{"id":1126,"date":"2004-04-15T14:14:47","date_gmt":"2004-04-15T14:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/15\/globetrotter\/"},"modified":"2024-11-28T18:48:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T23:48:02","slug":"globetrotter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2004\/04\/15\/globetrotter\/","title":{"rendered":"Globetrotter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"All<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

I just noticed that my passport<\/strong> is due for its first renewal next year, which got me thinking about the dents I\u2019ve put in it over the years:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. England:<\/i> I had to go for a last-minute work<\/a> trip, so I took off for my first week out of the country. I spent that first trip in a snazzy little hotel in Knightsbridge, going to work in the day and zipping around at night on the back of my friend\u2019s motorcycle (proving to myself that I wasn\u2019t as terrified of motorcycles as I always thought I was). I\u2019ve been back to London twice, and consider it one of the few cities besides New York I could see myself living. The last time<\/a> I was there I finally managed to get up North<\/a> to Lancaster<\/a>, Blackpool, and Carlisle, much to the snickering of the Londoners I saw the rest of the time. I loved it all, though.<\/li>\n
  2. Japan:<\/i> This was just a layover, but I still count it because I spent the night in a Japanese hotel on the way to and from…<\/li>\n
  3. China:<\/i> Two-and-a-half weeks helping my friend take care of a tour group. While rain poured for most of the trip (ruining about half of the 32 rolls of film that I shot), we herded our group on and off buses, planes, trains, boats, and the Great Wall as we visited Beijing, Shanghai, Xi\u2019an, Guilin, Guangzhou, and pre-Handover Hong Kong. A-freaking-mazing, all of it.<\/li>\n
  4. Jamaica:<\/i> The launching pad for another tour-group trip, but this time we didn\u2019t have to do much more than get the group onto a cruise ship. The trip was more fun than I would have guessed, in part because of (rather than in spite of) it being so cheesy in so many ways. Still, it was a great way to score a free trip to…<\/li>\n
  5. Colombia:<\/i> We spent a day wandering around the old part of Cartegena. I discovered that I retained much more high-school Spanish than I thought.<\/li>\n
  6. Costa Rica:<\/i> We spent an incredible day hiking through a rain forest. I\u2019m still very eager to go back and see more of the country.<\/li>\n
  7. Panama:<\/i> After a totally cool trip into the Panama Canal<\/a> and back out, we went swimming at a very Gilligan\u2019s Island-esque archipelago off the coast. No screwball hijinks prevented us from getting off the island and back to the ship.<\/li>\n
  8. Iceland:<\/i> I\u2019ve been through Reykjavik on two different trips now, but I\u2019ve still never left the airport, which has always reminded me of Moonbase Alpha<\/a>. I\u2019m still eager to see parts of Iceland that don\u2019t look like the Moon.<\/li>\n
  9. Brazil:<\/i> I spent almost a month in Rio with a friend, visiting her friends and family for Christmas and New Year\u2019s. It is a sexy, sexy place, and to date the only place where I have appeared in public in a Speedo without thinking twice about it. This is also where I met my beloved friend Jo\u00e3o, when he and I picked each other up in a bar my last night in town and remained fast friends afterward.<\/li>\n
  10. Italy:<\/i> My first trip<\/a> to Italy was yet another trip with a tour group, this time to Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast. I was smitten with the place. And after going back for another two weeks, I find that it\u2019s hard to think of any other place I\u2019d like better.<\/li>\n
  11. Belgium:<\/i> A rainy cold, grey afternoon on the way back from Sorrento, trudging around to look at the Atomium<\/a> and that kid taking a piss. I have no desire to go back for more.<\/li>\n
  12. France:<\/i> The only time I led a tour group without help, so I was lucky that this was a trip where the group was left to wander on their own for a week, rather than be led anywhere by a local guide. It\u2019s a magnificent city<\/a> but my love for it is mitigated by my hatred of the sound of French.<\/li>\n
  13. Canada:<\/i> I\u2019ve been to both Montreal<\/a> and Vancouver<\/a> so far, but I\u2019m pretty convinced that Canada is just as polite and pretty and liberal as I\u2019d hoped. I think I could very happily live in Canada if I were forced to flee there to escape our own government.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I just noticed that my passport is due for its first renewal next year, which got me thinking about the dents I\u2019ve put in it over the years: England: I had to go for a last-minute work trip, so I took off for my first week out of the country. I spent that first trip … Continue reading “Globetrotter”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1126"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71885,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1126\/revisions\/71885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}