Up in the Air

I like travelling, but I don't get to do it very much. And when I do get to travel, I find that I am generally doing so in the company of my parents. I love my parents, but there's an age at which you start to think it *might* be pathetic to have your parents as your sole travel companions. And when you reach that age (33), you have some choices:

Option #1: Meet an awesome member of the sex to whom you are attracted, who finds you irresistible, and get married! Now you have someone to travel with and you'll get a tax break! This option is favored by my mother, my married friends, and the more meddlesome members of my extended family. And to them, I say: OF COURSE! WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT?!?!? *irritated glare* Next.

Option #2: Travel with a friend! This is a perfectly legitimate option, provided you have a friend who meets all the crucial Travel Buddy Requirements and is interested in going to the same place you want to go and can get the time off from work and has no outstanding warrants in your country of origin or destination. That's a pretty tall order. And it gets a lot tougher when your best Travel Buddy options start going with Option #1.

Option #3: Travel alone! This can get pricey, as there's no one to share costs. And it might get lonely. It might even get boring. On the other hand, no one else gets a vote on what you do with your day, no one will know if you choose to have ice cream sundaes for all three meals every day of your trip, you can spend your whole trip in character as your alter ego (Mitzi Wong, international plus-size model and wine reviewer), and you don't have to go to a *single* modern art museum if you don't want to. WHERE DO I SIGN?

So this year, for the first time ever in my whole entire life, I am opting for #3. I have booked plane tickets and a hotel room. I've also booked a day tour, but I think I'm going to leave the rest of my itinerary open and see where the days take me. I expect it'll be something like this...

9AM: "I have deduced that these important cultural and historical landmarks are all in the same neighborhood, so I'll walk over there and spend the day enriching my brain!"

9:45AM: "There's a IHOP here? Hmmm. My brain won't get very enriched if I don't at least feed it first..."

Noon: "Crap! It's noon! I gotta stop reading Twitter and get up to that other neighborhood."

Noon 15: "Wait - there's a Little Italy here? Is there a Little Italy in every city? I can't believe I didn't know there was a Little Italy! HEY PIZZA!"

4:30PM: "Screw it."

6PM: Back in my hotel room with a bottle of wine and my leftover pizza.

Solo vacations are awesome. Also: I've just checked, and apparently there really is an IHOP less than a block from my hotel, so every day of my trip may literally go exactly as I have described above. Except Little Italy won't surprise me anymore after the first day.

So I'm pretty stoked, and I'm open to any suggestions or ideas anyone has. I'm not going to tell you where I'm going, because I don't want to be followed around by mobs of adoring fans and/or angry creditors. Let's just say that this place where I'm going has more than one modern art museum (WHY?), and I will not be setting foot in any of them!

Oh - and let's also just say that I'm not leaving for another 13 days, so it's not like I'm leaving immediately. Not that you could tell whether I'm home or not, since I've been so bad about blogging lately. Who knows? Maybe I'll think of something worth telling you in the next thirteen days! But just in case I don't...

Ciao!

Mitzi