New York bagels

If there is anything guaranteed to make you feel even more gross after a day of international travel, it is schlepping your luggage through the NYC subway in the summertime. Fact.

My gracious host for the night, guest blogger and frequent travel buddy, Julie, was kind enough to point out that I didn't exactly smell like roses after my 12 hours of travel that deposited me at Columbus Circle, fresh off the 1 train. Kinder still, she let me use her shower. What a friend.

But I ask you... how many things are better than waking up to a gorgeous morning in the Big Apple, feeling surprisingly not jet-lagged (though I have a feeling I may be speaking too soon), and walking a few blocks to get a fresh bagel with scallion cream cheese and lox? Definite points for America, my friends.

I'm back in action after over two weeks in Ireland that far exceeded my (already high) expectations. Over the next couple weeks I'll be detoxing (so much meat and Guinness!) and decompressing, revisiting the trip that took me through historically significant cities and breathtaking natural wonders, as a solo journey and in the company of old and new friends. This is also exciting for me, as it is my first time traveling internationally since starting Litterulae ab Mundano a few months ago. Like always, my appetite for travel has been whetted, but my wanderlust heart is left longing for more...

How to squeeze more travel out of your budget

 The Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland, via

Travel doesn't come cheap. But it doesn't have to burn through your bank account, either. One thing that I have become really adamant about is that it is possible to squeeze a little more travel out of your budget if you are willing to be a bit flexible.

I'm leaving for Ireland on Saturday, almost a full week ahead of my friends who will be joining me in renting a castle in County Clare the following week. Knowing that I had the luxury of time on my side (and let's face it, time is often the other huge constraint when it comes to the ability to travel), I decided to look into the possibility of extending my trip on the front end. Flying Aer Lingus, I was able to choose from a matrix of dates and varying prices. I could have left with my friends on Friday the 17th and flown into Shannon, or I could have chosen on Saturday the 11th and flown into Dublin for about $150 less. Guess which one looked more appealing to my opportunistic eye? Granted, it will cost me a little more than that to spend an extra six nights in Ireland, but not too much more if I play my cards right.

As I am staying in hostels, my accommodations will average about $25 per night, allowing me to break even with the money I saved by going early. And some of these are places with real character, like, say a converted old wine cellar in Dublin or a cottage on the Antrim Coast steps away from the Giants Causeway with a full breakfast included. Sure you give up a bit of privacy staying in a hostel (though most hostels do offer private rooms, which are very affordable if you are not traveling alone- an option I have exercised in the past), but when you are traveling alone and looking for a bit of conversation, hostels are a great place to meet fellow travelers and perhaps even chat with friendly owners.

I'm flying out of JFK, which is definitely not close to me by any stretch of the imagination. However, to fly out of Washington (which is not even super convenient) required an indirect flight, less flexible flight options, and was more expensive. I decided to stick with JFK and my Megabus tickets to New York from Baltimore over two months in advance set me back a grand total of $10.50 round trip. Add in LIRR tickets to meet the friend that will drop me at the airport (who I will later meet at the Shannon airport!) and to get back into the city on the way back, and I'm still paying less than $25 to take a much less expensive direct flight from JFK-DUB. Not bad. And not super inconvenient, either.

Throw in a few bus tickets (at around 10 Euro a pop), lunches, dinners, and few attractions (a black taxi tour of Belfast, Bloomsday festivities), and I'm still looking at less than $200 to spend an extra week in the Emerald Isle and further justify my plane fare.

As a single traveler with some extra time on my hands, I have the luxury to choose less expensive options that stretch my wallet and my travel itinerary. This time around it means that I will get to explore a bit of Northern Ireland and experience Bloomsday in Dublin in addition to a week of exploring the West from a castle. Not a bad trade-off for making a few frugal moves, right?

jet-setting to France (life is rough): meet guest blogger Kate

Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend--or a fantastic Easter weekend if that's your thing.  Mine was dotted with a mix of gluttony, hot yoga, unpredictable weather, retail therapy, and visits from far-away friends-- all in all a superb spring weekend.  I have a lot to accomplish over the next few days, and I'm starting to realize that time is going to start flying by with an abundance of good company and exciting events on the horizon.

Without further adieu, I would like to introduce you to Kate, a friend of mine who will be contributing a bit to my little project over the coming weeks.  With wishes of bon voyage over the weekend, she has already taken off and touched down in France.  I'd like to imagine that she is drinking vin rouge and practicing bad French at this very moment.  That's my girl!
__________

(not kidding about the hole)

"Bonjour! I'm Kate and I'll be guest-posting for Lindsey while I'm jet-setting. By jet-setting I mean one trip from New York to Paris to Lyon to New York for a total of two weeks. Lindsey and I met here (see photo), in a hole in the ground in Greece while on an archaeological dig. We wore headbands, sweat a lot, and unearthed all kinds of interesting things, including arrow heads, boar skulls, and a shared love of travel.

the one time we didn't wear headbands

I'm also doing some travel writing while I'm over there, and can meanwhile give some tips on how to "become" a travel writer. I don't by any stretch fancy myself that, but it's more along the lines of how to finagle your way into doing travel writing. It is the dream job, right? I'll be writing a pieces for both Elle Magazine and Fodor's, so wish me luck.

I'll be wearing a fanny pack. And comfortable shoes and a t-shirt. What have I learned from living in Manhattan all these years? New York seems like a fashionable place with fashionable people wearing fashionable things, but in truth, unless you're dying on the sidewalk no one cares about what you look like. I imagine an enormous city like Paris is the same. I have packed some dresses, but we'll save those for nighttime.

   I'm staying with friends from college - Go Quakers! - in both Paris and Lyon. In between the 2 cities I'm going to pop by a few vineyards (my piece for Elle is a super cheesy bit about how a gal with a boxed-wine-and-two-buck-Chuck palate navigates the wineries of fancy old France) and as of now I'm not 100% sure where I'm staying while in the countryside. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. AKA, I will panic and maybe use AirBnB. 

That's all for now! Nice to meet you. Thanks, Lydia, I mean, Lindsey."
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I, for one, am tres excited about Kate's upcoming contributions to Litterulae Mundano, and I plan on using all kinds of bad Franglais to celebrate.

K doesn't know (yet) that I used this. She really wasn't kidding about the headbands. Or the sweat.  (Sweat bands?)  If this doesn't pique your interest, there's probably something very wrong with you.

happy Earth Day from some of the most beautiful places on the planet!

Chitwan National Park, Terai Region, Nepal

fields near Egeskov Castle, Funen, Denmark

Lake Champlain, Adirondacks, New York, USA

Arcadia, Greece

Manla Reservoir, Tibet

dawn near Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, USA

sunrise over Sargamatha (Mt. Everest) and neighboring Himalayan peaks from Kala Pattar, Sargamatha National Park, Nepal

*please don't use my photos without asking/crediting me!

how not to pack for a long weekend

Despite the fact that I have been in perpetual motion for the past couple years, I am still the worst packer ever.  I struggle to remember one trip in recent memory that didn't begin with a scramble to get everything packed at the last minute-- whether that be a weekend jaunt in nearby Philadelphia or a year-long move to the opposite side of the world.  Often this ends in gross over-packing, frequently in poor sartorial decisions, and time and again in random acts of packing stupidity, as I end up with several pairs of pants and only one shirt for the weekend or completely forget to toss in underwear (which can only somewhat work if you are headed to Mexico and plan on spending most of your time rotating through the bathing suits that you, thankfully, did not forget to pack).

This weekend was no exception, and Friday morning found me struggling to finish a final paper and throw together a weekend bag for New York with highs of 75 and best friends on the horizon.  75 is well and nice, but the excitement over basking in the glory of an early spring day can easily corrupt the reasonable part of the brain that tells you that highs of 50 the following two days really mean that it will get down close to freezing over the weekend-- don't hang up your winter jacket just yet.

Flash forward to Sunday night, as I'm waiting for the bus to take me home, away from the chaos of the city as well as far away from the people I love.  After a night of dancing in heels and retiring yet another sad pair of black opaque tights, I've been schlepping it around the city in a pair of yoga pants and gold Toms.  While I am vaguely embarrassed about my state of being, at least New Yorkers are wonderfully active, and traversing Central Park in workout attire (albeit of the perfectly matched Lululemon variety) is nothing out of the ordinary on a sunny Sunday.  Having just made it in time for my bus back down below the Maison-Dixon line, I'm high on the adrenaline of a close call and not really expecting a long wait out in the cold.  But the buses are backed up, and so nearly forty minutes later, I decide to pull a pair of jeans over top of my pants in hopes that I will stop shivering uncontrollably.  Never mind the awkwardness of shimmying into denim that was not meant to be layered and bending over to fish for the ends of my bunched up yoga pants while surrounded by hundreds of Megabus customers-- I'm certain I am borderline hypothermic at this point, and dammit, I am not going to go into shock just because I can't pack or predict the changing weather worth shit!

My bus ended up boarding a few minutes later, but the damage was done, and I shiver shiver shivered all the way home.  While this should be a lesson in how not to pack, experience tells me that I will continue to get this wrong time and again.  How does one pack for a short weekend with drastic temperature changes and drastically different social situations (a Saturday night out at a swanky lounge vs. lounging on a Sunday morning, for instance)?  Will I ever get it right?!

a self-portrait. the big apple is just sooo much better in the comfort of my yoga pants, yea?  I'm pretty jazzed about the situation, anyway, if you can't tell.