Another week for Sunday Stealing, this time with the questions being about travel. I’ve had travel on the mind for several years now, partly from watching the wonderful shows of Anthony Bourdain and then Phil Rosenthal’s Somebody Feed Phil, and partly from studying photography and seeing the dispatches sent back by the pro photographers. And, yes, from a few small travels of my own. Let’s get to it!

1. Have you traveled abroad? Where have you been? If you haven’t been overseas, which country would you most like to visit?

No, I have not. Places I’d like to see or go? Great Britain, for one. Vienna. Maybe Paris, but I’m not totally sure on that one. Japan…I’ve heard things about Kyoto that sound life-changing.

2. Where did you go on your last trip? Talk about where you went and what you did.

Defining “trip” as “any jaunt out of town that involves a hotel stay of any duration”, it would have been our annual trip to Ithaca last year. When we can we prefer to make a two-night stay out of this journey, but that didn’t work out last year. But basically the usual itinerary is kind of the same: lunch locally on Friday, then we road-trip to Rochester where we stay and have dinner. Then the next day we travel to Ithaca, stopping along the way at a winery and to see some sights in the Finger Lakes before we attend Ithaca’s Apple Harvest Festival. That’s a lot of driving for one day, which is why we prefer to have a two-night stay in Rochester (from home to Ithaca is about three hours). I would just link the post where I talked about that trip and shared a bunch of photos I took from it, but…it appears that I never actually wrote such a post about last year’s Ithaca trip. I chalk this up to the fact that starting in mid-August, and not really ending until just this past January, was a cataclysmically awful time in my life.

Prior to that, we had a long weekend in Toronto last spring, and prior to that was Ithaca again.

3. What is the best place for a vacation in your country? Why is it good?

It depends on what you want, really. If you want a hot city or a cold nature place, or a cold city and a hot nature place…or if you want mountains or seaside, forests or deserts…quiet or crowd energy…I couldn’t begin to say what’s best. I can say why I’ve loved places I’ve gone to, though.

4. What is the longest time you have been away from home? Did you feel homesick?

We were in Hawaii for eleven days. It was not enough. (Though I did miss our dogs terribly. And our cats a little.)

5. How long should a vacation be? How long does it take you to really relax?

Now, a vacation isn’t quite the same as a trip, is it? I think a vacation should be long enough to allow one to fully get one’s mind off work, and there’s no real one-size-fits-all for everybody on that. For me to really be a vacation it needs to be at least five days; anything shorter than that is a long weekend. (And those are lovely, truly! I’ve got one coming up, and I desperately need it!)

I think I read somewhere recently that the optimal length of a vacation is eight days; anything more than that and while you might have continued fun, your mind won’t benefit any more for having not been at work. I don’t know about that, but I do know that for many Americans, including myself, an eight-day vacation is kind of a luxury.

6. What forms of transportation do you prefer to use when you travel?

If I could take a train everywhere, I would. I dislike flying because the airlines have made it unpleasant, though I don’t find it hellish. (Oddly, I love airports! I find them incredibly fascinating places.) Unfortunately, trains are not much of an option these days, so it’s mostly driving.

During our Toronto trip, we stayed in the outskirts of Mississauga, ON, and relied on the GO Train system to actually get into the city. Good public transportation is a wonderful thing.

7. How do you choose where to go? Are you inspired by other people’s travel stories? Or photos? Or advertising?

I love reading travel writing, and watching travel documentaries! We don’t get to travel far-and-wide enough to have to make decisions on where we go, though. That’s the thing about travel: it’s really a matter of privilege, isn’t it? Which I think is a big part of why so many people have annual trips that they take to the same place: when you’re laying out big money for travel, you don’t want to risk it not going well.

8. What’s more important to you when you travel – comfort and relaxation, or stimulating new experiences?

Some of each. I don’t like “on-the-go, all-the-time”, but just sitting in the hotel or lazing by the pool all day for the duration? No!

However, I do also think that traveling to beloved places because you want to do beloved things again and see beloved things again doesn’t get celebrated enough.

9. Do you like to try local foods when you go somewhere? Have you ever had something really delicious?

Always! Part of the whole reason for travel is food! I’m always flabbergasted that people travel to places far away from their homes and then eat at the same chain places. I do not understand that, ever.

Hawaii, just to name one example, was an amazing food experience. Just the garlic shrimp from the shrimp trucks blew our minds.

10. Things can go wrong when you travel. Have you had any bad travel experiences?

We had set up our Toronto trip before it emerged that The Wife was having mobility issues, so that made for some challenges, especially when one restaurant we wanted to go to was seven or eight whole blocks from the nearest subway station…and then it turned out that the trains weren’t even running that far because of construction, so we had to transfer to buses and then still walk the eight blocks there…and then back again. And this was after we’d managed to get lost in Toronto’s Underground City thing. That day as a challenge.

Oh, and the flight back from Hawaii was…an adventure.

11. Do you take a lot with you when you travel? Or do you try to pack light?

I probably pack heavier than I should. I don’t admit to many downsides of overalls, but they take up more room in the suitcase than normal pants. The Wife always makes fun of me for packing tons of clothes, but I’m always like, “I have an outfit for each day, plus one ‘lazy in the hotel room’ outfit!” And when we went to Hawaii, I did not pack an outfit for each day! That would have been absurd. Our suite had a washing machine, which made things easy. Plus I knew I’d end up buying a new shirt or two.

12. Which places in the world do you think are too dangerous to visit? Why are they dangerous?

Honestly, I don’t think I’m educated enough on the world right now to really assess this. Bad things can happen anywhere, and they do.

13. What is the best age to travel? Can children appreciate the experience?

They can, but then you have to tailor a lot of the experience to them. Nothing’s worse than being dragged somewhere with your parents, away from your friends, and having nothing to do.

14. What are the advantages and disadvantages of traveling alone?

No idea! I’ve never traveled alone, except for a training trip for a job I had years ago, and that doesn’t count. I suppose it’s easier to keep track of yourself.

I’ve thought about going on writing retreats in the past, or maybe a photography trip now, but I haven’t pulled the trigger.

15. What kind of accommodation do you like to stay in when you travel?

Hotels, mostly. I really don’t think I’d like the vibe of an Air B&B or an actual B&B. I’m not super-demanding; clean and cool rooms, a decent selection of channels on the teevee, Wi-fi, and near to decent restaurants, and I’m good. The place we stayed in Hawaii was luxurious, and I’m going to have a hard time with not staying there if/when we go back. And we rented a wonderful cottage on Seneca Lake for our 25th anniversary; that was an absolute delight!

16. Do you like to talk to the local people when you travel? Why or why not?

We do, in the course of just being there and interacting.

17. Would you like to go to a big international event, such as the Olympics or an international film festival? What would be good or bad about attending such an event?

I honestly don’t think that would be pleasant at all…but then, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade was an absolute joy to attend, so…maybe?

I took a couple days off from posting here, so let’s get back in the swing with a Sunday Stealing quiz! This one looks pretty benign:

1. Are you double jointed?

Nope!

2. Are you ticklish?

I know I used to be, I don’t know if I still am. Honestly, you reach a point in life where tickling isn’t a thing anymore, and looking back on all the tickling that went on in college, I’m wondering if that maybe shouldn’t have been a thing at all.

3. Cookies, cakes, or donuts?

Yes.

Honestly, the biggest impediment to my health right now is my undefeatable sweet tooth. The only area of life where I’ve really been able to conquer it is coffee: for years I took it with a lot of sugar, but now, I can’t abide sugar in my coffee. But other than that, I love sweet stuff and I have very low resistance to it. Not great. I’m better than I used to be, but I’m nowhere near as good as I should be about it.

Oh, and Roger‘s right about how wonderful pie is! I am always ready to second someone else’s endorsement of pie. And that’s not even referring to pie as facial accessory.

4. Did you go to prom? 

No, and I have never once regretted not going, either. I didn’t understand the fuss then and I still don’t get it. I wasn’t one who detested my high school years, but I didn’t see them as a font of Wonderful Lifelong Memories, either, and I was realistic enough to know then that I was unlikely to ever see any of those people much again once high school was over, so…why bother with a dance?

(One thing that I’ve noticed people making a big deal of is “seeing their kids off to Prom”. I don’t really get this, either. I don’t judge it, but I don’t get it.)

(Another thought: when I was a kid, Prom was all about couples, or one boy and one girl going together, even if they weren’t a “couple”, strictly speaking. I know now that Proms can be more about going as a group of friends, without the whole “couple” thing at all if you don’t want it, and if that had been the vibe, then maybe I would have gone.)

(Ultimately, though, not going to Prom felt like an act of rebellion against all the “High school is the best time of your life!” crap that I was hearing constantly back then. I believed even then that if you can honestly look back decades later and conclude that you really did peak in high school, you have made a colossal error or a sequence of errors at some point.)

5. Do you bite your nails?

No. I did as a kid, but that habit went away also when I was a kid. Playing trumpet and piano, as well as typing a lot, always gave me incentive to just keep them trimmed, and as nervous habits go, nail-biting was never one of mine.

6. Do you enjoy dancing?

No, but I think that’s because I’ve never done it enough to get beyond the point that I feel really weird when I do it. Maybe if dancing had been a thing in gym class when I was a kid…well, actually it was, briefly, when I was in third and fourth grade, and we did square dancing. (Years later, I learned that there might have been some less-than-great reasons for square dancing in schools.) But once I got to ultra-conservative small-town Southern Tier New York? Dancing in gym class? You must be joking! Get in there and wrestle, kids!

Now, watching dancing is an absolute joy.

7. Do you forgive easily?

Not super easily, no…it usually takes me a bit of time and distance to get there. I usually do, though.

I don’t forget super-easily, though, and if something happens that requires forgiveness, then once I’ve done the forgiving, I’m still likely to incorporate some extra distance into the relationship.

8. Do you prefer to bathe or shower? 

Shower.

9. Does your name have any special meaning? 

Not that I am aware of. And now, well, if there was, I’m never going to know it. But I’m sure the subject would have come up at some point. (In fact, it probably did and I just never bothered retaining the information.)

10. Have you ever gone camping? 

Yes, when I was a kid. It was our standard means of lodging when we were oot-and-aboot. My parents always owned a camper, and in fact they owned one up until they started downsizing their “estate” in the early 2010s in anticipation of moving to the Buffalo area to be nearer us.

11. Have you ever won something?

Yes, here and there! Winning stuff is nice. The best thing I won is probably the Short Fiction Contest that the Buffalo News used to run every year. In 2007 the subject was the assassination of President William McKinley (which happened in Buffalo), and my story won. You can read my winning entry here!

12. What did you last eat?

A chocolate chip cookie from our favorite local bakery that we visit each Saturday morning. My last meal was the Baja Chicken Penne that I got from Poppyseed, a local restaurant that’s been around forever and there’s a reason for that.

13. What’s your longest relationship so far? 

Excluding my father and my sister, obviously, I’m still connected (via Facebook) with people from grade school, including one girl I knew way back in Second Grade when we lived for one year in Elkins, WV.

14. Have you ever been on a diet? 

Yes, and I don’t bother with that anymore. It’s a waste of time and energy and they always eventually fail. I do find myself needing to recalibrate my daily eating toward healthier options and mixes once in a while, but I don’t go on “diets” in the sense of “I’m not eating any of that” or “I’m only eating this.” 

My favorite dietary advice came from a chiropractor we saw for a while, back in the 2000s. He was anti-diet for the reasons I state above, and what was more, he advised indulgence on small levels. He said to me something along these lines: “If you have to eat chocolate every day, fine! But don’t make it a full-sized mass-produced Snickers bar. Eat one smaller portion of very high quality chocolate. Compensate for the small serving by making the quality outstanding.” I like that advice a lot.

By the way, I have recently decided to restrict my alcohol consumption to only nights where I do not have to work the next day. I never indulge enough to the point of a hangover, so that’s not the issue. But it’s almost certainly healthier–and absolutely less expensive–to cut that aspect of my weekly consumptions down a lot.

I end this topic with a quote from James Bond, in the novel Casino Royale:

“I never have more than one drink before dinner. But I do like that one to be large and very strong and very cold and very well-made. I hate small portions of anything, particularly when they taste bad.”

15. Do you enjoy DIY or crafts?

Meh, not really. I admire everything I see that’s along that line, but never enough to want to take any of it up myself. DIY, in terms of house maintenance, just makes me feel like I’m working because my day job at The Store involves a lot of that kind of thing, so if I’m getting out my tools and stuff at home, I feel like I’m just working more, and nobody wants that. And crafting is a great creative outlet, but for me, writing and photography are always filling my creative outlet needs, so I’m good. I’ll leave the painting and the wood carving and the pottery to others. Give me a pen and a camera!

And that’s the last question. Here endeth the lesson!