I’m up in Seattle for a couple days of travel-related meetups – I went to two of them tonight, and the third is tomorrow night. Every single person at each meetup is someone I’ve met online, and they’re all travelers. One is here in Seattle after two days in Portland, which was the first stop on what’s going to be a long-term trip. She departs for Asia in a little over a week and isn’t planning to come back for at least six months. Another pair from tonight’s meetup are 18 days away from their own departure date, and they’re off on a multi-year adventure.

The rest of the crew is made up of a bunch of travel lovers with whom, it turns out, I have a fabulous time with. Yes, we share an interest in travel, and that’s definitely good for a conversation starter, but it’s more than that. These are excellent human beings with whom I’m proud to be associated and humbled to spend time with.

And now my thought.

As I was sitting in the gelato shop tonight, at the second meetup of the evening, surrounded by some of these wonderful people and thinking about how many miles we’ve all traveled collectively, I thought, “These are exactly the kinds of people I am pleased to have out in the world representing travelers. These are the perfect travel ambassadors.”

I love knowing that they’re out in the world, on long trips or short getaways, sharing their hospitality and generous natures. I love knowing that I know them all. The world needs more of them.

Big hugs to @nerdseyeview @pwcarey @kag2u @aghman @wtalbot @betsytalbot @spunkygirllogue @dogjaunt @c_johnston @CAroundtheWorld @hbaskas – and I swear I haven’t been drinking. These are honest-to-goodness heartfelt hugs here, folks.

I’m fond of saying how lucky I am that I live in a beautiful part of the world, and I still love being reminded just how lucky I am. Thankfully, the Pacific Northwest – especially in the summer – has a brilliant way of doing that regularly. On a recent trip to Central Oregon, I had more than one occasion where I was unable to stop gasping at how gorgeous my surroundings were.

On one of those occasions, I had just come around a corner on the trail by Sparks Lake with the South Sister in the background. This is what I saw:

South Sister & Sparks Lake

I am not a collector of passport stamps, and my list of places I’ve been is woefully short compared to many of my travel writing colleagues. I do, however, always have a desire to plan whatever my next trip is, and to see as much of the world as I can.

And yet something tells me that if I spent half as much time exploring my own state as I do yearning to be elsewhere, I’d be quite content for a very long time.

my alma mater colors outside the reunion

I dug them off their shelf the day I got back from my 20-year reunion, and paging through the pictures and messages – for the first time in perhaps 15 years – is helping my brain put the faces I saw at the reunion together with the names I remember from graduation.

Why didn’t I do this – let’s call it research – before my reunion? Why only after? Probably for the same reason I wasn’t entirely certain going to the reunion was a good idea: I wasn’t eager to relive those years.

If you’d asked me any time in the past two decades what high school was like for me, I’d have had a pretty definitive answer for you. I’d have said I hated high school, that I had a very small circle of close friends, that I was a social misfit who didn’t really have a place in the school I attended. I wasn’t one of the popular crowd, I wasn’t top of the class, I wasn’t stand-out in anything enough to be memorable.

I skipped my 10-year reunion (even though I live a 1.5-hour drive away) using the logic I’ve heard countless people use before and since – I was in touch with everyone I wanted to be in touch with from high school already (a grand total of two people). I had similar qualms as I made the 1.5-hour drive to my 20th reunion. I had even convinced myself that most of my classmates wouldn’t even remember me.

What was I doing?, I kept thinking. Why, if I didn’t fit in back then, did I think I’d fit in now? Why, if I hated high school so much, would I want to revisit it?

I walked into the bar on the first night of the reunion, relieved to notice they had a registration table set up with nametags, and was immediately enveloped in a bear hug by a guy I hadn’t had time to even look at before he hugged me. “Jessica Spiegel, ladies and gentlemen,” I heard him say. When he pulled back, I saw that it was someone I’d known since third grade, when I first moved to Oregon. He had been a loveable punk kid, a trouble-maker with a sweet side, and someone I hadn’t been close to. In the bar at our 20th reunion, he not only recognized me, he was happy to see me. I was dumbfounded.

At that moment, I realized I’d been approaching the whole reunion thing all wrong. It wasn’t about reliving the past, it was about living in the present with people who shared history with you. And that was it.

Through the rest of the weekend, I had an utterly fantastic time seeing people I hadn’t seen in 20 years – some of them I’d been friends with, some of them I’d just known by name. In every case, I felt like I was making new friends as much as (if not more than) seeing old ones. There was no awkwardness, no reverting back to age 18. The old cliques were gone. There were some remarkable transformations, and they were (as far as I could see) taken in stride. People were accepted for exactly who they are right now. I drove home with an unexpected warmth in my heart.

And then when I got home and pulled my high school yearbooks from the shelf, I started to wonder what high school had really been like. The pictures of classmates were familiar now that I’d just seen so many of them again in real life, but reading through the messages made me question the entire premise upon which I’d built my impressions of high school. I read page after page of friendly words from people I had thought wouldn’t remember who I was – and not just the usual “stay cool, have a great summer” stuff we all expect from yearbooks. These were heartfelt teenage messages, with phone numbers and addresses and requests to stay in touch. Requests I had obviously ignored.

In the end, I wondered, was I on the outside looking in during high school, or had I removed myself from the social scene?

But then I came back to the warmth from the reunion. My classmates had clearly decided – subconsciously or not – that it didn’t matter what high school was like for any of us. It didn’t matter who hung out with who, what grades we got, or what we wore. It didn’t even matter that our interests weren’t completely aligned as adults. What mattered was that we shared history together – in some cases, going all the way back to kindergarten – and nothing on earth can change that. We can grow up, get jobs, move around the country (or the world), get married, have kids, get divorced, get married again – and we’ll still be the same people who once had goofy haircuts and wore polyester pants in that fourth grade class photo.

That unchanging history used to depress me. I’d look at my resume each time I’d write it down and cringe at the path my life had taken. But once I reached a place where I was happy with who I am now, looking back at the path seemed less depressing and more intriguing. I’d gone through that and ended up here? Well, I’ll be.

And so it was as I drove home from the reunion, happy with who I am and no longer afraid my classmates wouldn’t remember me, that I decided I no longer care about the teenage discomfort I surely felt back then. I no longer want to be part of the crowd who chimes into the chorus of “I hated high school.” Yes, growing up is difficult in lots of ways – we all felt it, and many of us felt like we were the only ones who didn’t quite fit in. It sucks at the time, and of course it’s only continuing to grow up that helps you not just get past it but see that you weren’t the only one – that everyone goes through an awkward period and, most importantly, that people don’t tend to judge you forever by the person you were when you were 18.

Thank goodness.

Maybe I really did hate high school back then, or maybe I’ve just convinced myself of that over the years. Either way, it doesn’t really matter anymore. What matters now is that there’s a group of people who have known me for a damned long time and who are friendly, open, accepting, and warm for no other reason than we’ve known each other for a damned long time.

I’m already looking forward to the 25th.

I’ve been mulling over something in my head for a few weeks – has it been months? – now, and it’s something I’d like to have a conversation about. Something, at least, that I’d like to hear from others about before I go spouting off on the subject.

I know, right? Kooky.

Anyway, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask a question here, and if you’ve got something to contribute to the conversation, let me know. You can leave a comment below, or, if you’d like to send something longer you can send me an email – jessica (at) bootsnall (dot) com with the subject line “I’m Obsessed.” Why? You’ll see in a minute. And you should also know that any response you leave in the comments or send me via email may well end up in whatever I write. There you are, fair warning.

And now, for my question.

Question:

Have you ever been obsessed with a place for a really long time without actually setting foot in that place? I’m talking ten, 20 years or more? If so, have you finally visited that place after your long obsession? What was it like? Did it live up to expectations or was it disappointing? And if you haven’t visited the place, are you afraid to, just in case it might be disappointing?

I look forward to hearing from you.

This was my second trip to Paris in the space of a month, only this time I didn’t have the comforting bubble of friends around me, fellow study abroad students who’d been to Paris before. This time I was in the enviable position of staying with my father’s French cousins – cousins who had an enormous parquet-floored apartment just down the street from the Arc de Triomphe. I was being very well taken care of, but was fighting a fear of the unknown that was keeping me in their gorgeous apartment and away from the city outside.

When I’d visited Paris earlier in my trip, I had happily followed my friends around, only vaguely paying attention as they surveyed the metro map to plan a travel route. I sort of understood how to read the map, but I hadn’t put that to the test. When I returned to Paris to stay with my cousins, I was by myself. My friends had set off, armed with Eurail passes, to spend the two-week break between our semesters in Nottingham seeing Europe. I had chosen to spend that two-week break with relatives in Zurich and Paris – and even as I sat in my cousins’ apartment, nervous about going out alone, I didn’t regret that choice. It was just going to take a polite bit of mothering from my cousin Françoise to get me out of my shell.

One morning before she left to work at one of her new quiche shops that had just opened across town, Françoise said to me, “Why don’t you come by the shop for lunch? I can feed you there.” It was settled. I couldn’t disappoint Françoise, so I told her I’d meet her at the shop. She drew a speck on my Paris map that I was to aim for, and then she was gone.

I’m not exaggerating when I say it took me all morning to work up the gumption to walk out the door of that apartment.

I had studied my metro map and found the nearest station to that speck Françoise had drawn. Following my friends around had apparently done more good for me than I’d realized, because the metro map – a potentially confusing mess of colorful spaghetti haphazardly dropped on the floor – seemed to make sense to me. I picked my route and successfully navigated my way to the station I’d been aiming for, without having to even glance at the map in my pocket.

I was feeling smug when I got off the metro train, which is probably why I was presented with that humbling, awful 50-50 choice, and probably why I chose poorly.

As anyone who’s gotten off a subway train anywhere in the world knows, there’s often an array of signs pointing you in various directions to different station exits. These signs are incredibly helpful, but only if those street names mean something to you. If you only know a general direction you’re heading, or you only know a street name a few blocks away that you’re trying to reach, or you don’t even know those things, those signs just end up being too many choices when you don’t want any.

What I was faced with at that metro station in Paris was only a 50-50 choice – two signs, pointing in opposite directions – but rather than look at my map, thereby looking lost or confused, I just picked one direction as soon as I saw the signs. I didn’t break stride. I probably looked like I’d made that trip a hundred times.

I looked the part of the Girl Who Knows Where She’s Going. And I knew instantly I’d chosen the wrong way.

The tunnel I was in kept going and going and going and I thought I would end up at the previous metro station, when finally there were stairs leading up to ground level. I walked out into the September sunlight and – once again – picked a direction and walked that way. I thumbed the edges of the map in my pocket, but refused to consult it. I walked with purpose. In completely the wrong direction, mind you, but with purpose.

I kept walking until I happened upon another metro station. Without hesitating I marched down the steps into that station, punched another ticket, consulted the map in the station (not the one in my pocket) to see exactly where I was in relation to the station I’d walked from, and figured out the route back to where I wanted to be.

I probably don’t need to say this, but when I was faced with that 50-50 choice again, I chose differently the second time.

Within five minutes of my second trip to that metro station, I was taking my coat off in a newly-opened Tarte Julie shop in a residential neighborhood on the outskirts of central Paris, being served a lovely quiche and salad prepared by Françoise. I never said anything to her about my wrong turns (thankfully we hadn’t established a specific time I’d be there). When I left lunch that day, I navigated my way back to the apartment without incident, and my Paris map remained in my pocket the entire time.

I still look back on that trip to Paris – and, specifically, that day – as the point when I realized there’s no such thing as being lost. You can always get where you’re going from where you are, it just might take a little longer than you’d intended. I love maps, and they wallpaper my office, but when I’m walking around a city I would rather make a dozen foolish wrong turns or walk in circles than destroy the illusion that I know what I’m doing. I’ve taken more wrong turns in my life since that point than I can count, but I know I can always get there from here.

I may not always be the Girl Who Knows Where She’s Going, but I still like to pretend.

photo by earcos

There’s a Google map at the bottom of this post with markers for all the places I mention below, so you can see where they are in the city.

• Pok Pok – This is my favorite Thai place in a city full of Thai places, but you won’t find pad thai on the menu. Pok Pok is more of an homage to Thai street food, and an order of Ike’s Vietnamese chicken wings is a must. The cocktails are also spectacular (try the ones made with the drinking vinegars for a special treat). There’s often an annoyingly long wait here, but if you’ve got a group of 5+ you can make reservations (highly recommended for dinner, especially on weekends), and you can now get a drink and an order of Ike’s wings at the Whiskey Soda Lounge across the street while you wait.
• Ken’s Artisan Pizza – My favorite pizza outside of Italy is made by the husband right in my own kitchen, but a very close second is any pizza made at Ken’s Artisan Pizza. The big wood oven and attention to detail make the dough perfectly chewy inside and crisp outside, and a limited menu of toppings means you’re getting the best stuff available. Ken’s doesn’t take reservations, so plan on a wait (especially on weekends) – if you spot open seats at the bar, however, grab them. You’ll get the same dinner menu at the bar and you’ll typically have much less of a wait.
• Tabla – Tabla serves one of my favorite dishes in Portland (after tasting it the first time I assumed the chef had sold his soul to the devil for something so orgasmically good). The menu is a medley of Mediterranean foods, and you can order everything in full or half sizes – so you can sample more dishes without getting over-stuffed. Tabla does a nice happy hour, which is nice if you’re on a dining budget, and if you see the pappardelle with rabbit ragu on the menu I have two words for you: order it.
• Mio Gelato – I’m a fan of Italian gelato, so I feel lucky that there’s an exceptional gelateria in Portland. In fact, my favorite – Mio Gelato – has four locations around the Portland area, three of which are in the city center. The gelato is authentically Italian; many of the flavors are the same ones you’d find in any gelato shop in Italy. There are also sometimes flavors that are locally popular, too, and they have special seasonal flavors as well. There’s usually a selection of sandwiches, soup, and other snacks on hand if you want to make it a one-stop-shop for lunch, but the highlight here is really the gelato.
• Ping – The people behind Pok Pok had such great success with it that they opened a sister restaurant on the other side of the river, called Ping. Ping also pays homage to street food, but this time it’s street food from all over Southeast Asia. The plates are small here, so you can sample liberally and share with table-mates. Cocktails – including those with drinking vinegars – are also outstanding here, and sitting at the bar means you get to have fun conversations with the bartender.
• Sahagun Chocolates – Sahagun is about the size of a walk-in closet, and the chocolate artwork in the display case is definitely not cheap, but I strongly suggest you set aside a few dollars so that you can experience one of the salted caramels. They’re tiny thimbles of dark chocolate shells with a liquid center of salty caramel goodness. You have to eat them in one bite, so if your budget allows it – buy a couple. Oh, and if you’re having trouble finding parking nearby, there’s usually a spot or two available in front of the adult store around the corner (no one wants to have their car seen in front of it, I guess).
• St. Honore Bakery – The St. Honore Boulangerie is a little bit of Paris right in Portland. The pastries are as beautiful as they are flaky deliciousness, the breads are wonderful, and the sandwiches and quiches make a fantastic lunch. It can be extremely crowded at times during both breakfast and lunch, especially on weekends, but you don’t have to wait for a table – you can also get your goodies to go.
• Voodoo Doughnut – There’s nothing secret about Voodoo Doughnut anymore, but I’m still going to mention it because maybe you haven’t read about it already. And even if you have read about it, you might think it wasn’t worth the hype. A donut is a donut, right? Wrong. I’m not necessarily a fan of every odd creation the Voodoo folks come up with, but I cannot say enough nice things about the one donut you should order if you go – the maple bacon bar. Yes, bacon on a donut. Don’t think about it, just eat it.
• Portland Brew Pubs – There are several good prew pubs in Portland, most of which serve local microbrews, but two of my favorites downtown are the BridgePort BrewPub and the Deschutes Brewery Public House. In addition to a range of beers, they also serve up a selection of fine pub-inspired foods. There’s nothing pretentious about these places or the food they serve, but it’s also significantly better fare than what you might expect at most pubs. These are fun and lively places to drink, to be sure, but don’t overlook the food because you assume the menus are the same old boring bar menus you’d find anywhere.

I haven’t listed any coffee places on this list, because you’d have to try really hard to not find a decent place to get coffee in Portland. I would encourage you to steer clear of the many Starbucks outlets, primarily because there are so many other more interesting places to get coffee. When hunting for a place to get good coffee in Portland, the thing to pay attention to is the kind of coffee a given cafe is serving. Portland’s own Stumptown Coffee is always a good bet, but it’s by no means your only non-Starbucks option. If you’re into coffee, you’ll enjoy testing liberally while you’re in Portland.

If you’re in Portland during the farmer’s market season, then Saturday breakfast and lunch can be taken care of at the Portland Farmer’s Market if you like. Yes, the market is crammed with amazing fresh produce that you may not be able to enjoy if you’re just visiting and don’t have a kitchen at your disposal, but there are some fantastic booths selling prepared foods – in fact, some of Portland’s restaurants got their start as a booth at the market, so it’s definitely several steps above what you might think of as “market stall food.”

It’s also worth noting that Portland is one of the cities that has a vibrant food cart culture. There are some carts that are truly mobile, but there are others that are always in the same spot. The Food Carts Portland site is a great guide to Portland’s moveable feasts.

I’m sad to find, as I’m writing this article, that my old favorite Mexican place downtown – El Grillo – is closed now. It was a hole-in-the-wall dive with reasonable and cheap food, but it was the experience of eating there that made it a place I recommended to people. Where else, after all, could you be any age to eat in a restaurant but need to be 21 to use the toilet? El Grillo’s odd location meant that it shared a bathroom with Mary’s strip club next door, so if you needed a potty break in the middle of eating your burrito you had to go through the back door of the restaurant – and yes, you got quite an eye-full of the (ahem) entertainment on display. RIP El Grillo…

Pok Pok photo by Paul Lowry

Sara Rosso of Ms. Adventures in Italy, Michelle Fabio of Bleeding Espresso, and I recorded our first episode of Eye On Italy last Monday, and although we know we’ve got some room for improvement we’re also pleased with the results of that first effort. At a selfish level, it’s a fun opportunity for the three of us to chat in real-time once a week – but having the podcast will also be a forum for us to discuss all kinds of Italy-related topics.

In the first episode, we talked about the volcano in Iceland and how it had disrupted travel in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, about the iPhone app for the Uffizi gallery in Florence (as well as several Lonely Planet apps that were free for a limited time to help travelers stuck in Europe because of the volcano, and about visiting Turin to see the city’s famous Shroud. Our plan is to talk about news items, current events, Italian culture, and Italy travel tips each week, and also to have special guests on when we can to talk about whatever their area of expertise (Italy-related, of course) might be.

The Eye On Italy podcast is available on iTunes, so if you’re at all interested in Italy I encourage you to subscribe – and by all means tell us if there’s a topic or a story you’d like us to talk about. See an Italy news item you want commentary on? Send it to us. Have an Italy travel question you think we can answer? Let us know. You can leave a comment on the Eye On Italy site, send an email (click on the “Contact” link at the top of the site for information), or send a note to the Eye On Italy Twitter account.

We all look forward to recording more episodes, and we hope you enjoy this all-Italy podcast!

I think it’s safe to say that this dish not only inspired the husband to love cooking, but also started the love affair I now have with Italian food. I am not a cook – I don’t like experimenting in the kitchen and I’m easily flustered by too many things on the stove at once – but this dish just looked so simple to make that we tried it the same day we saw it as part of a promotional show on our local PBS station. As I learned later, the simplicity of this recipe is completely indicative of how easy Italian cooking is. What’s more, we’ve made it even simpler than the original recipe, too, so there’s really no excuse to not make it at least once a week.

Which is why it’s insane that we always forget about it.

At any rate, I’ve never been to The River Cafe in London, but this recipe comes from the two women who started that restaurant (which is, incidentally, where Jamie Oliver got his start). Without further ado, I bring you:

Rigatoni con Balsamico

rigatoni with balsamic vinegar and tomato sauce
serves 4-6r

Ingredients:

• 9 oz dried rigatoni pasta (penne works fine, too)
• 1 28 oz can peeled plum tomatoes*
• 4 tbs balsamic vinegar**
• 1 generous cup of finely grated pecorino cheese
• 6 tbs butter, cut into small pieces
• 2 tbs olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely sliced
• handful of fresh basil
• salt & pepper

* If you can find them, we prefer San Marzano tomatoes – they’re sometimes labeled “Italian peeled tomatoes” – and they’re peeled in their own thin puree, but whole.
** The quality of the balsamic vinegar is extremely important to this recipe; if you have balsamic that’s aged 10 years or more that’s best. If you don’t, you may need to use a bit more of the vinegar to impart enough flavor to the pasta.

Directions:

• Heat the olive oil in a large pan, and add the garlic slices. Saute them until they’re light brown, then add a few of the basil leaves.
• Add the entire can of tomatoes to the pan and stir over low-med heat for 30-40 minutes. As you stir, break up the whole tomatoes into smaller pieces. Reduce this mixture to a thick sauce.
• Add salt and pepper to the sauce to taste, along with the rest of the basil leaves.
• Cook the pasta in generously salted water. Before you drain the pasta, keep a coffee mug full of the pasta water in reserve.
• Return the drained pasta to its pan and stir in the butter until it’s melted.
• After the butter has melted and thoroughly coated the pasta, add the balsamic vinegar. Stir this into the pasta over low heat (residual heat from the burner is generally sufficient) until the pasta is coated with the vinegar.
• Stir in a handful of the grated pecorino, and then add the tomato sauce to the pasta.
• Stir a few times, just to distribute the colors and flavors, but don’t worry about the pasta looking uniformly-covered. There will be irregular chunks of tomato throughout the pan.§
• Serve immediately with the extra pecorino to garnish the top.

§ If the sauce is too thick to adequately coat the pasta lightly, you can add a bit of the pasta water you saved before you drained the pasta. We’ve never needed the pasta water when we’ve made this dish, and you’d have to cook the sauce for quite awhile before it got so thick that you’d need the pasta water, but it never hurts to have it on hand just in case.

photo of London’s River Cafe from the restaurant’s website