Old and new

Home again

So after 21 days and 6 cities, I am back in NY from my first "vacation" abroad since I started working. I think I am going to do this quite out of order - ideally I would have liked to record the planning before the trip, made a few en-route posts with pictures, and then follow those up with a proper conclusion (possibly with detailed list of expenses in a spreadsheet) afterwards. Well, since I was 1) in a high frenzy prior to departure and 2) too cheap to pay the 1 euro/15 minute to post while on the road, here I am trying to make up for all of that now, after my trip has ended.

I spent 12/14-12/25 in Italy, then 12/25-12/30 in Athens, and 12/30 - 01/04 in Istanbul. This trip was meant to be my first step to fulfill my childhood dream of seeing the world. I don't have long periods of free time, so I figured I could do this a little bit at a time. These three precious weeks were right in between the end of finals and the beginning of the spring semester. I planned the trip with small time margins and hoped to fully utilize my free time. It turned out that things barely fell into place in time, and that by trying to predict things that I could not control I had caused myself considerable stress and aggravation. This was especially true before the trip, with last-minute visa applications, snow storms and whatnot.

I followed through my plan of sleeping through the entire flight to Rome, thanks to the lack of sleep on the previous nights. Was not jetlagged at all. I had deliberately not planned out many things and wanted to give myself some freedom to be spontaneous (gasp). In retrospect this worked out well - I don't feel that I missed out on many things during trip, and for the few things that I did miss (like the Christmas Day Mass at St. Peter), I did so by choice.

I was quite wrong in my initial hope to escape the New England winter by going to the Mediterraneans region during winter. Venice was cold, and 2 out of the 5 days of my time in Istanbul, it snowed. Hence I always wear the same thing - the jacket - in all of my pictures. It was great not having to deal with the crowd however.

Breaking out of daily routines was great. One of the best thing about traveling was simply the feeling that one has endless options and can do virtually anything. Not that I actually did anything crazy (which is all relative depending on who you talk to...), but just having that idea was awesome. Traveling alone gave me a lot of time to feel, to wonder, to delve into old memories, and sometimes just let my mind go blank. For the first week I kept on wanting to turn off my cellphone whenever I walked into a quiet place like a church, only to realize repeatedly that I don't have the phone, and that I have no service abroad anyways. It was quite funny though, how it kept happening, like a reflex.

It's good to be back. Next I think I'll write about the foods.

Los Angeles, CA

To celebrate my birthday I decided to take a couple of days off from work and visit Cheng and Maggie in LA. Wendy also made it down from Saratoga to join us for the weekend. Getting there was a bit of a pain (UA moved my flight which resulted in a 4 hour layover), and my hopes of escaping the New England winter for a few days was thwarted by record-low temperatures in LA, but I had a great time nonetheless.

As I grow up, it becomes increasingly more difficult to make very good friends. This is partly due to the fact that I've become more private after college, and don't spend enough time with the new people I meet to really develop strong bonds. I'll admit that my being opinionated is also to blame - I am more critical nowadays. That said, I'm happy with the way things are. My handful of close friends are spread all over. We may not hear from each other often, but when we do, we never have difficulty getting worked up in our long, animated discussions on random things. Maybe I enjoy aged friendships so much that I feel the need to brew new ones.

It was comforting to see that my friends here are all doing well and nearing the turning point in their lives. Mid-twenties (shudder) is such a happening time! Ending one thing and starting another is never easy, but I guess youth is a powerful enabler... and so we dive in fearlessly. What a luxury. I wonder when I will start experiencing the reservation that comes with age? Hopefully, never.

I didn't intend to ramble like this... it's a travel journal, after all.

I find California quite exotic. The idea seems almost irrational to me, however. On the flight from San Francisco to Burbank, the woman sitting behind my row was going to the Xena convention. I was like whoa. I used to (like, 10 years ago) want to go so badly!

In lieu of a birthday cake, we had Beard Papa's cream puffs (ha! take that, phantom gourmet). Calamari sandwich on the wharf at Santa Barbara was great too, as was the chicken meatloaf at Doughboys. The trip ended with a ritual trip to IN-N-OUT, complete with animal fries and lots of reminiscing about the "good ol' days" (when exactly that refers to... changes every time though).