This time next week I’ll be somewhere in central Sri Lanka, waking up to breakfast at Kandy Cottage before setting out for the ancient cave temples of Dambulla and the magnificent rock fortress of Sigiriya. At least that’s the tentative plan on a still-unbelievable trip that after nearly two weeks spent exploring Sri Lanka will lead us onwards to the Maldives and around South Africa.

If it sounds like I have one foot out the door already, well, I do.

A little over two months ago I broke the news that I’d won a dream vacation. At that point we were still in the early planning stages of the trip, and still grappling with the notion that the world was essentially a blank slate, that for the first (and what will perhaps be the only) time in our lives budget wasn’t a prevailing factor in shaping our travel plans.

Whittling down the possibilities took some time: inland China, Indonesia, the Seychelles, Mozambique, India… we considered all of these and many more, but after the dust had settled on four months’ worth of planning, we sized up our five-week itinerary and decided we’d done a damn fine job making the most of it.

I’ll be posting short updates from the road here on Perceptive Travel (as well as on the Lonely Planet blog) while I’m gone, so I won’t get into too many specifics just yet. We’ll visit big cities and small villages, pound the pavement in crowded metropolises and kick back on deserted beaches, travel by train, plane, automobile, and boat, go from hot climate to cool, and dine at street-food stalls and four-star restaurants. We’ll hike, bike, snorkel, and swim.

That did it. I think my other foot just followed the other…

You know, I’d have written this earlier today but, well, there were the after effects of all that beer….

And the sunburn makes me tired….

What was the final score of the game?  I forget.

I was a Wrigley Field Bleacher Bum at a Cubs game in Chicago (thanks to my friends Pat and Ben from Matterhorn Marketing, who sprung for my ticket while we’re here for SOBCon.  Hey, it’s usually $25 whole dollars to be a Bum!)

The deal with bleacher tickets is that you don’t have assigned seating, it’s first-come-first-served, and you may not get a seat at all, but you DO get to hang out with rabid Chicago Cubs fans and enjoy the historic baseball atmosphere at an affordable price.

Wrigley was built in 1914; the only major league stadium that’s older is Boston’s Fenway.

History is fine, but I had even more fun watching the enthusiastic fans, the interaction with players in the outfield, the abuse of anyone throwing beer onto the field and of course the home runs.  When a home run ball goes out of the stadium into the street, the Bums all holler “Throw it back!” in unison and, wow, today someone really did throw it back onto the field (they’re rewarded with loud cheers.)

For those who (unlike me) actually pay attention to the score, all game stats are kept on the original scoreboard and some are updated by hand.

If you’re ever in Chicago, don’t miss enjoying an afternoon at Wrigley.

Evelyn Waugh is best known as the author of Brideshead Revisted, a novel depicting British aristocracy and high society in the first few decades of the 20th century.

He never inspired to be a great traveler or travel writer. By his own admission, he simply travelled as a matter of course as was expected of a young man of his standing. As a  result, from 1928 to 1937 he was constantly on the move, travelling around England and abroad, documenting his experiences in a number of travel books.

Waugh’s first travel book, Labels: A Mediterranean Journey (1930) charts his travels by cruise ship around the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern seaports.

Written as a semi-fictionalized travelogue in which Waugh casts himself not only as a batchelor (when in truth he was on his honeymoon) but also as an innocent abroad, Labels is a hilarious account of his 1929 travels.

Like his novels, Waugh’s Labels is ruthlessly satirical. A true novelist, his travel writing focuses more on the character and attitudes of his fellow-travellers and indigenous residents than locations. And when he does write about locations, it’s not always in the most favourable light.

I do not think I shall ever forget the sight of Etna at sunset; the mountains almost invisible in a blur of pastel grey, glowing on the top and then repeating its shape, as thought reflected, in a wisp of smoke, with the whole horizon behind radiant with pink light, fading gently into a grey pastel sky. Nothing I have ever seen in Art or Nature was quite so revolting. (pg 169)

It sure makes for entertaining reading of travel in a bygone era.

I heard my first growl of frustration from a Venetian on my second day in the city.

The sound emanated from a woman who was stuck behind me on a crowded, narrow street, and it seemed like an manifestation of my own feelings, as I’d stopped to look at the map I kept palmed in my hand, for what seemed like the 18,000th time.  After I wrinkled my nose at the map, I’d consult the guidebook’s more detailed maps, and then the GPS on my BlackBerry. In between, I’d spin in circles, peering around myopically for signs on the buildings that would tell me what street or campo I was on so I could then again recheck navigational tools. This all took quite a while, and was extra challenging when it was raining, or when it was night time, as it was when the woman behind me bellowed. I squished myself against a store window to let her pass as I yet again performed the entire routine.

Okay, so I don’t have the innate navigational skills of Marco Polo, but in my defense, Venice isn’t compared to a maze for nothing –  the city is a crazy spaghetti-bowl tangle of streets and alleyways, a good number of which terminate in dead ends.  Eventually, I would learn some tricks to navigating the city: for instance, if there’s a gap in a building that seems to have a brick wall just beyond it,  just keep going. A street would reveal itself at the last moment. Except for when it didn’t, but it’s better to be right up against a wall and backtrack than to miss the street you wanted to be on — since the chances of finding an alternate route to that street were not good.

And second, I learned that it’s good to count the number of canals you have to cross en route to your destination, ticking them off mentally as you traverse a bridge.

It turns out that the canals really are the secret to navigating Venice without a headache — there are 170 of them, and “they still represent the most direct way to reach most parts of Venice; unlike the contorted maze of calli, campi, and bridges just above them, they generally make sense,” write Robert C. Davis and Garry R. Marvin in their book, Venice: The Tourist Maze. I clicked over to the Google Earth view of Google Maps, and adjusted my gaze so it took in only the waterways. I could see Davis and Marvin’s point — the canals aren’t exactly a grid, but they also are a lot less tortured than the streets. Just after, I looked out of my 24th story apartment window, at Manhattan’s right angles of streets and avenues.

Oh, I get it. Taking the streets in Venice is rather like attempting to navigate New York without taking the streets, by somehow traversing through buildings, rather than going around them.

Of course, this insight into Venetian navigation is basically completely useless to a visitor intent on exploration. Vaporettos, the public ferries, are banned from the smaller waterways, and motorized water taxis that could get you onto these smaller waterways are prohibitively expensive for a day of meandering.  And how about all those gondolas that still ply the chalky green canal waters? From the time Venice became a major tourist destination, right around the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, until about World War I, the gondola was exactly the solution.  But those days are long over. In 1930, you could ride a gondola for an hour for less than 50 cents, and the point would be transportation. Now a gondola ride will cost you around $100 an hour, and the point isn’t getting from Point A to Point B, it’s more like an amusement park ride, with fixed stops along the way. Some 80% of gondolier’s business is in tour groups, write Davis and Martin. They call it “the ritual ride to nowhere”.

Since most tourists don’t have private boats, and most Venetians do, Davis and Marvin call the canals “the final possession of the Venetians…They travel in what is a very different city…keeping their gaze down on the canal before them, below the level of tourist feet, and calling out only to one another, they see a different city, with a good many more half-collapsed warehouses, sewer outlets and rather sordid boarded up storerooms, but also a treasure trove of otherwise secret houses and palaces that show their ornate faces only to these private waters and those who travel them.”

That’s a Venice that I’d love to see someday. But since the approximately 65,000 Venetians are so outnumbered by some 14 million tourists that visit each year,  a crowd that locals have dubbed “the herd,” it’s really hard to begrudge a city it’s final, tourist-free possession — or to justify its invasion.

An upcoming trip to New York City has me on the search for a place to stay. With  hundreds of hotels to choose from, simply finding a hotel is easy. But finding the perfect hotel – that turns out to be a little more difficult.

Now, some people would say  ’a hotel is a hotel is a hotel‘, just somewhere to rest your head at night after spending the day roaming around the city. And they are right. But sometimes you need a hotel be more than just a hotel – you need it to be a home away from home. Sometimes, you even need it to be a sanctuary.

And a sanctuary is what I’m looking for in New York City. After travelling for the previous two months, mostly on a Princess cruise ship in a smallish cabin with my mother, I’ll be more than ready for some space of my own to sit, to read, to write, and simply chill out.

But searching for a sanctuary in the middle of New York City isn’t as easy as it seems.

Things that need to be considered include…

Location. Location. Location

As any good real estate agent will tell you, it’s all about location. New York City might be located on a small island, but deciding where to stay is crucial to getting the most out a short stay in this city. So the first step in a hotel search needs to be deciding where you want to be based – theater, midtown, Greenwich, downtown, etc…

Size does count

There’s no getting away from it in New York City – the hotel rooms are small, some exceedingly so. Sadly, larger rooms cost more, but if size really is a crucial criteria, you either pay the price or look for hotels further afield.

Character is Important

Sure, there are plenty of well known chain hotels on offer that will give you a bed for the night (and points towards future stays) but a hotel with character and history can make an ordinary stay extraordinary. 

Is it worth it? 

Location, size, and character is important, but you have to ask yourself ‘is it worth the cost’. It pays to look for the added extras – free wifi, complimentary breakfast and snacks – that will make the price seem a little more acceptable.

Want to stay at The Plaza over looking Central Park but can’t justify to the costs ?  Check sites such as expedia.com to map out other hotels in the location. You might just be able to find one that fits both your criteria for location and costs.

Hotel Reviews – fact or fiction?

For every review I read that praises a hotel that I think might be the one, another review damns it. Hotel review sites such as Trip Advisor offer plenty of insight into hotels, but in the end, you just have to make a decision.

…

Meanwhile, my search for the perfect hotel continues.

I’ve narrowed it down to these possibilities – Library Hotel,  the Strand, The Plaza (just kidding), The Roosevelt, and the Algonquin Hotel.

But before make my final decision,  I just have to ask…

What’s your favorite hotel in New York City?