Archive for March, 2010

Some songs just make you want to go somewhere. Some songs you remember from travels and whenever you hear them you are transported back to that specific trip or place. Here are my top 5 travel songs!

1. Tangled up in Blue by Bob Dylan
A road trip originally headed east, but had some pretty awesome detours. Great inspiration to be open minded when traveling–meet people, see things; above all– keep going.

2. Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Don’t wait to see the trees until they are in a tree museum. Take time to appreciate what is here, now. Get out.

3. The World at Large by Modest Mouse
When the seasons change so does our desire for a change of scenery.

4. City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie
You haven’t traveled if you’ve never traveled by train. This song will have you singing along and wishing you were playing a card game with friends while watching the landscape pass outside your window A mandatory song for me each time I take a long train ride through Europe.

5. Life is a Highway by Tom Cochrane
This song is on all travel song lists, but for good reason. Crank the windows down, fill the gas tank and just drive (personally I imagine wide open roads just outside of Missoula, MT when I hear this song… ).

Which are your top 5 travel songs?

bob dylan painting by lamarsorrento@yahoo.com

… so now we can’t build castles for the robots because the pieces don’t fit together”.

This is a lyric from a song I have been listening to non-stop by the Maccabees called ‘Lego’. It fits the theme of this post because Legos are being used for more than just robots and castles these days in NYC.

German artist Jan Vormann has been using Lego blocks to fill in open cracks and holes in buildings all around the city (as well as in Europe).
Here are just a few pics I was able to find online. Fun. I must go find one of these spots in person now. NYC is the perfect element for finding oddities that often cause me to do double takes. These oddities and the miles of city streets in which to find them on always have me eagerly anticipating my day o’ wandering in the city. Even if your city isn’t as large as mine–there is always something interesting to be found; get out there and look.

Wow. this is the life. 89F degrees with a very steady breeze. Just when I start feeling a bit warm, I’m suddenly cool.

This was my first journal entry on my first day in Aruba as I sat on the beach just outside my hotel.

The beaches in Aruba are some of the cleanest I have seen and the sand appears to be unnaturally white in contrast to the ocean water that has no less than five varying colors of aqua blue. After moving to the East Coast, my normal tropical vacation destinations of Hawaii and Western Mexico became too far away for long weekend escapes so I was forced to find closer destinations.

Aruba, one of the ABC islands (B and C being Bonaire and Curacao) in the Caribbean has a stigma–everyone is aware of that fact. It is here where a young girl on an school excursion made some bad decisions, chose to hang out with the wrong friends and ended up missing. Tragic yes, of course, but what is also tragic is the negative impression that incident left on Aruba. The bad press made an impression on me–I had very low expectations for my visit and was admittedly drawn there only for the warm weather and 4 hour direct flight from NYC.

I scored a great deal at the Westin in the Palm Beach area of the island, the newer “high rise” section. The view from my room overlooked the Caribbean Sea, the salt water hotel pool and 10 stories below under a canopy of palm trees, a live steel drum band that serenaded the hotel guests most of the day. Have you ever heard ‘Land Down Under’ by Men at Work performed by an Arubian Steel Drum band? It is awesome. Even their version of ‘Kokomo’ sounded good.

Aruba is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Together, the State of the Netherlands, the State of the Netherlands Antilles and the State of Aruba form a Commonwealth. They all share Dutch citizenship and the Dutch passport. I love the Dutch. In my experience, any place with Dutch influence is clean, friendly and inviting. Dutch and a local pigeon dialect are the national languages here, but Spanish and English are spoken freely. To visit a Caribbean island (although some say Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao are technically considered South American by their longitude and latitude marks) and be able to communicate in English so easily would normally be a turn off for me; but here, I still felt as though I was in a foreign land and much further away from the US than I actually was.

Inevitably, Aruba traded some of their tropical authenticity and fell victim to the thousands of people that visit each morning and then depart each evening on cruise ships– barely straying from the tourist t-shirt shops and chain restaurants just across the street from the port. Luckily, Palm Beach is driving distance from the cruise ship area which spares me (and other residents of the High Rise section) the tacky souvenir shops and the annoying, not at all persuasive, offers from street salesmen to take you fishing, boating, diving, hiking or whatever else you may want to do on the Island.

There is plenty to do on this small island (but do take note–if your kind of fun involves mind altering substances, know that Aruba’s rules on illicit drugs are not nearly as lax as their parent country) and renting a car to drive around the island to see how the locals live is a good first step. My agenda for the week included wreck dives (three ships and a plane) with one of the local PADI shops (note: with the shallowness of the dives, the snorkeling is nearly as good as the diving), kite boarding, or at least watching some crazy kite stunts, at Baby Beach on the windy side of the island, an overnight trip to Venezuela via ferry-only 17 miles away- (which is another story in itself) and of course laying by the pool with a floatie, a book and a cool drink.

baby beach

With its close proximity to major cities on the East Coast, Aruba is definitely a top vacation spot and if all travelers keep in mind that regardless of the destination, any place can be dangerous to visit, places like Aruba wouldn’t get such a bad reputation.

Just last night I saw that Aruba is still making the nightly news, or rather, the unfortunate incident with the missing girl is still making news. I am relieved though that now when I hear Aruba mentioned, I no longer think of an unsafe place– but instead of a place I can’t wait to visit again.

Now and again, when I have a free minute, I go through all of my magazines that seem to pile up (this includes my online subscriptions), many of which are centered on NYC and I am amazed at the eye catching, sometimes odd things I discover. New York is a melting pot of all that is good, bad and weird in the world and here are some things of late that caught my attention.

Posh Icelandic couple sued for putting IKEA kitchen in swank Gramercy Park Hotel pad
courtesy of the Daily News

Apparently, the swank GPH is far too glamourous for run of the mill Ikea sinks. People, COME ON! Don’t you know that you need to ask all of the important questions (like if the iron steams horizontal or vertical or the brand of the sink) BEFORE you agree to rent a room… Geez. Obviously not locals.

In keeping with the above posh theme…

Posh Soho House boots ‘uncool’ members
courtesy of the NY Post

This very, very, VERY elite hotel in one of my fave hangouts, the Meatpacking District, seems to be ditching the crowd that may look too elite (even the Sex in the City girls got booted in an episode). If you can get into Soho House parties (in particular, their pool parties on the roof are FAMOUS) you are definitely living right– but now it seems, unless you can fit into the restructuring plan to get the House back to its “creative roots”, well– forget it. Even the early members (4500 in total with 3000 on the waiting list) are having their membership renewals declined because from what I can gather from this article– the image of stuffiness and corporate-ness is clearly uncool and a thing of the past; the management even requested that members not wear suits and ties. What apparently is still supported by the management is the “encouragement of under 27 memberships”.

Side note: my very fabulous friend Justin (under 27), artist and film producer, actually had an invite to one of the pool parties last summer and INVITED ME! Sadly I was out of town and I recall wondering that I’d be a bit nervous for Tom and I showing up because maybe WE were not elite enough— I mean, I actually swim when I go to pool parties–CANNONBALL! Anyway, now no need to worry about that! I am calling Justin to see about this summer!

… and to wrap this up I want to bring the last example down a level—one the common man can relate to: motorcycles.

New York Magazine had a feature on some new shops that offer complimentary food and drink while you shop. This in itself doesn’t sound too odd; in this economy you gotta do what you can to bring the consumer in, right? One of the stores’ food and merchandise pairing though does seem to be a category in the childhood game of “one of these things doesn’t belong”.

NYC Motorcycle Federation on 6th Ave sells biker jackets, stylish gem encrusted helmets, customized leather seats and shredded Harley tees.
The food: Illy coffee, Ceci-Cela croissants and prosciutto panini.
Did I mention that their logo is a skull of the Statue of Liberty, her crown still intact?

Anything about this seem weird? Something about this combo of Harley and croissants doesn’t quite work… but in NYC, well everything works.