I believe that the only way you can know which way to go is to look as forward as you can.

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Alize on travel

What can it be more exciting then travel? Actually a lot of things (like computer games for some people :P)… but seriously traveling changes the way you think, your personality and somehow the vision about esthetics. There are all kinds of travel… but the way I see it…
There is weekend/opportunistic travel. That’s right. There is never time/ enough money to travel. It is never the right moment. Therefore, the philosophy is not to miss any occasion.

It is a big disadvantage with this approach: you visit everything in a hurry. You go and see stuff in a “veni, vidi, vici” style and meditate about it later. The advantage: you don’t have time to get bored. This is important. I always fear that one day I might say that I find travel some kind of exhausting effort and decide to stop searching for exciting places to go.

When I want to travel some place new (or an event) I go to Flickr and other similar web-sites to set up my expectations. There are all kinds of travel / tourist attraction sites but it seems to me that they always miss the essence. I’ve found other people’ travel photos so useful for so many times that I felt in debt to share my small collection in a public gallery too. :) I haven’t yet time to sort all of them but what I have ready is on my Picasa photo album.

So… here I am in WA State with a long list of cool things to do. About Seattle.. I like the I520 and I90 bridges when the traffic is not heavy… and regarding the Space Needle... I find it quite nice. When I see such a tower I remember the breathtaking feeling of being in Tour Eiffel’s elevator looking down over Paris at night. It simply worth doing this… New York is certainly an impressive urban experience but something with a medieval flavor like Brussels is more appealing to me. My all time favorite place is Brugge. This medieval city has cathedrals, old buildings, amazing architecture, daffodil gardens and even fairy-tail like windmills. Swans swim on the water channels and eat from your hand.


I think travel can help you choose the best place to live in. You have to see both awful and good shows to recognize a great one. I could never understand why a lot of young people say, “I hate living in Bucharest. Terrible city.” It is not that bad at all. It has beautiful architecture and nice parks; it has cleaner subways then Paris and New York, it is not that crowded and you have plenty of urban life. This sounds just nice to me.

I think it is nothing more rewarding and pleasant then mountain hiking no matter how strenuous the trail might be. The “let’s go to the mountain” does not mean sitting all day in a warm hotel-room enjoying the TV. It is such great feeling catching your breath while admiring volcanic lakes or waterfalls or an impressive belvedere. I must admit… exploring caves is even better for me!
I have a long list of mountain trails here around … and these are pretty much my plans for the next weeks. I hope we’ll have sunny weekends! :)