me the entire trip.

Thus, I’m attempting to push that little travel agent within aside. Instead of building my anticipation and sheer delight at the thought of the summer ahead (and that delight is a big reason travel planning is such an addiction), I’ve decided to turn my attention to why I really enjoy travel. I’ve written in the past about things I like to do when traveling, the places I love, and why travel is important, but in my cloud of precision-planning, I don’t want to lose my own reasons for travel, its mental and emotional impact.

Focusing on the Why

So, why is it that I like to travel? This may seem like a strange question, as generally in our society long-distance travel, even for work, is something about which we’re expected to be excited. When I happen to share the news that I’m embarking upon a two-month trip to Europe, the standard responses include “That’s so exciting!” “You must be so excited!” “I’m jealous!” etc., etc. I’m sure that, in part, this has to do with my tone and countenance; if I sighed heavily and explained that I *had* to travel all summer because my husband was dragging me all sorts of places, perhaps they’d react differently. (Though they’d probably think I was at best odd and at worst a potentially miserable person.) But what is it about going somewhere with a different culture (even one that’s only slightly different in the grand scheme of things) that feels so thrilling?

Lost and Found

There are many schools of thought on travel, and it’s honestly a subject that’s been written to death by backpacker types on every blog and website imaginable (insert photo here of girl in anorak standing on edge of mountain). Two perspectives seem to come up again and again: 1) that travel helps you find yourself and 2) that it helps you lose yourself. I’ve personally vacillated between these. I think of the times, when I was a kind simple traveling to my grandparents’ house in eastern Pennsylvania from Illinois, how I felt blissful at the opportunity to be away from home, and how it stoked my imagination with dreams of being somebody different. I think of the delight I feel still in being anonymous on a foreign city street, in a market, on a bus or train, willing myself to fall into a new city’s complex choreography. These sensations fit pretty snugly in category two.

But I also think of the more enriching moments of travel, the negotiations and interactions, the attempts to explain myself and to find out about others. I think of the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve learned, and how I must wedge them into my formed conception of the world, how I’ve turned them over in my mind and processed them through my experiences. I think of the experience of a semester abroad, and how what at first felt disappointing and disorienting became a time of personal evolution, of coming of age and developing a sense of myself.

It’s this last thing that really gets to the heart of it. The fact is, travel can be about both losing yourself and finding yourself. If I really dig deep to suss out the appeal of travel, to me, is the way it combines a feeling of hyperawareness of oneself with a sort of forced reset. Thrust yourself into a foreign country, with all its attendant communication issues and challenges, and you’re forced to confront the person you truly are: how you relate to others, how you respond to challenges, what aspects of culture you are drawn to, which ones you misunderstand or fear. You are removed from the familiar surroundings that sometimes obscure these aspects of your identity, and thus they come into sharp relief.

But you lose yourself in some ways, too. Trying to forge relationships with those from other cultures can be challenging; because you lack a cultural shorthand and perhaps also have a language barrier, it can be difficult to show them who you really are. It can be frustrating to compare these encounters to those with friends at home, and wish the people you met abroad could know you in that same way. But isn’t it thrilling to be someone ever-so-slightly different, to figure out how to present yourself in a new context? To navigate new situations like this can make us feel foolish and uninteresting (in Italian my conversation is basically limited to asking a person how they are, and then naming different types of food, clothing and animals) but it also shakes you out of complacency, and forces you to answer for your beliefs and attitude in ways you never have before.

Coping Mechanisms for Losing Yourself

When I’ve led study abroad classes in the past, I’ve at times had to check my frustration when students become absorbed in Instagram during sightseeing expeditions, meals or meetings, or when they ignore the tour guide’s insights in favor of discussions about the minutiae of life back home. Think about where you are! I want to remind them. You may not be here again! And yet, I also realize that these behaviors are not a sign of apathy or disinterest per se: they are in fact a natural response to the unmooring sensation of travel. The students are out of their cultural context – many for the first time – and it can feel alien and dangerous; not only in the sense of physical, walking-down-an-unfamiliar-street-at-night danger, but in the sense of losing the context within which we feel defined and unique. Some of us turn to social media and to banal discussions of fraternity parties to continue to grasp a firm identity, to make sure we still understand ourselves.

And some of us, we plan.

It’s a natural reaction and, whether or not you give in, travel will change you.

I know that this summer will not be as life-changing as a first trip abroad, but I also know that if I let go a little, these two months will have something to teach me. Here’s hoping I can stay committed to write a bit about the amazing places I will visit. Stay tuned!

Feeling London: Wandering in England’s Capital

Walking in the exciting city of London is the perfect way to really experience it in a short time.

London: a city that conjures up a lot of excitement in me, mainly due to years of listening to music, reading books and watching films set in the city. While it’s not the world’s most beautiful, exotic or affordable place, it is one of the most cosmopolitan and exciting. When I had the opportunity to visit in June on the way to see friends in the southwestern English city of Exeter, I seized it. I had been to London twice before but had never been intentional about how I spent my time there. In short, I never felt like I really got a feel for even part of the city, something I was determined to do this time around.

The Two-Day Trip

Strangely enough, my two previous visits to London had also been two days — it’s like some accidental pattern I can’t break. The main reason for this trend, however, is sadly no mystery: I had and continue to have very little money, and London is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

I was 18 when I first traveled to England — by ferry from France, as part of a French class trip. We did the usual — Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Topshop, and karaoke in a pub, for some reason. I don’t remember much (though I do remember my karaoke selection, Soft Cell’s seminal “Tainted Love”), which is probably because we only really spent a day there, dedicating much of day two to an Oxford-Stratford day trip.

View of the London Eye from Westminster Bridge.

The second time was during my study abroad semester in Ireland, when a friend and I decided to meet in London with another friend studying at University College London. Toward the ends of our semesters and impoverished, my friend and I agreed to share a tiny twin bed in an empty UCL dorm room rather than pay for a hotel. We saw a West End production of When Harry Met Sally starring an aging Luke Perry, spent a day at the Tate Modern, and wandered around pleasantly for the rest of the time. I came away satisfied and happy to have seen friends, but without much understanding of London beyond parks and pints and red phone booths.

Feeling London

This time around I was focused, determined not to waste my two days. My husband and I booked a room at an economical, well-located, and slightly shabby South Kensington establishment called the Cromwell International Hotel, and I set out excitedly to plan my first London trip as a proper adult. My husband was planning some meetings with overseas colleagues, so I would have a good chunk of each day alone to do as I pleased. I perused lists of museums and markets and theatrical performances, but what I was really chasing was a feeling: the feeling of being in London, the city of so much music, literature and film I loved. So I decided to simply do what I like best, which is walk.

Parliament Square, at the end of my walk. — Parliament Square, looking pretty at the end of my walk.

As discussed in my post on the “flâneuse,” the best kind of walking for a traveler like me is wandering solo — I don’t much enjoy an organized tour, no matter how informative. Knowing little about the best ways to wander in London, I looked online for self-guided walks and landed on London for Free’s “Bridges Walk,” a very on-the-beaten path kind of stroll that would take me through the heart of tourist London. While I’m not usually one to go full tourist, I couldn’t resist the misery-gray allure of the Thames. Plus, considering I didn’t feel like I’d really seen London, it seemed a logical place to start.

But First, Records

The original Rough Trade record shop in Notting Hill, which opened in 1976.

Our first morning in London, my husband and I had one thing to check off our list before I embarked upon my walk: a visit to the original Rough Trade Records on Talbot Street in Notting Hill. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been obsessed with British music (of which London is undoubtedly the locus), as well as contemporary London novels by the likes of Nick Hornby and Emma Forrest. I longed to finally get a feel for the city of Rob Fleming’s imaginary Championship Vinyl; the city in which Damon Albarn, brokenhearted and detoxing, wrote “Tender,” one of my all-time favorite songs; the home base of so many great bands, some of whom released music on the Rough Trade label in the ’80s and ’90s.

It was surprisingly pleasant and quiet wandering down the famous Portobello Road on a cloudy Tuesday morning (all in all, I found Tuesday and Wednesday to be excellent days for visiting London), and though the neighborhood is now quite pricey, I was easily able to imagine its humble roots as a home to artists and musicians. The shop itself was small, with a lived-in feel and basement full of great vinyl. The only downside was that I had little money to spend and little room in my suitcase. After much deliberation, a vinyl record by the 1970s post-punk band Magazine and a CD by 1980s London indie-poppers the Siddeleys were enough to satisfy me. I parted ways with my husband and hopped on the tube to Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge, site #1 on my self-guided walk.

“Drinking Tea with the Taste of the Thames”

This line from Morrissey’s song “Come Back to Camden” always springs to mind when I think of the Thames, an evocative line in an aching ballad about lost love in London. It was time to start my journey along the iconic river, and I popped on my headphones with this song full blast. As a big-time music nerd (I spent five years as a critic for the late indie rock zine Cokemachineglow), I always make playlists for my trips. I made this one extra-long and extra-British, with my all-time favorites the Smiths/Morrissey, Radiohead, Blur; lesser-known bands like the Field Mice, The Clientele and Talulah Gosh; and selections from my mom’s record collection like the Beatles, Kinks, Donovan and the Small Faces (see condensed Spotify version of playlist below). I knew it would be just the company I needed for a magical walk.

I decided to reverse the order of the London for Free walk and begin at the Tower Bridge, ending closer to Soho, where I was to meet my husband in early evening. The walk was clearly designed for an optimal Big Ben photo op in the early day sun, but seeing as the famous landmark was surrounded by scaffolding anyway, I was unconcerned. The day began cloudy, and i was fully prepared for a famous London rain shower. But I was pleased to find the sun coming out as the day wore on. The Tower Bridge, the so-called “most famous bridge in the world” (completed in 1894), cut a striking silhouette against the river.

I proceeded from the Tower Bridge into the morass of office buildings in the Southwark neighborhood. Tourists and Londoners alike rested casually on the steps separating buildings from river. Weaving in between smartly dressed people with briefcases, I felt a stab of jealousy toward the central London office worker, who each day hustles into the heart of one of the world’s most exciting cities, feeling the wind off the Thames, breathing in aromas from the food stalls at Borough Market. Having worked for awhile in Midtown Manhattan, I know that this kind of daily commute can become strenuous and repetitive. But I also know that it takes a lot to quell that internal breathlessness: I’m really here, in the heart of New York City. I’m here in London, at the center of it all.

Borough Market is an oft-recommended lunch stop in London for good reason: it’s a place to find something delicious and filling for less than ten pounds, more often than not less than five. It is one of many showcases for London’s robust population of immigrants, featuring food from countries all over the world. Overwhelmed by the options swimming around me, I stopped at stall with no line advertising “food of the Balkans.” Feeling that this was sufficiently far-flung, I ordered a savory pie (I’m pretty sure it was some variation on a börek) filled with spinach, cheese and artichoke. Sitting on a Thames-facing bench with my Balkan pie, people-watching and eavesdropping, I have to admit I was pretty freaking happy.

The Tate Modern and Half-Hidden Big Ben

Bottles from Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles's 1970 Coca-Cola Project — Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles’s 1970 “Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project,” one of my favorite works at the Tate Modern. Meireles printed Coke bottles with political slogans (and Molotov cocktail instructions) and put them into circulation.

After lunch, I crossed Southwark Bridge to catch a glimpse of St. Paul’s cathedral before continuing on my way. My next bridge was Millennium, the pedestrian bridge that opened in the year 2000. I’m always pro-pedestrian bridge, and — despite a general disdain for anything dubbed “Millennium” — I find it to be a pretty lovely structure, with a view of St. Paul’s on one side and the Tate Modern on the other. While I hadn’t planned on visiting the Tate Modern again, I couldn’t resist its pull. It’s one of the best museums in the world after all, and as the façade boasts, it’s completely free.

The Tate Modern: wonderful inside & out.

The Tate Modern grounds are also a prime example of London’s excellent public spaces. On this sunny 65-degree day, many congregated on the museum’s green and benches to chat, picnic or read. Nearby, a man slung a small lasso through a pool of bubble solution, sending clouds of iridescent spheres into the air.

My quite ugly photo of a backlit, be-scaffolded Big Ben. — My proudly ugly photo of a backlit, be-scaffolded Big Ben.

After spending time at the Tate, I crossed Blackfriars’ Bridge, walked west along Temple Gardens and crossed again via Waterloo, threading my way through the thongs at the London Eye — the only place on my walk that felt a little too touristy. I was headed to Westminster Bridge and Big Ben, arguably London’s most iconic spot, which was at this particular time shrouded in scaffolding. I had to laugh to myself when I saw it, and thought of the mixture of disappointment and relief the tourists around me must be feeling — freed from the pressure of snapping the “perfect” photo. The scaffolding brought Big Ben down to earth somehow, stripping away its grandeur to reveal a humble clock tower in need of repair.

Protests at Parliament

Pro-choice protest in Parliament Square.

A protest against violence in Gaza, Parliament Square.

I concluded my walk at Parliament Square, just as the workday was ending and the crowds were flowing into the surrounding tube stations. As I strolled toward Parliament Square Garden, a gathering of protestors caught my eye. Joining the crowd, I listened as speakers from Northern Ireland argued for abortion rights in that country, in light of the Republic of Ireland’s recent decision to repeal the eighth amendment. Northern Ireland now stands alone as the only country in the UK where women do not have access to safe, legal abortion.

The protest concluded and I ambled down Parliament Street, quickly running into another, larger gathering protesting the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the recent military violence against activists at the border. The crowd at this protest was large and incredibly diverse, with native Brits and immigrants alike cheering support for a roster of speakers. I realized I had come to Parliament Square at the right time, as it was a great opportunity to experience activism in London firsthand and learn more about the issues that matter to people here.

End of an Introduction

A pre-dinner pint at the Dog & Duck pub in Soho.

I moved on to meet my husband at the Dog and Duck pub in Soho (a former hangout of George Orwell, it must be noted), and early evening in the city was lively and golden. Garrulous after-work crowds gathered outside of pubs, balancing pints on windowsills and smoking in shirts-and-ties and smart dresses (when in England or Ireland, I always experience jealousy pangs that Americans don’t celebrate happy hour with nearly as much gusto).

Chuffed to be drinking Fuller's at the Dog & Duck — Chuffed to be drinking Fuller’s at the Dog & Duck

Though I was tired and ready to settle in for a pint and some conversation, it was bittersweet to end my day of walking — to turn off my headphones and my meandering thoughts and break from my role as silent observer, passerby, sightseer.

After downing some pints with a friend in the crowded, cozy pub, we concluded our day with dinner at Machiya, a reasonably priced, modern and delicious Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood. I still had another day to go in London, but I finished the first proud of what I had accomplished. Not only did I spend the day exactly as I pleased, wandering with no pressure to accomplish anything besides move from point A to point B; I was intentional about my path, and as present in the moment as I could be. I discovered I now had a feeling for London, at least a very small slice of it. I could trace on a map where I had been and what I had seen there, I could remember what it felt like to weave through the office crowds in Southwark, to roam the Tate Modern lawn with bubbles popping around me, to stand surrounded by protestors outside Parliament.

London is a large and complex city, and I am by no means finished with it. But over one day in early June, we had the chance become ever-so-gently acquainted, to make a tentative connection. And for that, I’m thankful.

My London Wander Playlist

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On Anthony Bourdain and Transformative Travel

Bourdain taught us that travel is more than a vacation, and people around the world are more alike than we think.

Like most people who love travel, I was hit hard by Anthony Bourdain’s death earlier this month. When we heard, my husband and I had just wrapped up year two of the short study abroad program we lead in southern Italy (for the University of Oklahoma), and were visiting friends in Exeter in Devon, England for a few days before heading back to the states. We spent the day and night following his death in a way Bourdain would appreciate: exploring a place we’d never been — the rocky English coastal town of Lyme Regis — and then settling down for an epic dinner of local crab salad, sausages, cheeses, beer, and wine over conversation with good friends.

In that moment more than ever, I felt that these are the kinds of experiences that make life worth living. Anthony Bourdain believed that, too — or at least he expressed as much in his writing. Why a man with so much passion for life decided to end his, we can’t know. We can only hope that at this time of crisis in our country, his straightforward, inspiring, important body of work can continue its reach and impact.

Anthony Bourdain’s Legacy

As with most things, I wasn’t able to truly appreciate Anthony Bourdain until he was gone. I had followed two of his travel shows — No Reservations and Parts Unknown — and read some of his work, even assigning one of his essays, “The Hungry American,” as part of last year’s study abroad curriculum (this year I subbed it out to make room for more women writers). I knew, as clearly as one knows that Neapolitan-style pizza is superior to Domino’s, that his travel shows were by far the best in the genre. But I hadn’t really reckoned with the complexity of his work — what it was all about, and what it was doing — until he passed. I came home from our three-week European trip jet-lagged, sick, and determined to return to Bourdain’s oeuvre, for my money one of the more impressive in the history of travel writing.

When I returned to No Reservations and Parts Unknown, it hit me immediately just how much of my perspective had already been subtly shaped by years of watching these shows. When I became familiar with Bourdain in my early twenties, I was already in love with travel due to my study abroad experience living in Ireland and traveling in Western Europe. But funny as it sounds, Bourdain’s work actually helped me to better understand my own experience of living and traveling abroad. And he also introduced me slowly to new places I had never thought of traveling, approaching them in ways both accessible and unexpected.

The Saturday market in Catania, Sicily. — The Saturday market in Catania, Sicily: a Bourdain-esque cultural experience, 2018.

Though Bourdain has stated that before beginning No Reservations he’d “been basically nowhere,” his perspective is informed by his experiences as the grandson of French immigrants and as a longtime chef. Chefs, I would have to imagine, confront on a daily basis the influence of the global on our day-to-day life. Whether brought here by immigrants, colonialism, or other means, American food as we know it would not exist without the influence of a great many cultures. So it was natural that Bourdain evolved into a crusader for global travel and cross-cultural exchange, and in his down-to-earth, freewheeling way, took viewers around the world like no one else on television has done. Geared toward all curious parties (recognizing that the majority of viewers would never make it to such far-flung places), Bourdain’s shows eschew the guidebook format of hosts like Rick Steves and Samantha Brown. He brings viewers as close as possible to the experience of transformative travel in the interest of creating a more open-minded and better world.

The Bourdain Philosophy of Travel

Overall, watching Bourdain uncovered for me something I had already learned, but perhaps refused to acknowledge: that to travel and really learn something — truly connect — is difficult. Due mainly to our work-infatuated culture, we in this country often see travel as synonymous with vacation. Escape is a term that comes up often: escape from our day-to-day lives, our responsibilities, our mundane selves. But transformative travel, of the kind Bourdain favored, is quite the opposite.

The busy streets of Naples. — The busy streets of Naples, 2018.

Claude Levi-Strauss’s 1955 travel memoir Tristes Tropiques features one of my favorite travel-related quotes:“Perhaps, then, this was what traveling was, an exploration of the deserts of my mind rather than those surrounding me.”

Of course people — relationships, meetings, connections — are central to his work, but I think Bourdain would agree that travel is at its heart about the traveler. That the primary reward of travel is its impact on one’s consciousness and perspective, the way it nudges one’s mind open painstakingly, almost imperceptibly. For travel of the non-“escape” variety, as Bourdain knew, means not shirking but taking on additional responsibility — the responsibility of the respectful, curious traveler who attempts real connection with another culture and the people in it. This traveler must navigate the attendant confusion, awkwardness, discomfort, and self-consciousness this implies. It’s not easy, and attempts may even feel “unsuccessful.” It may take days, weeks, months, years to sink in — until one morning, you wake up to find you’ve grown to understand the world just a little bit more.

With our study abroad group in Napoli, learning about the mafia, 2017.

Study Abroad à la Bourdain

Our study abroad course, taught through the College of International Studies at OU, is technically a hybrid of Art History and Travel Writing. My husband the art history professor tries to teach our students (as much as one can in the course of a mere 11 days) how to look at things, how to notice and describe and make meaning from the act of seeing. And I introduce them to something called “travel writing” (of which most have never heard) through readings and discussions about what it means to travel, to be a traveler, and how to tell stories about travel and evoke a sense of place.

But the real point of the course is much larger. What we hope students really take away is not the ability to describe the mosaics at Pompeii or write an entertaining essay about getting lost in Naples. Ours is (or should be) the goal of every study abroad course: for them to learn that travel can be more than just taking a photo with the Colosseum, or sitting on a beach at a resort (though there’s nothing inherently wrong with those things). That the real reward is the process of learning about, negotiating, and connecting with another culture. We want them to see that difference isn’t scary. We want them to learn that there are people all over the world, speaking different languages and practicing different customs, with whom they have an awful lot in common. And in the end, we want them to see that traveling with an open, curious mind is one way to grow as a human being in this world. It’s a tall order for less than two weeks. The best we can hope for is to plant a seed.

Learning about food at a local farm, Sorrento, Italy. — Farm in Sorrento, Italy, where our group learned about local food, 2018.

This same mission statement is behind pretty much all of Anthony Bourdain’s travel-related work. In an America that grows increasingly paranoid and isolationist by the day, he made it his mission to demonstrate that our differences on the surface belie our similarities underneath. Recently, I revisited his Travel Channel series No Reservations, which I remembered as perhaps less intentional than Parts Unknown. I was surprised to find that from episode one, the Bourdain philosophy made famous by the best episodes of Parts Unknown (“Hanoi,” “Iran,” “Cuba,” “Jerusalem”) was already crystal-clear: that much of the ethnocentrism and xenophobia present in our culture is a result of ignorance, and that travel is its essential antidote.

I had forgotten that No Reservations began just a few years after 9/11, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were in full swing and the United States had adopted a with-us-or-against-us position regarding its allies. The first episode takes place in Paris, with Bourdain critiquing the ridiculous anti-French sentiment and “freedom fries” rhetoric of that era. In this episode and others, Bourdain performs a balancing act, highlighting cultural differences and idiosyncrasies while always keeping up his mantra: we’re all pretty much the same. This is a delicate message for a cable show, but he makes it look easy.

Bourdain and Obama in a clip from Parts Unknown, "Hanoi." — Bourdain and Obama in a clip from Parts Unknown, “Hanoi.” (Source: Pete Souza / Barack Obama Twitter.)

Take Bourdain’s conversation with then-President Obama on the most famous episode of Parts Unknown, as the two share a dinner of bún chả in Hanoi, Vietnam: “We’re at a point where we seem to be turning inwards,” Bourdain remarks. “I mean, we’re actually talking about building a wall around our country. And yet you have been reaching out to people who don’t necessarily agree with us — Gaza, Iran, Cuba — I mean, I just wish that more Americans had passports. The sense in which you can see how other people live seems useful at worst and incredibly pleasurable and interesting at best.”

Obama, nodding his head, agrees. “It confirms the basic truth,” he says, “that people everywhere are pretty much the same.”

Students doing Judo with teenagers in at Star Judo Gym, which helps children in Scampia through sport — Our students doing Judo with teenagers in at Star Judo Gym, which helps children in Scampia through sport, 2018.

This is the kind of balance those of us who teach study abroad courses must strive for: to highlight the specific and unique aspects of a culture without exoticizing or othering, always attempting to maintain that tacit acknowledgement that really, we’re all the same. For our program, we’re lucky enough to work with an Italian guide (the marvelous Katia) who integrates Bourdain-like experiences into our curriculum: meetings with immigrant-advocacy and anti-mafia nonprofits, as well as locals whose lives have been touched by the mafia, a visit to a local organic farm, and even a visit to a judo gym for underprivileged children and teens. Of course, Italian culture is not such a difficult one for new travelers to embrace, and it’s unencumbered by the negative associations Americans have with places like Iran or Cuba. But it all comes down to the same principle: introduce travelers to actual people from that culture, and those travelers will likely come away with a great deal more empathy and less fear.

Global Education in Trump’s America

And so though I’m somewhat new at this whole study abroad thing (and this whole teaching thing, for that matter, as I’ve only been doing it for a few years), more and more I’ve realized how crucial learning about other cultures — even if one can’t travel — is to becoming an educated citizen. Every day in Trump’s America, we see the results of the opposite. Trump promotes ignorance and fear of those different from us and a belief, despite this ignorance, that we are superior. It’s a sickening, cynical way to look at the world, one that directly results in mistreatment of immigrants, people of color, the lgbtq community — and the list goes on.

Meeting with staff at Eleven, a restaurant that hires and trains immigrants from Northern Africa. — Meeting with staff at Eleven in Catania, Sicily, a restaurant that hires and trains immigrants from Northern Africa, 2017.

It’s true that not everyone can afford to travel the globe, and many lack the financial means to travel even to another state. But through work like Anthony Bourdain’s, they can approximate the experience. And that’s worth a lot. Because in addition to teaching us open-mindedness and empathy, travel — or the approximation of it — humbles us. This is true for young and old, experienced or first-time traveler. The world is staggering and vast, we quickly learn. But this revelation need not be a negative one. Personally, when I think about how much of the world in all of its beautiful complexity I have yet to learn about, I feel awestruck, energized, even comforted. People are mostly the same, yes. But that fact makes their differences all the more interesting.

One of my favorite Bourdain quotes to this effect comes from an early episode of No Reservations set in Peru. Plainly inspired by his experience, Bourdain demonstrates the enthusiasm, passion, and embrace of life that made his death so difficult to comprehend. “It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be,” he says. “The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go and how much more there is to learn.” He pauses. “Perhaps that’s enlightenment enough — to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

(Top image: Bourdain eating with friends in Iran on Parts Unknown. Source: CNN)

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New Orleans: One of America’s “Only Cities”?

The foreign-feeling, people-pleasing experience of NOLA.

New Orleans native Tennessee Williams is quoted as saying, “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everything else is Cleveland.” Perhaps that’s a tad harsh, as there are a number of other wonderful and interesting cities in the U.S. (And the Cleve itself isn’t so bad! Just ask Liz Lemon.) But one thing the cities of New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans all have in common is their multiculturalism – something that I imagined inspired Williams’s quip.

It may seem obvious, but one of the things I’ve come to value the most when traveling throughout this country is those areas where diverse cultures come into contact with one another, often creating something new and beautiful in the process. I currently reside in Oklahoma, a state that may seem homogenous statistically, but also one where a number of Native American nations and Latino and Southeast Asian cultures converge, creating some of the state’s most interesting traditions and neighborhoods. In our globalized world where you can find the same chain stores in every town, the influence of different cultures becomes more important than ever.

The Candlelight Lounge in Tremé, where musicians from the neighborhood gather on Wednesdays.

Everyone Loves New Orleans?

New Orleans is one of the first places I’ve ever visit about which I heard nothing but rave reviews from others who had visited. It’s certainly the only city of the three Williams mentions with such a positive reception – New York is often seen as too crowded and frantic, San Francisco too gentrified and taken over by tech (and both too expensive). But no matter what kind of person I asked – avid traveler, introvert, wealthy, middle class, culture vulture or party person – everyone liked NOLA. When people tried to explain it to me, they said things about the food, the friendliness, the diversity. But they also said this: “It’s like being in another country, when you’re still in the U.S.”

The famous Cafe du Monde at midnight, when the crowds are thin but the beignets are just as good.

This intrigued me, as person who spends much of her time trying to scheme ways to leave the country and travel abroad for cheap. But traveling abroad without even leaving the U.S.? That I hadn’t thought of.

“Like Being in Another Country”

And it’s true. NOLA has a wide range of cultural influences. The city began its life as a French colony, was ceded to the Spanish, and then returned to French rule about a century later. After the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans saw an influx of Haitian, Creole, African and French immigrants; Irish, Germans, and Italians later joined. The confluence of all of these cultures made its mark on the city, which remains today. Some parts of New Orleans feel Caribbean, some Spanish, and some French. My friends were correct when they said it feels like being in another country – but a country wholly its own, where pieces of cultures have become integrated over the years into one ever-evolving whole.

Shot from the backyard of our New Orleans Airbnb – your classic colorful shotgun shack.

And everything else people said is true, too: there’s great food (especially seafood, which I greatly appreciate as someone from landlocked country), music, art, and history. It also has those great cemeteries that feel like ancient sites, ice-cold daiquiris and monsoons you can drink on the street, and – at the best bars – all the free red beans and rice you could want.

I went to New Orleans in March to spend a week with great friends who knew the area. We covered all we could – culture at the New Orleans Museum of Art, history at Lafayette and St. Louis Cemeteries, music at Candlelight Lounge, Vaughan’s, and One-Eyed Jacks and, of course, all the food we could eat and still live to be tourists another day. During this whirlwind trip, I had to agree with those I surveyed: while other towns might claim to have something for everyone, New Orleans truly does.

We had to try New Orleans' famous Snoballs. — We had to try New Orleans’ famous Snoballs.

Liuzza's near the French quarter; a great po'boy. — Liuzza’s near the French quarter; a great po’boy.

Igor's: an ingenious Laundromat/bar combo. — Laundromat-bar Igor’s

Tennessee Williams was right – New Orleans is a true American city, in sense that it embodies all that the word “city” invokes: the community, the sense of excitement, and the unique vitality of a place so self-contained and self-possessed.

A friend's farm in the 9th ward. — A friend’s farm in the 9th ward.

Sunset in the Irish Channel neighborhood.

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