Convergent Journey

A cuppa tea and a camera

Posts from the ‘Travel tips’ category

Toesocks! And other Travel Tips

By on April 24, 2013

Toesocks to prevent blisters. Shoes with soles that actually provide buffer from those cobblestone ridges. How to be kind to your feet without looking like a dorky American tourist in high-top sneakers and mid-calf socks. Satisfy the oft-incompatible criteria of sensibility and fashion sense.

Advice from tour guides in Europe–for whom walking well is essentially their livelihood–tells you all this and more in The New York Times‘ article, ”Shoes the Pros Use.”

Basically, this is the best thing about to happen to my summer travel wardrobe. No longer do I have to sacrifice style for comfort! Well, not that I ever did when traveling. I definitely was that dorky, unapologetic American tourist squeaking around town in my sneakers.

Grates

These sneaks traveled all over Europe.

These heeled sandals gave me blisters.

Montmartre, Paris

These boots battered the cobblestone until the heels collapsed.

windy

Oh yeah, and that’s me in my sneaks in Vienna, faceplanted by the wind into my map.

Time to do some online shopping! Read more @The New York Times.

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Travel Like a Rock Star

By on August 16, 2012

A NYT article, ”A Battle Plan for Jetlag,” promises to distill NASA-developed techniques for us earth-dwelling travelers to fight jet lag. It sounded cool. But then I read it, and these are the takeaways I got from it:

  1. Well, at least that explains the indigestion.
  2. Wear sunglasses at certain times when traveling in certain directions.
  3. And when you do, you’ll feel really cool. “People will think you’re a rock star.”

… Or rather, you think they think you’re a rock star.

I know because I’ve tried this on New York subways. Whenever I see people wearing sunglasses on the subway, I think they must have (a) puffy crying-eyes, (b) a black eye or (c) an inflated ego.

But then I tried it one time, and it was a pretty awesome feeling. Especially living in New York, where the crowds crush in on you at all times, a pair of sunglasses on the subway is a screen between you and everyone else. It’s liberating. You can see them; they can’t see you. Or so you think; they’re actually staring at you because they think you look stupid wearing sunglasses on the subway.

But hey! That’s the point exactly. With the sunglasses on, you don’t care what they think. For all they know, you’re a rock star.

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The Keys to Happy Travel: Planning and Remembering

By on June 13, 2012

In the last post, I mentioned a study from two years ago that claimed people experience more of a boost in their happiness levels before a trip than during or after. The argument goes, it’s the anticipation and the planning that gets people all excited:

After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people…. There was no post-trip happiness benefit for travelers who said the vacation was “neutral” or “stressful.” Surprisingly, even those travelers who described the trip as “relaxing” showed no additional jump in happiness after the trip. “They were no happier than people who had not been on holiday,” said the lead author, Jeroen Nawijn.

So how can you drag out those happiness benefits? Well, I recently attended a talk at LSE with Daniel Kahneman, a seminal behavioural economist. I was excited because his research comprised about 30% of my syllabus in behavioural econ this term. The talk was unfortunately not all that interesting but I blame the moderator, who I thought did a really dismal job and barely knew what he was talking about (system 1, system 2, blah blah blah).

One thing that did stand out is Kahneman’s point about how our memories of experiences are shaped. He points out that people tend to conflate memory and experience, even though experiencing a moment and remembering it later are actually quite different. For example, if you attend a concert and there’s a loud screeching noise (or a persistent ringtone) at the end, you might say, “It ruined the experience for me.” Actually, the experience was how you enjoyed the concert during the first hour and a half, yet the memory of that experience is disproportionately determined by a final screech. In other words, we’re overly influenced by last impressions or peak (and, possibly, trough) moments.

The takeaway for traveling well? Remember it better. As this NYT article on “Planning the Perfect Vacation” recommends, try to end on a high note—save the best for last, perhaps—or at least plan a few activities or moments that will stand out in your memory as something special.

The other part that has made traveling even more fun in retrospect is recognizing the places I’ve been in the media. I was watching a rather boring movie called The Cardinal, which really wasn’t capturing my interest at all until! they were on a boat from Vienna along the Danube, passing right by the towns where we’d gone biking, on his way to the monastery!

Or hearing about Hallstatt on the news (this week’s “Wait Wait.. Don’t Tell Me“) because China spent nearly a billion dollars to create a replica of the Austrian village, though it doesn’t come with the alpine beauty and the lakes and the waterfall roaring through the town. (If you watch the BBC video, doesn’t the mayor of Hallstatt look just like Julian Assange?)

 

Something of the rustic, natural beauty gets lost in translation.

 

And I guess you can’t really create a whole mountain range either.  

Or watching the Olympic torch recreating the Chariots of Fire moment on its way past St. Andrews to light up Edinburgh Castle, then on to Stirling and the Wallace Memorial.

The “I’ve been there!” moment is all the more enhanced because these places always do seem to look better in the movies, don’t they? I was watching a film set in New York City the other day, and whenever I watch movies about New York I’m always amazed at how bright and shiny and clean everything looks.

Journaling helps preserve the memories too. Blogging especially has been helping me to keep reliving the memories! In short, I know I’m a lucky gal to have traveled so much in a mere ten months. My European travels are almost at an end, but they are hopefully well-preserved in my memory—and on this blog—for all their peaks and troughs and everyday details.

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UK Border Control: Bests and Worsts, Mostly Worsts

By on May 11, 2012

Two stories about the UK border agency. First, the worst airport in London. Second, the immigration officer who not so subtly hinted I should leave the country.

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1. THE WORST AIRPORT IN LONDON

Especially with the Olympics coming up and tourists already swarming in London now that it’s spring, there’s been a lot of talk about how awful the delays are getting through immigration at Heathrow. Reacting to that, there are the “What delay?” articles. As well as that great tool of lazy reporting, crowdsourcing.

I’ve had two visitors come in through Heathrow in the past week, and both of them said they breezed right through. So maybe Heathrow’s not so bad after all. Flying into Gatwick has never caused any problems, and Luton is by far the easiest: quick, painless and a straight shot to the bus. (By the way, for service from Luton, I love easyBus. If you arrive earlier or later than expected, they’ll put you on the next bus free of charge.)

Without a doubt, the absolute worst immigration control is at Stansted Airport.  Given all the heat that Heathrow’s been getting, a few media outlets have been analyzing Stansted too. This from the BBC:

A spokesman for the airport, owned by BAA, said: “The majority of passengers arriving at Stansted pass through border controls quickly and securely. However, at peak times, and similar to many other UK airports, immigration queues can be unacceptably long.”

Ha! Well, truth be told, getting through the EU/UK citizens line seems easy enough. But there is no airport in London quite like Stansted for discrimination against non-EU/UK passport holders.

Even when there were only eight people in front of me with two desks open in the “All Passports” line, I waited for an hour. No exaggeration. The people in front of me were Turkish passport holders who seemed like a group of family and friends, and each person who went to the desk had to talk to the immigration officer, wait while the officer called for help or verification, then sit off to the side until they were summoned elsewhere. Each took about ten minutes, and the officers kept getting up to leave the desk in between! Drive. me. crazy.

The second time, there were about fifteen people in front of me, with only one desk open. A group of Chinese students who were travelling together ran into the same situation: Desk. Wait. Call up. Sit to the side. Get summoned. Officer leaves with them. Students here on visa have to match up their fingerprints, and the system wasn’t retrieving any of theirs.

Stansted Airport. Worst.
Photo source: The Telegraph

Problems: (1) Too few officers. (2) Broken systems. And (3) inefficient design. The wheelchair access lane should not go through the All Passports line. No discrimination here against handicapped access, but for efficiency’s sake, when there are eight desks open on the EU/UK passports side, it would make more sense for everyone involved to have the handicapped access line be serviced there instead. (Wanting to be careful about how I described this, I took particular note of whether the people being served through the handicapped access lane were EU/UK citizens or not. And indeed, all handicapped access passengers are served through the “All Passports” side, including EU/UK citizens.)

As the line behind me grew longer—up to thirty or more—and still ten more to go in front of me, I could hear people sigh audibly every time our lone immigration officer had another holdup, or another handicapped passenger took precedence. And the crazy thing is, just when you get excited that a second immigration officer has come down to open another desk, once that desk is open, the other officer leaves!

Enough griping. How about something to be thankful for?

Well, with an American passport, when I do finally make it to the immigration desk, I answer two questions, match my fingerprints, and I’m outta there in thirty seconds. God bless America!

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2. “PLEASE LEAVE NOW,” IN SO MANY WORDS

So much for the stereotype that Brits are polite.

Returning from Paris by Eurostar, I thought, on a 7.30am train there shouldn’t be bottlenecking at immigration (which you have to pass through as you leave Paris). But bottlenecking there was.

An American family—a girl studying abroad in London and her parents— was in front of me. The parents were flying out of Heathrow later that day, while the girl would stay on in London.

“When are you leaving the UK?” the officer asked.
“Today,” the parents replied.
“Where are your boarding passes?”
“We haven’t printed them out yet.”
“I need to see your boarding pass.”
“But we haven’t printed them—here, I have it on my phone.”
“No sir, we cannot accept electronic passes.”
“But our flight leaves today, we’re going to pick up the e-tickets—”
“I’m sorry, I need to see your boarding pass.”

The officer may as well have been a robot. How much more obvious could the circumstances be? After a few more minutes of fumbling, they, too, were summoned for further questioning. How long will you be in the UK? What time is your flight? And you, how long will you be studying in the UK? What are you studying? Where? 

When it was my turn, the immigration officer asked me:

“Where are you studying?”
“LSE.”
“Have you booked your flight back to the States?”

Excuse me? This was in early April, and my visa is valid through September. Time to pack those bags—apparently I’m not wanted here!

*Shakes fist*

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EPILOGUE

I did make it onto my train with barely three minutes to spare, and the family scrambled on only moments before the doors closed. I know this because they happened to be in the same train car as I was, and they talked loudly about what had happened for forty-five minutes. On a 7.30am train. What sympathy I had for them vanished after the first fifteen minutes. Not a single other person was talking; most were sleeping. Fulfilling the stereotype that Americans are loud.

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In Search of Postcards

By on May 8, 2012

I could have spent hours browsing the selection here, at L’univers de Leo in Paris

When I moved to England I decided to channel my weakness for stationery into something worthwhile. So I started a postcard project back in October, offering to send a postcard to anyone who requested one.

The final tally: I’ve sent 47 postcards in the last seven months, 16 of which have been for my family (because I send one from every city I visit). My brother joked that he’d have to dedicate a whole wall to my postcards soon.

Writing postcards has become a fun and functional habit—it indulges my love of stationery, helps me stay in touch with friends back home, keeps the dying postal service in business and is a much cheaper habit than buying souvenirs that just gather dust. The only things I ever bring back from my trips are chocolate bars and other edible items :)

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*Tip: If you’re looking to buy postcards in London
The best selection of postcards I’ve found in London—and believe me, I’ve looked all over this town—is in a small convenience store in Hay’s Galleria along the South Bank, on Hay’s Lane. I honestly don’t even remember if the store had a name; it’s just on the left before you enter the Galleria if you’re walking from Tooley St. It’s a small selection, but they’ve got a lot of interesting historic ones. A lot classier than the garish close-ups of the Queen where you can see all her pores. The postcards here cost about £0.60 per card. The cheapest postcards I’ve seen are sold in the souvenir shops lining Oxford Street, for £0.10~0.15 apiece. 

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