Describe your most memorable vacation.
Sometimes a one-nighter in your own area can be fun. I haven’t spent much time in Boston since I left my job, so it’s good to be back in the city.
Happy Birthday to all Americans. We are 248 years old today. Long may we run. 🇺🇸
What’s your definition of romantic?
This prompt is giving me flashbacks to my college art history survey: the darkened auditorium, the slides of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Renaissance to the 20th century, the occasional nap. I got a B in that class. Not bad.
The Romantic Period in art (late 18th century to mid 19th century) was characterized by “a focus on emotion, individualism, and the sublime. Artists of this period often emphasized intense feelings, dramatic compositions, and the beauty and power of nature.”
Based on that definition, I’m going to have to say that the Grand Canyon is the most Romantic place I’ve ever been.
Pretty darn sublime, right?
If you were forced to wear one outfit over and over again, what would it be?
I bought a reversible skirt at a boutique last summer and I wear it a lot. I love that one garment gives you two different looks. Also, the waist is completely adjustable (from size 2-12), so no need to toss it, if I lose or gain weight. It goes with all different color T-shirts and is made of a very comfortable cotton.
The skirt is 100% cotton, made in India. The boutique owner, Sally, is delightful. She named her boutique Apsara after the supernatural female beings in Hindu mythology. She was inspired by a visit to the Angkor Wat Hindu-Buddhist temple complex in Cambodia.
So anyway, I’d want my one and only outfit to be reversible!
If you’re ever in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire, check out Apsara at 130 Congress Street.
Speaking of buckets…way to go Boston Celtics! 🏀☘️ NBA championship #18.
I started a Bucket List (I’ve heard some say “Life List”) in the notepad app on my phone a couple years ago. I update it whenever the mood strikes. Sometimes a TV show, movie or book will shake up the order. For example, I read a book called “Independent People” by Haldór Laxness (a Nobel prize winner in literature) which resulted in Iceland getting booted from my list.
Here’s the latest version:
Grand Canyon ✅
Paris ✅
Finger Lakes & Hot Air Balloon ✅
Tanglewood
Yellowstone National Park
Ireland
NYC comedy club or SNL
Southern Italy (Naples; Amalfi Coast; Cinque Terra) and maybe Sicily
Sweden
Return to Paris in warmer weather and see the sites we missed
Argentina?
Return to SoCal – LA/San Diego; Santa Monica; Venice Beach; Yosemite; Joshua Tree?
Key West
Austin TX
Greece
Acadia National Park
My friend Julie (the eventual artist) made sure we visited the Watts Towers in South Los Angeles.
Describe one of your favorite moments.
We were lucky to have close friends with a beautiful beach house while my kids were growing up. It’s near the loveliest beach. The water gets really warm in August. One year, my daughter had a waterproof/underwater camera. Photos from that visit always make me happy.
Ocean, Sun, Joy, Love, Floating Happiness
What are the most important things needed to live a good life?
I think books, music and art make life worth living, once basic needs (food, shelter, safety) are met.
I got to go to an art show by a dear old friend from college last night. It is her first gallery show. In college, she was a double major in art history and religion. For decades, she’s worked as a museum educator and administrator.
She always had an artist’s eye and soul. We studied abroad in Italy at the same time and traveled together on our fall break. A fellow blogger’s post about the city of Bergamo (Italy) reminded me of that trip. We went to Bergamo, Parma, Verona, Venice, and Milan.
Her artwork involves deconstructing everyday packaging and reassembling in very cool ways.
A year ago this week, we were in Grand Canyon National Park.
This trip was motivated by the death of my close friend Carla who loved the Grand Canyon and whose ashes are spread there. (Carla is the person who set me up with my husband more than 33 years ago.) I would consider it my first “bucket list” trip of retirement, even though I didn’t retire until six months later.
I’m lucky to have a kind and hardworking husband who is willing to travel with me (within reason). He doesn’t love it like I do, but he usually ends up liking the trip a lot more than he thought he would.
Thirty-one years of marriage—that’s a whole lot of time together!
The Grand Canyon lives up to the hype. Go, if you can.
Related posts:
I don’t like cold weather. I especially dislike snow. We have so many places in the Northeast that are spectacularly beautiful—in the summer. The Finger Lakes region (aka the Southern Tier) of upstate New York is one of them.
This area is a very long drive from Boston (about 6 hours), so I made this weekend’s graduation trip to Ithaca a “bucket list” sort of trip. I have enjoyed my many visits up here, but I doubt I’ll be back again.
In addition to the hot air ballooning, we visited the famous Corning Museum of Glass, which many people now know from Blown Away—the glassblowers competition series on Netflix.
The city of Ithaca, NY is on Lake Cayuga and I’ve seen it many times. This trip, I wanted to see the next Finger Lake over—Lake Seneca. It is equally beautiful and has the cute town of Watkins Glen at the bottom.
Watkins Glen is also home to one of New York’s most beautiful state parks.
There are many wineries in the area, but I had never been to a cidery, so we stopped at South Hill Cider after graduation for a glass of hard cider and a charcuterie board. Lovely spot and their dry, sparkling Baldwin cider was great. I bought a bottle to take home.
There’s an expression you may have heard—Ithaca is Gorges. Its deep gorges and their accompanying waterfalls are truly gorgeous, and there are dozens of them all over the region. I had seen the showstopper—Taughannock Falls—on a previous trip, but wanted to check out a couple of others before we left.
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Have you ever broken a bone?
I broke a toe once, really badly. I don’t even like to think about it. It hurt SO much. (I stubbed it on a futon leg while barefoot.) It was wildly out of alignment. My husband had to pop it back into place. OUCH! Doctors can’t really do anything about toes. They just taped it to the one next to it and I limped around until it healed.
Fortunately no bones were broken during our Friday night “bucket list” excursion in Ithaca. The take-off was much wilder than I thought it would be. I was holding on to the basket for dear life. But once we were floating, it was quite magical. I’ve been in a helicopter before, but this was different. It’s as close as you can imagine to being a bird. So very many shades of green. The bottom of the basket occasionally scraped on some tree tops. “No problem,” said our pilot Dar. “Basket cleaners,” he called them. And then handed us some leaves. 🍃
My husband and son got put to work on both takeoff and landing. I took pictures and videos.
I think we were all a bit nervous about the landing. Once he found a good spot, Dar had the heavier people, including my very strong husband, move to one side of the basket. We all crouched down with all body parts inside the basket. We dragged on the ground for a bit. My husband got out and helped hold us down, which he said was hard. (He got a rather large bruise as we attempted to “jump” the basket up and over a small ditch. Inside the basket, we actually jumped up and down.)
When instructed, I did not waste any time grabbing the bars and vaulting myself out of the basket in a move that my son described as “wildly athletic.”
My son was instructed to run out into the field and help the ground crew pull down Captain America.
We celebrated with a roadside champagne toast and then the ground crew drove us back to our car!
Related post:
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