Thanks to the Sherrilee, Renee, and Beth-Ann, the guest bloggers who kept the conversation rolling while I was enjoying a long weekend in northern Minnesota.
It was a wonderful time to be away – even the mostly rainy day was delightful. And I learned about perspective! There is a proper way to record the events when you are catching impossibly tiny fish.
Summer, 2011 is turning out to be wonderfully green and lush. If you were lucky enough to not flattened by a tornado in North Minneapolis or submerged by a river in Minot, the weather has probably been pretty fair for you. Still, it is an upper Midwesterner’s obligation to complain bitterly about whatever prominent feature the climate is projecting. In this case, it’s the outrageous amount of rain and the far-too-cool temperatures, though the truth is that we are blessed to have enough moisture and something less than blistering heat.
For those who would like to experience a truly harsh environment, I suggest you book your passage as soon as it becomes possible to visit an asteroid.
This would be the vacation of a lifetime, if by vacation you mean a bleak and frightening experience that feels endless. NASA has sent a probe named Dawn to spend a year with Vesta, an asteroid that orbits our sun. Like some of those exotic vacation resorts you’ve chosen and then regretted, we don’t know very much about Vesta. Even the brochure is puzzling – this line-up of all the best known features makes Vesta’s amenities look like an assortment of blurry potatoes.
But they have sun there (or we wouldn’t be able to see it), so let’s go! I think I can see a pool in the third image from the top left, and is that the golf course in the fourth picture from the right, bottom row? I think it is, and it looks like there are no trees to get in the way of all the perfect, lo-gravity shots I plan to hit.
Fun!
Describe a vacation destination that was much different than you imagined.
Trail Baboon 
Rise and Shine Baboons!
London just this winter was far different than I imagined. I have enjoyed seeing the large cities of Europe, but London kind of left me cold. Perhaps it was the English food which is notoriously, umh, bad? disgusting? without imagination? Lou and I usually find the food scene of a city of great interest. However, in London we found the further away from English cuisine? we found ourselves, the better. Our favorite restaurant there was Turkish.
Meanwhile, the subject, “The Worst Vacation Ever” is under construction for a blog entry!
Meanwhile, I’ve been swamped at work so I have had little time to look at the blog. Last week the founder of the kind of psychotherapy we specialize in at my office was featured on the cover of the New York Times. This seems to have increased workload and phone calls at the office. I’ll try to put the link below. I won’t know if it works until I post it though!
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Very powerful story, Jacque. Thanks for sharing. I can see why your office would be swamped with calls, you’re offering desperate people much needed hope.
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Jacque, I tried the link and found I would need to register to see the story. I decided not to register, but I would like to know the name of the the kind of psychotherapy that your office features. Could your post the name of this type of psychotherapy?
Dale, interesting pictures. I will have to remember how you did that because I usually only get small fish when I go fishing and might need to use your trick to cover up my poor fishing skills..
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Dialectic Behavior Therapy. Go to her website, http://www.behavioraltech.org. It is posted there, too. Thanks for your interest.
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Thanks for the info
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Ha! That’s funny, I didn’t have to register to read the story.
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It looked like I would need to register to see the story, but maybe I didn’t.
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Good moning to all:
I took a trip to Azerbaijan as an agricultural volunteer. It wasn’t exactly a vacation since I was there to do volunteer work, but I did have lots of time to look around. As a volunteer I knew I would be treated more as guest than as a tourist. However, I was on my own for part of the time more or less like a tourtist. I expected that the trip would be a good experience and it was even better than I expected.
The office of the Agency that recruited me, ACDI/VOCA, was mostly staffed by Azeri people who were very helpful and friendly. I stayed at a hotel in Southern Azerbaijan where I got the best of treatment and spent some time in Baku, the capital of the country, where I was able to roam the streets at night on my own with no fear of having trouble. In the capitals of most other under developed countries I think it would not be good to go out on your own at night. I didn’t see or hear about any problems with safety at night in Baku and enjoyed strolling the streets there in the evening.
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I thought about this topic as I rode to work this morning (decided to try biking again, so teenager can have car for work). I started trying to come up with negative examples and couldn’t think of any. So then I decided to think of places that turned out better than I had expected — too many to name! I’m not sure what this says about me…. but I’ve never been disappointed in my travels.
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Because the work I’ve done most of my life has not been profitable, I’ve not been able to take vacations. In my lifetime I’ve had four or five trips that might fit that definition, and each was carefully researched.
Also because of the work I did as an outdoor writer, I took countless number of “trips” that could be turned into story material. And I learned exactly one thing. No matter what the weather was, or how good the hunting or fishing, or how well organized we were . . . the only thing that counted in the end was the quality of my partners. You can’t have a good trip or vacation with jerks, and you can’t be disappointed in you travel with quality people. And that’s a damn fact.
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Steve, I agree that your travel companions make all the difference in the world, although I have managed to have a not so great experience even with a good one in Jamaica.
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I have mostly not been disappointed by travel either – though I was a little surprised by Seoul, Korea. I had traveled to England and Norway before, and although both were definitely lovely and European, neither felt especially “foreign” (except for the much older buildings and history of the places) – language and culture were similar enough to feel not too far different from home. Seoul I expected would be different – it’s a non-European country, I knew none of the language, I had an expectation that the culture and atmosphere would somehow feel “more foreign” than my prior international travel. I was a little disappointed that, except for traveling into a couple of traditional markets, much of Seoul is like any other big city, just in a different language. I felt taller than I usually do if I stood next to anyone older than 30 or 40, and the curly hair was definitely a standout (the red, not so much – it was the fashion in Seoul at the time, it seemed, to bleach and dye your hair auburns, reds and dark blondes). Had I had time to travel outside of Seoul I might have gotten a better flavor for Korea as a unique country, but within Seoul itself, it was just another big city. Clean, more seafood oriented than some in the restaurants, and signs that didn’t have English translations were pretty indecipherable, but those were rare – probably because of the long-standing presence of US troops in Seoul as a result of the conflict with the North. Would love to go back and see more – and go with someone more adventuresome in their food choices than my prior traveling companion. (I only got her to go to a “traditional” Korean restaurant once – could not convince her to try one of the sidewalk cafes – I ate a lot of “American” food in Korea. Bah.) That said, the old architecture and cultural events we managed to see while we were there were lovely (including a big street fair we happened upon with a wide variety of performances in English and Korean, lots of neat crafts, demonstrations, etc.).
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As part of my endeavors to introduce my son to “culture”, we have been watching M*A*S*H (ok, and because I really love that show and the ensemble)-he is appreciating it, and I am now on a quest for kim chi, as he think it sounds like something he would like to try (I like it). I’m going to hit the Asian markets in St Paul, but if anyone knows for sure where I can get a jar, let me know!
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Dang, the Traditional Foods Warehouse is still closed, and they had plenty of choices there. I think your best bets are where you’re already headed, and the food co-ops. Some of the Farmers Markets may have some, but I don’t know which.
If you get around to Kombucha (another natually fermented food), it’s in my kitchen…
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There are a handful of Korean markets and restaurants on Snelling north of University (near the Hamline campus) – I’d think one of those markets would have something. My nephew, who is a kimchi fan, likes Hoban in Eagan when he wants to got out for Korean food – not exactly sure where it is in Eagan other than it’s near Hwy 13.
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There is a guy selling the Kombucha tea at the St Paul Farmer’s Market who also sells a wonderful selection of mushrooms. No kim chi there-I’ll definitely check out the co-op, thanks for the suggestion!
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3 Tiers bakery and restaurant at 5011 34th Ave. S. in Minneapolis makes their own kim chi which I have tasted and it is good.
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I was just at Lunds, MiG, and they had kimchi in the fresh produce section. I have no idea if it is good or dreck.
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mig, you can also make your own. It takes a little time to ferment but isn’t hard or labor intensive to do.
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Wow, thanks for all the info, guys. We’ll definitely have to check those out. Jim, I am intrigued by a bakery that makes kim chi!
I confess, I am all about the food tie-ins to stuff.
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can get Kim Chi at the Super One in Cloquet! my brother says it is pretty good – not quite hot enough though, for him.
he spent a week in Korea for Sea Grant and it turned out to be the trip of his life. i think he wasn’t expecting as much fun, joy, and foods he loved as what he got. when they came up earlier this month, he stopped at the Super One before he even came to the farm, to buy Kim Chi. 🙂 in Baton Rouge, where they live, he buys it by the quart from a Korean grocery store.
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My hair stylist is Korean-American. She says Costco’s Kim Chi is excellent. If you want that much of it.
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Anna, it’s too bad that you only got to go to an traditional Korean restaurant once, the ethnic cuisine is a major part of the travel experience in my estimation. Why are so many American travelers loath to try new things and go with the flow? When I went to China with a friend of mine to pick up her adopted daughter ten years ago, one of the women in the group announced on the third day there that if she had to eat Chinese food one more day, she’d cry. What was she expecting in China? I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor little girl her son was adopting. Meanwhile, my friend and i had a great time exploring the street food scene in Beijing. I have another friend who travels extensively, and she announced one day that she has eaten at McDonald’s in every foreign country she has visited! I can’t imagine why you do that, but that’s just me. Another coworker went to England on her honeymoon, and when she returned complained bitterly about the toilet paper there! It had completely ruined her trip. Good thing she didn’t go to China, she’d have freaked out over some of the toilet facilities there I’m sure.
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I was disappointed, too, that I didn’t get more traditional food while in Korea. Ah well – it’s an excuse to go back (first excuse to was to bring home the youngest niece). When I went to England with my husband, I took a day trip to Newcastle to visit a friend and said he had to bring me to the best curry place in town as I couldn’t eat curry with my husband…
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I kept my opinion to myself when some Bulgarian friends told me they liked going to a McDonalds in their country. Same thing in Bolivia. I kept quiet when told a favorite place to go for some Bolivians was Burger King. On the trips I took as an agricultural volunteer I was especially pleased to be invited to homes to eat home cooked meals. I don’t why people who could cook very good meals for themselves would think McDonalds or Burger King are good places to eat.
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That’s interesting, Anna. My former wife traveled extensively to do her job, visiting perhaps two dozen nations a year. She was bright, sensitive and observant. In all her travels, only two countries freaked her out by being so “foreign” she couldn’t wait to flee them.
One was Finland, which reinforced the old stereotype that an extrovert in Finland is someone who stares at the tops of your shoes while talking. She found the people cold and remote.
The other was Japan, which was just so weird she couldn’t handle it. Japan is strange in an energetic, aggressive way (think of the game show Bill Murray visits in “Lost in Translation.” When the train and subway police used all their strength to pack a railway car before it left the station, Kathe was dismayed. She didn’t like travel where you could report, without looking, how many buttons are on the the jacket of the nearest businessman.
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I have been trying to dig up online articles I came across last year written by an Australian living in Finland. They were insightful and quite funny… one was about taxes being public information (you can look up the highest earners’ individual tax info online). There was another about how she sent her Finnish colleagues an email saying she wasn’t going to be able to meet a deadline because something came up, which caused some confusion because apparently Finnish people think that you’ll get whatever work done by the deadline and if you don’t you have a good reason why and you don’t have to explain.
The three places I’d love to go next would be Finland, London and Japan — most people I talk to seem to have the same impressions as what you and Jacque have described.
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Oooh, I wonder if I can write this without getting red-flagged. A bunch of us went seeking wilderness steelhead once, fishing the Ontario shoreline of Lake Superior. Not knowing better, we booked a room in a trashy old hotel patronized exclusively by drunk Canadian pulp mill workers. We ended up the first night in a bar bigger than a basketball court where half the audience was passed out, face down on their tables, blowing bubbles in puddles of beer there.
The big entertainment was what the Canadians call a “shaker,” which is “stripper” in US lingo. She remains one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. She would strip to a boombox tune, then sit down to schedule dates with her admirers. After entertaining them upstairs, she returned to dance again. A particularly drunk Canadian kid kept badgering her, lobbing coins at her. When she attacked him, half of the room was too far gone in beer to notice, but the more sober half roared and mobbed the two of them because she was about to do permanent damage to him with stiletto heels. The brawl became a local legend. They ran her out of town the next day, and we saw no more dancing on that trip.
So I guess that was a “vacation” whose final destination surprised me.
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Wow – how old were you, Steve?
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Probably in my late 30s. Old enough to keep my distance from her.
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Love the perspective lesson, Dale.
I was just 10 when we headed out with our 16 foot trailer in tow to Greeley Colorado, where my dad was to start his “Summer School Masters” program, a degree requiring only 3 summers of his time and talents. This would be our first “vacation” ever, as Dad had always worked during his summers off from teaching. We’d been told there would be a real trailer court to park in, with a grassy plot, near CSC’s football field. We got there to find that court full, and OUR court was the gravel parking lot. More details later, because like Jackie, I plan to make it into a guest blog some time. We did get to fall in love with Colorado and returned there many times.
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When I went to Russia in 1964 it wasn’t on vacation, I had gotten a job intended to stay for a year and get to know the place and the people. I wanted a truer picture of life in Russia than a two week vacation staying in hotels could provide.
In 1964, the U.S.S.R was behind the Iron Curtain. What information I had about the place before I went there was heavily influenced by anti-communist propaganda and I embarked on the adventure with some trepidation.
The first thing that struck me about Moscow was the smell, an unmistakable sweet and spicy fragrance that I didn’t particularly care for. Russian perfumes and soaps had a scent that offended my Western sensibilities, and it permeated the atmosphere; I noticed it immediately when I stepped off the plane. Many years later I attended a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet at Northrop Auditorium and was immediately transported back to Moscow when that smell wafted over the audience.
The second thing that made an impression on me were all the political posters on display everywhere. At the time I had never been to the U.S., so I thought of these posters as a communist phenomenon. It wasn’t until I arrived in the U.S. the following year that I discovered that political posters were also an integral part of this political system.
The first few days in Moscow, I heeded the advise of not fraternizing with any Russians, but soon discovered that people in Russia were as curious about me as I about them. An American friend and I discovered that a sure-fire way of meeting you Russians was to walk the streets with a couple of Bob Dylan and Beatles albums under our arms. Before long we’d be approached by someone wanting to listen to our albums, and the negotiation would start as to where would be a good place to do so. A certain amount of paranoia was involved in these talks, you didn’t want to be caught fraternizing with the enemy, but youth and curiosity often prevailed. Bringing them back to the embassy was out of the question, they’d never be allowed in by the embassy guards, so we’d usually end up going to their place. In this way we befriended several young people and visited several Russian homes. One young woman I befriended this way was an English ballerina, Ann Stone, who had been sent to the Bolshoi to attend their ballet school when she was only 12 years old. Through her I was soon hanging with a bunch of young Russian artists of every stripe, and I have some wonderful memories of our parties. I came to treasure the warm hospitality, delicious food and generous spirit of my Russian friends.
Moscow is a beautiful city with a rich history. I explored it on foot, by bus and the Metro. I swam in the huge outdoor swimming pool during the winter, and attended a May Day parade on the Red Square on a cold and snowy day. I visited museums, churches, and theaters, and ate at local restaurants and private homes, even spent a long weekend in a dacha. I shopped for groceries at the local markets and stores, and despite an extremely limited selection of drab clothes at the Gum department store, I managed to have the time of my life.
Lots has happened in Russia since then and I suppose much has changed, but I’d go back in a heartbeat.
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Russia is on my list of places I’d like to go – would have been a very interesting place to be during the Communist era, but I’d take a trip there, now, too. 🙂
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It was an interesting place at that time. I was there when Nikita Khrushchev was deposed, his ever present portrait disappeared overnight. I witnessed the triumphal parade of Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, on his return to earth. The excitement in the air was palpable. From what I read, things are a little dicier now, but I’d love to go back to see what’s changed. Russia is a complex and interesting place.
Another place that’s very high on my list of places to visit is Washington, D.C. So much history and so many monuments to see. I’m ashamed that I haven’t been there yet, but I want to go for sure.
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All of the vacations that I’ve taken with the teenager have been the best. Our first fabulous vacay was to Hawaii (thank goodness for airline miles!) She swam with the dolphins, fed the fish every morning, tried snorkeling (not that thrilled with it at the age of six, but enjoyed the boat ride) and we went swimming every single day. One of the things she remembers is going out by the pool one night and seeing a movie. It was fun to lay in the beach chairs w/ popcorn and watch a movie outside.
Another wonderful trip was our trip to Maine – I’ve talked about it before. We decided on the first morning that we wanted to have blueberries at every meal during our trip. A lofty goal, but we accomplished it.
Right now I’m planning our trip for this summer… to go see “the heads” as she calls them. Hope it will join the others as my best vacations ever!
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Iceland I knew would be fabulous – but I was surprised at the abundance of fresh food. So much geothermal, so many greenhouses!
Rome I heartily wish I liked better. The food in the city seemed consistently one-dimensional after trying many many local recommendations, though to be fair Mr. MNiS said the first time he’d been there he motorcycled in from the outskirts of town to see the sights and the food in the outskirts was better. And it was the first time in my life I’ve ever sent back tea (the water tasted like… soap? Even the second time). Plus after a day or two of incredible masterpieces, I found myself with a crick in the neck, both physical and mental.
Seeing the Mediterranean and Amalfi coast and how people live in those areas was pretty amazing. If I could re-do that trip I would’ve spent more time by the sea and less time in Roma, probably.
Shanghai/Hangzhou was by far the worst vacation ever. It was consistently 40*C, I ran out of reading material, and there was NO FACEBOOK OR TWITTER. There were still highlights though. People kept wanting to take pictures with Mr. MNiS the white guy, so I took pictures of people taking pictures with Mr. MNiS.
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Hmm my list of complaints about Shanghai/Hangzhou got truncated. I meant to say it was crowded, noisy, loud, polluted and hungry for more in a rather unrestful way. The famed West Lake was smoggy, murky and had Starbucks, Aston Martin and Ferrari dealerships on its banks.
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vs, I’m sure you’ll have a great time at the heads. It’s an impressive place, true Americana. We took a Danish couple there some years ago, and they loved it. Eli, the wife, was making a video of everything they saw. She spent a lot of time in the parking lot making a video of the different license plates from just about every state in the union.
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For a moment I thought “the heads” meant you were off to the Easter Islands!
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I want prominent features.
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Sorry to be missing the gang, busy time. I have never had a bad vacation. Unexpected stuff in duseldorf and Manchester and Jakarta
Only bad trip was to water park in Brainerd. Got kicked out for telling them wrong food cold 3 hours after it was ordered was unbelievable and I couldn’t believe they wanted to charge me even though I wouldn’t eat it
Not the holiday inn the one across the street from the holiday inn. Terrible customer relations . Worst I’ve ever witnessed
Normally rolling with the punches is what I do best. Always a cool opportunity around the bend
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