What I Look For in the Places I Travel To

The long wait of traveling long distance is over!

It has been 14 months--1 year and 2 months--since I last traveled somewhere long and far away from Atlanta. Initially I had no trips planned aside from Austria in August, which would've been nearly 1.5 years. I got itchy.

The great thing about my job is that I alternate between 6 day weeks and 4 day weeks. During these 4 day weeks I have 3 day weekends...and that is prime travel time. Ever since my sojourn into San Francisco I wanted another weekend out west. Wouldn't you know it but Delta had $200 round-trip tickets to Denver and I immediately grabbed those.

In this week's preparation for my Colorado trip I've had to consider what I value out of a destination. What do I always want to check out in a place I visit? I thought I'd extend this thought into a post.

Here are a few things I always look for and always aim to add to my itinerary.

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Food

Of course. Of course I want food. It's the number one element I look for in any new destination. I want to get a fork and eat my way through a place. In particular when I visit an urban place the first thought I have will be "Where can I eat?"

It's not enough to just want food, though. It's also a piece of a destination's identity. The choices I make in where I want to eat is how I get acquainted with a place. What do locals eat? What type of food is this place known for?

Thus I look for things like markets where I can find locals getting the best food. Or I'll research a place's culinary identifiers. I'll dwell on these identifiers. When I was in Quebec it wasn't enough to eat poutine (which I ate twice) but to look into the regional cuisine, largely rooted in French and largely using game meat like bison or deer. When I was in Chile I knew seafood was a large part of their cuisine. I went to Mercado Central and wafted the blissfully pungent smell of seafood and freshly caught fish before discovering my favorite South American dish: paila marina.

When I go to Denver it's not enough to just go to the highest ranking Yelp restaurant. I want something I can't find in Atlanta. A hip sushi place? Big whoop. A hot dog place where the hot dogs are made out of pheasant and rattlesnake? Oh...oh yes.

Some people are flippant about food options in their travels. Food isn't important to them. I don't trust people like that. I don't trust people who don't like food. They probably don't like life or sex either.

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Green Space/Natural Scenery

I've embraced the rural Appalachia that marks my identity. I grew up in a quiet place and I've grown to love it. There's a pace that nature offers that eases anxiety and restores health.

It's easy to get spoiled by nature when it swarms you. I grew up playing in forests and I never not want to do that. The way that people fall head over heels for the noise of talking people, traffic, the business of cities--which I understand--is the way I fall threadbare to staggering natural scenery.

When looking at destinations I consider how near I will be or how I can get to nature. Choosing San Francisco as a weekend destination fit my expectations because I was so near Muir Woods and Point Reyes. I rented a car purposefully to see these places early in the morning devoid of people. It was worth the frustration of renting a car and driving in a tight and compact San Francisco.

Access to national park and state parks isn't necessarily essential, but it helps. It helps if I can go to a place that has access to beautiful parks. I have to find great parks. I have to find the lakefront parks in Chicago, the greenery of Mendoza that stands in contrast to the desert that surrounds the city, or the Potomac River straddling D.C.

,,,

Live Events

I have to experience a live event--a sports game, a rock show, a reading, a performing arts production, or anything that requires an audience. As with food, finding the right live event is a way to live a local's life. It's a way to find the heart of a place. When I was in Montreal it was definitely a goal (no pun intended) to see a Montreal Canadiens game, because even if I didn't have a long term relationship with their hockey team being in that arena was bearing witness to the motherland of my favorite sport. It was my way to seeing what Canada is like, by seeing the reactions of a sold out (on a Tuesday) arena chanting "Go Habs Go." Likewise in a technology soaked city like San Francisco I found transcendence in a low-key, $5 cover charge dive bar. The band was playing standard Stevie Ray Vaughan blues while older, former hippies danced with younger San Fran crowds wanting to check out what the Yelp or TripAdvisor reviews.

Even in countries where I don't know the native language, it's fun to find an event where I can involve myself in a language that's not written or verbal. In Santiago I realized how wonderful dance was by seeing a dance performance that had no Spanish, just dancers speaking their language in choreography and movement.
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And Art Museums

I don't know why I have to see an art museum. I certainly love art. I certainly don't find enough satisfaction in seeing a high definition photo of an art piece. To borrow from Good Will Hunting I want to smell art. I want to have a relationship that I can only have in an art museum. For me a great place will have an art museum. It's the sign of how healthy a place is. An art museum will tell the story of a city. Take Atlanta, where I live. Of course the High Museum of Art has works by the Masters. Of course it has a Picasso. That's not what makes the museum golden, however. The High's best pieces are its self-made and folk art, a celebration of largely Southern and regional artists who labored over pieces using whatever medium they could get without any substantial art training. The High also had African masks and a large collection of African and African-American art because of how this culture defines Atlanta. That's not what will be found in a museum in Quebec, which celebrates its French ancestry and which celebrates the unique diversity of Canada.