It always seems like I’m going to have great swaths of time available for summer travel, since tutoring slows down so much. And it’s true that I already went to California for four days and will visit my parents in Cincinnati for four days in July…but even if the calendar isn’t getting filled UP by any means, it’s getting chopped into smaller portions.
In August I’ll go to London to teach a class and, when it’s over, will either go to a Mediterranean island or somewhere else in Europe. So I’ve been thinking about where…
Outside of Europe, the places that top my list are Northwestern China, Peru, and Madagascar. In Europe, if I consider places I’ve never been, I always think about Croatia…and after seeing a friend’s Instagram post about Slovenia, it also looks pretty amazing. But what looks amazing in Slovenia isn’t a national monument or a specific geological feature; it’s the Swiss Family Robinson-esque place she’s staying and the absurdly blue lake it sits on. Not that that disqualifies Slovenia as an amazing and interesting place, obviously, but maybe it highlights the importance of secondary research once you’ve chosen a destination.
Usually when I’m planning an entirely hypothetical trip, I go to flymeanywhere.com and see where I can go for not too much money. This is how I almost ended up in Sweden in March of 2015, until I realized my passport was going to expire in less than six months and I had to renew it before I could travel. But I’m not opposed to the “throw a pin at the map and see where the fates point you” approach, during the initial stages.
I’ve come to really hate being on long flights and also to feel guilty about the carbon a 6+-hour flight produces, so once I’m in London maybe I should consider train options…there’s almost nothing I like more than an overnight train. This is not going to sound like a logical comparison, but: something about overnight trains reminds me of ice cubes. If you drop an ice cube on the floor, you can rinse it off. It’s self-cleaning in that it’s self-melting. Please don’t ask me for the thread that connects that to the way train travel allows you to skip the drudgery of being stuck in a vehicle for hours while also saving the cost of a hotel for the night. I’m sure it exists, somewhere.
