Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

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I’m completely addicted to Stumble Upon. I’m sure a lot of you have used it, or heard about it, but in case you haven’t, it is a website that directs you right to websites based on your indicated interests. A site that takes me immediately to what I’m interested in? Sign me up. It’s a double-edged sword. I’ve “stumbled” upon so many interesting articles and sites, but I’ve also wasted time. Like, lots of time. When I have papers due. Or when I have blogs to write.

Anyway, one of the interests that I selected when signing up for Stumble Upon was “Travel.” Usually when travel sites come up, it’s for cheap flights or somewhat generic photos of different landmarks around the world. But, the other day, I stumbled upon a website about travel and tourism in Paris. Not just any kind of tourism, either. This website listed twenty things (varying from museums to parks to cafes and street markets) you can do in the city of love and lights for free. Free. That’s honestly one of my favorite words to hear. Travel is awfully expensive, and anything that is worth seeing and is free is right on the top of my list. I, like most everyone else, have dreamed of a trip to Paris. And while I’m not sure I could pass up visits to the Eiffel Tower (though this article does mention Le Champ de Mars, beautiful gardens under the tower) or the Louvre, I also think that experiencing less famous areas of a city is essential to truly get the most of your trip. Therefore, I was all about this list of places (some unconventional for “normal” tourism) in Paris I’ve never heard of before.

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Though I’d love to visit every one of these places (probably a new goal of mine), my favorite destination, purely from description and pictures, on this list was number nine: Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. As the list says, this is Paris’ steepest park that can essentially transport you out of the city center to the wilderness with a waterfall designed by Baron Haussmann, a variety of birds, and rock formations. It is the perfect place to relax and have a picnic with a sweetheart or good friends, or even interact with locals.

The Complete List:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1PpOpM/www.lonelyplanet.com/france/paris/travel-tips-and-articles/76886/

My United States Travel Bucket List: Arches National Park

Landscape Arch*

            In my room at home, I have maps on the wall. Maps of the world, maps of the United States, maps of Europe. I would see them every day when I woke up and every night before I went to bed. I remember I always wanted to put pushpins in where I went, and where I wanted to go. I didn’t, because I thought it was rather clichéd, and because I was intimidated by the amount of amazing, beautiful places I might never get to see. It’s honestly a depressing thought to me. However, if I write off world travel as improbable, chances are I won’t travel as much as I could if I truly believe I can and try, which involves saving money wherever I can. I am determined to see the world. And I might as well start with our own country. There is so much of the United States that I haven’t seen, and that’s a shame.

Edward Abbey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey

Double Arch*

Therefore, for my first bucket list location I choose to stay in North America: I would love to visit Arches National Park in Utah. Last semester, I had an English class that focused on environmental literature. We read a narrative called Desert Solitaire by the somewhat radical environmentalist and novelist Edward Abbey. His descriptions of the national park completely gripped me. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t choose a generally barren area to visit. Before I read this book, my travel bucket list would have only consisted of bustling cities and cultural centers. However, this book entirely changed how I thought of our beautiful national parks. I realized I needed to get out and see them, to experience them, before it was too late. I had to expand my boundaries in order to truly be able to appreciate all the world has to offer. One quote stuck with me in particular, perhaps because of the intensity of the writing: “No, wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread. A civilization which destroys what little remains of the wild, the spare, the original, is cutting itself off from its origins and betraying the principle of civilization itself. If industrial man continues to multiply his numbers and expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making. He will make himself an exile from the earth and then will know at last, if he is still capable of feeling anything, the pain and agony of final loss.” (Abbey 169)

Park Avenue*

So, Edward Abbey sparked my desire to someday see Arches National Park, which has over 2,000 natural sandstone arches. This is the first place on my United States bucket list, and I honestly feel it would be not only a beautiful trip, but would also be one that would further expand my connection to the natural world and increase my understanding of the importance preserving the United States’ national parks. I think it is important that travel somehow educate or enlighten you, and visiting Arches National Park would certainly do that. 

*from:http://www.nps.gov/arch/photosmultimedia/photogallery.htm

I Wish I Knew Liam Neeson

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Have you ever seen the movie “Taken,” starring Liam Neeson? If you haven’t, I really recommend it. However, I recommend you don’t watch it right before your first trip to Europe. Basically, the movie is about a girl who travels abroad with a friend, gets kidnapped, and sold into prostitution through a disturbing human auction. Luckily her dad (played by Neeson) is a complete badass retired CIA agent, and is able to help rescue her and get revenge on her capturers. I can admit it was a little on the farfetched side, but these situations such as young girls being forced into sex slavery unfortunately aren’t unheard of. Anyway, my best friend and I decided to watch this movie right before we left for Germany. Literally two weeks before. I don’t honestly know what we were thinking, but we did it anyway. It scared us, but we knew we would be safe and with responsible adults.

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We all but forgot about the movie until one night. Our school group was staying in a hotel, and we were divided up into pairs of two to share rooms. It was late at night, or rather very early in the morning, when the friend I was rooming with and I headed back to our room from our friends’ down the hall. We were just about to collapse from exhaustion when we heard a knock on the window. My friend was more collected than I was – she hadn’t seen the movie and is admittedly more collected than I in stressful situations. She brushed it off as a tree branch or the wind, and we continued washing up. Then we heard it again. It was definitely a knock. And voices, clearly calling to be let in. I had thoughts of predators searching for young girls in my head; my friend, always recklessly brave, wasn’t so much worried as curious. She pushed aside the curtain and peered outside.

Not my friends; random guys from the Internet

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“There are people out there!” I remember her whispering, now a little fear in her voice. I went to take a look now – it was true. There were definitely figures outside, male figures. We looked at each other, truly freaking out now. Just as we were considering getting a chaperone, a face pressed against the glass. A familiar face, though flushed with intoxication. There were at least six boys from our group outside, all completely wasted (we were legal drinking age there). My friends and I still joke about the time we had six boys crawl into our hotel room at 3 AM. We helped them in, got them into bed, and made them thank us ten thousand times the next morning – the front door to the bed and breakfast was locked, and they would have been left outside till morning. I was relieved. Even though drunken high school boys are certainly not fun to take care of, I would take that any day over being in serious danger. So, since we all don’t have Liam Neeson in our family trees, we have to watch out for ourselves. From this experience I learned that it’s certainly important to have fun, but it’s even more imperative to be safe, as you never know what might happen, especially in a place where you are far from home and don’t know anyone.

Travel Tip: Don't be an "ugly American."

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When preparing for my first trip to Europe, my parents gave me countless tidbits of advice (some obviously outdated, which I didn’t mention to them); information that I nodded my head to and tucked away, more focused on packing and getting my passport together. However, one piece of advice stuck with me. My parents constantly warned me: “Don’t be an ugly American.” By this they meant they expected me to be respectful and courteous always, to act in accordance with the culture's expectations, and accepting of a new culture. They didn’t want me to offend others, or embarrass myself. They had raised me to behave appropriately in new situations, and always wanted to make sure it carried over when I was out of their supervision. This trip was no exception. With no intentions behave in such a way that would reflect poorly on all Americans, and myself, I agreed. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy my trip, but I definitely made sure I followed German customs. For example, it was expected that bare shoulders were covered in cathedrals, so I always brought a cardigan. Instead of drinking flat water like we do here in America, and isn’t commonly served in Germany, I tried Mineralwasser, or bubbly water.

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However, some of the other kids on the school trip weren’t aware of what it meant to be an “ugly American.” On one of the first nights there, a boy from my school decided to wear adult-sized footie pajamas with rockets printed on them around the hotel. I remember him coming to my room beforehand looking completely ridiculous. Honestly, it was hilarious. He was always a goof in school, and that didn’t change because of our location. Had he stopped there, it probably would have been fine. But he left and went to the hotel weight room where he bench-pressed a few times, and then went into the hot tub. A stereotypical meathead, he wasn’t a slender guy, and the footie pajamas inevitably ripped when he got out of the hot tub. Of course, this rip happened in the worse place possibly, the butt, and at the worst time possible; he flashed several other guests of the hotel, who were no doubt shocked and horrified. Overall, I took a very valuable travel tip from from my friend’s odd behavior that my parents had warned me of from the beginning: having fun encouraged and expected, but being respectful of other ways of life is imperative when traveling to other countries.

Me and friends at the Berlin Wall

Photo by Ines A.