LLWorldTour

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Okay, I’ve been gone almost nine months now and it’s time for a barometer check. Many have been asking questions and I guess it’s high time I had some answers.

1. What have your favorite places been so far?

Thank god the question is plural because there have been so many and each is unique in its own special way. I find it hard to narrow down, but here goes:

• The Galapagos Islands off Ecuador—beautiful and magical, unspoiled nature and animals
• Buenos Aires, Argentina—an amazingly affordable cosmopolitan city full of a sexy energy and a hip vibe
• Melbourne, Australia—reminded me a lot of Chicago—cool, down to earth neighborhoods, diverse food, city events for everyone, and bike lanes on nearly every street
• Hong Kong—a huge, bright city full of life where old and new collide
• Halong Bay and Sa Pa, Vietnam—mystical, peaceful bays and mountains from another era
• Singapore—a modern, anally clean, (of course I’d like that!) crossroads of cultures
• Turkey—beautiful landscapes and amazingly friendly and helpful people

2. How much longer will you travel?

Forever! Well, I wish I could…and I’m still working out the nasty little logistics of how I can truly make that possible. But in the meantime, while I don’t have a definite answer, I am hoping to extend this trip to become longer than first planned. Originally I told people I’d be traveling for one year, mostly because it was just a very nice round number and easier to estimate then saying, ‘oh, 15 months’ or something random like that. But now that I am “out here” in the world, it just seems so much easier to keep going than to come home and try to get away again. Why not just keep going now that all my stuff is packed away in storage anyway? We’ll see.

3. Are you homesick? Are you ready to come home?

No. And no. Seriously, there are times when I am down or low, for a whole year—it’s nearly impossible to be jazzed every minute of everyday. I have some sad or lonely moments, but I do have to say they don’t last long. I really find it quite easy to make friends when traveling alone…just look at this photo album of some of the amazing folks I’ve met.

I definitely feel much less stress than I had felt at home with a job and a million things to always ‘worry’ about and obsess over. Now I know, in the grand scheme of things, none of that really matters.

4. What do you miss?

I miss some of my good friends and family. But at the same time, these friends have been with me throughout the entire trip thanks to the internet and its amazing technology and websites and services like Skype, Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Flickr, Feedburner, and my blog’s home at Word Press. Through my laptop, my friends are still cheering me on, encouraging me, giving me blog feedback, and just still ‘being there’ just like they would if I was home and in some ways even more so. And that’s how I know they are good. You know who you are—I love you and thank you!

I miss the city of Chicago. No matter where I go, I am still lucky to call it home and I truly do love it. It’s my adopted home and I have been singing its praises all over the world, encouraging everyone I meet to visit it one day. I think the Chicago Tourism office needs to hire me as an ambassador.

With a very limited number of outfits, I love the idea that I don’t have to really worry about what to wear each day, but I certainly miss having some more clothes to choose from than just the same old threadbare t-shirts, stretched out tank tops, and fading cargo pants.

As the months tick by, I guess you could say I miss having an income, because I’m scared of facing the fact that my funds are dwindling. Now see #5:

5. How much money have you spent?

In eight months, I have figured out that I have spent roughly $25,000. This includes everything—airfare, other transportation, food, lodging, and all my other random expenses. I have been in some countries in Southeast Asia and South American that allowed me to stretch my budget and then, on the flip side, places like Australia, Dubai, and now, as I enter Europe, have been rather expensive and make it harder to cut corners, etc. But, then again I got a job in Australia and am now doing some English tutoring in Istanbul so I am trying to combat the higher prices by at least breaking even. If I had remained in Chicago, where the overall cost of living is high, I would have definitely spent more than $25,000 in eight months on my mortgage, condo upkeep, car, bills, food, entertainment, and general runs to Target that always add up. On the road, I realize I don’t have to buy things like toilet paper, but do have to eat out more than I would at home. Although in many hostels and some hotels where I had a fridge I was able to eat some meals at ‘home.’

6. What will you do when you get home?

That’s the toughest question of all. And as the months tick by, unfortunately I find myself worrying about it more and more. I have gotten tons of great feedback on this blog and have started the dreaded process of looking for a literary agent and publisher for my travel book. I still have tons of interests…it’s narrowing them down that is the problem. Television Production? Open a sandwich shop/café? Real Estate? “Green” eco-store? Travel Writer? Get Masters in Urban Planning or International Business? Photographer? Or maybe I will just stay ‘retired??’ Who knows what will happen with any of that. I can always do some freelance TV Production and writing. What I do know is that after stopping by Chicago to visit with friends and try the latest restaurants, I will be going to LA to hang out at my friend, Mark’s apartment. I will lay at his pool where I can decompress and readjust to life, USA-style. I guess LA couldn’t be more ‘in your face’ USA…and with my new work experience from my days at the Australia café, I may just be qualified to work at ‘the big S’—Starbucks. Maybe.

7. Have you dated any men?

Yep.

My new hotel in Istanbul, the Alp Guesthouse , was a small and wonderfully charming place in this city of more than 12 million. In fact, urban sprawl has created an Istanbul larger in area than the state of Rhode Island and a bigger population that all of Greece or Belgium. In my hotel, there are just fourteen, newly refurbished rooms in a small Ottoman-style wood paneled four-story house (almost similar to some American colonial wood houses). It sits on a side street in Sultanahmet, the old quarter of Istanbul between the Blue Mosque and the mighty Bosphorus Strait that connects the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea and eventually, the Mediterranean. My room was a calm oasis with a queen canopy bed with white fluffy sheets, dark wood floors and trim, and a newly marble tiled bathroom. It had a lovely large window overlooking the ‘backyard’ with all the delights of spring–green leafy trees full of chirping birds set against an almost constantly deep blue sky. Just beyond the trees was a reminder of the city I was in–an old brick mosque, small in comparison to others around the city, topped with a tall stone minaret tower that bellowed with the calls to prayer five times a day. It was lovely to look at, but the loud operatic chants at 4:45am were quite the alarming wake-up call that certainly had me jumping from bed enough to ‘pray’ they would stop.

Murat was the soft-spoken hotel owner. In the three weeks I was there I think we spoke a total of five minutes to each other. He only had two other guys that worked the front desk—Eren and Mustafa. Eren was a tall, dark, good looking younger guy who seemed to be book smart, but acted pretty immature. He would greet me daily with a kind of boyish pout, wondering why I wasn’t ‘hanging out’ with him more. He wanted to take me to dinner and, although I didn’t really like him all that much, I said I would go, but was quite frank in saying it would just be ‘as friends.’ I wanted to be super clear since guys here seem to think all foreign women jump into bed after one glass of wine. He always responded to my honesty with “oh, come on Lisa,” accompanied with more pouting and loud exhaling, as if my answer to his advances must be wrong and I was just toying with him. He was harmless so it was all just mildly entertaining until he started ‘petting’ me one day. I guess he figured even though I had already said I wasn’t interested that if he stroked my arm…I would be put under some magic spell or something. No such luck for him and of course I had to yell at him to “stop touching me!” Mustafa worked the ‘other’ shift every day from 8pm to 8am. He literally slept in the lobby once all the guests were tucked in for the night. He was quite the opposite of Eren—more mature and determined to improve his English for his future business success. He was working here strictly to get experience and to meet people from all over the world and talk with them. One day he took me sightseeing around town in exchange for my English. He just wanted me for my mother tongue—not my actual tongue—that was a nice change from most guys around these parts. He was a pretty sharp guy who also owned a retail clothing business. He has hopes of owning his own hotel one day…and I think he will. I also got to know some other guests from America, Brazil, & France as they visited and moved on, as well as some of the neighboring hotel owners and workers. I stayed at this hotel for nearly three weeks…so it became a bit like ‘home’ and this was my family, albeit a dysfunctional one.

Just like all the hotels around the old quarter, the Alp Hotel has a lovely rooftop terrace with glass-topped tables, umbrellas, and cushioned wicker chairs where a lovely Turkish breakfast was served every morning. The unblocked views of the other rooftops and the Bosphorus, just a kilometer or so away, were nearly breathtaking. I even “borrowed” the facilities in the kitchen up there one day to cook dinner for Eren and Mustafa and some other guests. I opened a bottle of red and whipped up some salad and pasta with olive oil, garlic, eggplant, and tomatoes. But I really loved my quiet mornings up there, (well, late mornings—I would typically sleep in, roll out of bed around 10am and get up to the roof just in time to grab the last scraps of food and avoid the earlier riser’s chatter) sipping my coffee, nibbling on toast with Feta cheese, watching the sea gulls and crows fight over any food morsels and bread bits that they scavenged from other terraces. I would let the sun warm my arms as I read my book and would look up occasionally to the sea to watch the huge, almost ominous-looking freighter ships ply the gray waters. One day, I watched a man on an adjacent rooftop fly a blue and white kite in the winds coming off the sea. I have always seen people in parks flying kites back home and wondered ‘what’s the point?’ It seemed you could only amuse yourself flying a kite for maybe ten minutes, max. But now, in my relaxed state, the kite looked so pretty darting and soaring against the bright blue sky of Istanbul. Small things are starting to mean a lot more when I am not so preoccupied with the crazy ‘real world’ B.S. that usually gets in the way of really enjoying the simple beauty of life around us. Very rarely in my adult life have I allowed myself to do nothing. I’ve always kept myself super busy with work, friends, exercising, volunteering, tennis lessons, guitar class, teaching…and just about anything I could do to enrich myself and also at the same time to avoid that horrible state of boredom I so loathe. Even during my trip, I have either kept myself busy sightseeing and still being a ‘tourist’ or I have stayed somewhere and found a job or some other way to immerse myself more into the local fabric of society. I had been back in Istanbul for two weeks and even though I had been traveling for eight months already, this finally felt like vacation…and I was getting better at the art of doing nothing and I was enjoying it.