a Geographer's Place

As a Geographer, I’ve traveled. A lot. I’ve taken solo jaunts and been on guided excursions; been a group tour guide and one for myself. After years of traveling from all different angles, there’s one thing I’ve noticed: most tourists try and do too much. Whether you’re planning a trip on your own or you have a travel agent/company doing it for you, be careful to pace yourself. Here are a couple examples… Let’s say you only have a one week vacation coming and you want to “do Europe”. The first-time tourist (and sometimes the perpetual tourist) might think, “Okay, seven days…I’m seeing London, Paris, and Amsterdam”. Can it be done? Sure. But can you REALLY appreciate anything along the way in five days? (Five days because it takes one to get there and one to get home). A trip of five days visiting London, Paris, and Amsterdam might look something like this: Day 1: Fly from home to London, overnight flight Day 2: Grab the “tourist” hop-on-hop-off bus way early and zip around the city wi...

My favorite thing to do when Traveling? Get lost. Travel is fine. Getting lost when Traveling, well…that's fantastic! Now, to me, "getting lost" while Traveling means wandering without any specific agenda. Sure you should have a guidebook and know about the place you're visiting, but by getting lost, amazing experiences occur. Imagine this… You've just finished an incredible lunch of gnocchi and are wandering down a small side-street in the Tuscan city of Siena, Italy. You could take the "main" street back to your hotel, but instead, you decide to wander down a small corridor lined with interesting shops very dissimilar from the "main" street. You're "lost"—perhaps more in thought than on the ground—although you know your hotel is somewhere in that general direction. But this is Travel after all, and you relish the chance to be Traveling. Coming out of a small shop that specializes in silversmithing, you see an odd sight: a blu...

After reading the entire Harry Potter series (I finished book seven Saturday afternoon—21 July 2007), it occurred to me that there were several really, really excellent life lessons. While there are countless truisms and lessons throughout the Harry Potter series, these five “lessons” represent, IMHO, the concepts of how a meaningful life can be achieved. 1. Sometimes, you just have to find out things on your own. This painful lesson is often skirted by parents and loved ones in the name of “protection”. If, for example, someone you love (see #5) is about to do something that YOU, from experience, know will be harmful, the first thought is to help them avoid it. But what good does that really do? Ignoring the someone doesn’t work either, as Dumbledore learned in OoTP. The trick is to be a guide through the “trial” and, though frustrating, let the person gain their own experience. Dumbledore learns this the hard way, paying with his life in HBP, and Harry is left to sort it out on his o...