Travel memories can be as simple as an unforgettable meal or taste sensation. I loved the tropical paradise of Fiji.  The waterfalls, the glorious beaches and the dazzling underwater world made me smitten, but the distinct cuisine, the mixture of Indian spices and Polynesian flavors cemented Fiji as one of my favorite vacation spots.  I can still taste the mouth-watering rhubarb crumble I enjoyed at a cozy pub, post hike, on a rainy day in Wales.  Once, many years ago, on a French catalog photo shoot in Greece, I played the role of photo assistant and translator. Every day for two weeks we ate fabulous Greek salads and yogurt, spanakopita, succulent lamb and fresh seafood. Everything was delectable. I have loved Greek and Mediterranean cuisine ever since.  I was taken back to that trip to Greece the other day while reading a front-page article in the New York Times entitled: Fast Food Hits Mediterranean: a Diet Succumbs. Sadly, the much sought after Greek Diet is going the way of our American super-sized culture. Young Greek locals are growing obese at alarming rates. Included in this dietary shift are steep increases in cases of diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol. This is happening all over the world, but as we search for health and longevity through our food, many have looked to Mediterranean cuisine as a sort of panacea for heart-healthy living. With the fast food fiasco sweeping the globe, these days, ironically, you are more apt to find traditional Mediterranean cuisine at a fancy restaurant near you.

The synergies of life…I am also reading a new book by Dr. Daphne Miller called The Jungle Effect, which explores the health benefits of indigenous diets, and how far we have strayed from the wisdom of our ancestors.  The chapter about Crete and the heart-healthy wild greens called horta which grow on the island speaks to this subject.  The book is part cook-book, part travelogue, written with the wisdom of a doctor who sees diet as integral to health and well-being. Miller travels the continents looking for “cold spots”; places where certain diseases are rare. Diabetes, depression and heart disease are a few of the modern day plagues she seeks to learn about. Miller then investigates the local (indigenous) diet and analyzes the connection with the low disease incidence. The information may not be earth shattering for those immersed in healthy food research, but it all makes so much sense. It’s an interesting read for the health conscious, travel buffs, and foodies alike. Of course you can still seek out the traditional fare wherever you travel, but you may have to search a bit harder, these days,  for that special bistro, taverna or pub. In these tough economic times perhaps bringing a little exotic cuisine into your life at home will make you feel like you are traveling in spirit.  I recommend the Three Sisters Stew recipe, a yummy concoction from the Tarahumara Indians of Copper Canyon, Mexico.

If that wasn’t enough we got the entire kitchen out for a look at the crazy American girls who ordered high tea for dessert because we loved it so! These are the quirky memories trips create. I can’t for the life of me remember what a quadratic equation is or the story of Homer’s Iliad, but that loony Weymouth waitress with a high ponytail and a hook of a nose, I can still see her in my mind’s eye, more than twenty years later. It was a memory that was jolted out of the cobwebbed crevices of my brain today when I opened my laptop to a Yahoo page and saw an article that listed Weymouth, England as one of The Best Places You’ve Never Heard Of in an online article provided by Budget Traveler.  It seems as though Weymouth has regained some of its lost cache.  It was always a destination for sun-deprived Britons, but now, perhaps, it beckons visitors from abroad.  Plenty to see and do from a pub popular with 17th century pirates to excellent scuba diving given the shipwrecks in the area, Weymouth, just three hours by train from London, sounds like a fun weekend trip. Don’t forget to eat the fish and chips and whatever you do, have high tea at the proper time!

Daniel Craig, who many say rivals Sean Connery as the best Bond ever, shot the latest Bond feature Quantum of Solace in the Atacama Desert of Chile, according to a recent article by Deanna Palic in the magazine International Travel News. The film opens in the U.K. October 31st and in the U.S. November 14th. Chile is fast becoming a hotspot for filmmakers with Quantum of Solace being just one of many films in production.

Chile’s landscape and climate rival California with a burgeoning wine industry to prove it. You can ski, surf and enjoy the cosmopolitan Santiago and now, apparently, see plenty of film crews in action.

You need a tractor or a donkey to make it up this hill, I thought. A second later, looking at his sweaty face, I realized that I really had no choice. I would be walking in that direction. How could I say no and just leave him behind?

So I slung my bag over both shoulders, joined him behind the cart, and grabbed my share of the handle he was grasping. “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”

The words he spoke made no literal sense to me but I knew he was thrilled. Together we strained to break the inertia of gravity, got the cart rolling, slipped a couple of times on the slick stones, but bit by bit made it up the steepest slope and around the bend. Taxis flew past us at an alarming speed, casting a cooling breeze upon us as we labored on. After about 100 yards the slope lessened and I needed to take a left to be on my way. Assuming my task was done I explained in useless words but effective sign language that I needed to go that way. “Me too!” his sign language said. So we bent to our task again.

Fifty yards farther on we hit another fork, and blessedly this time our ways were to part. We shook hands several times speaking in tongues and as I walked away I turned back to see that he was moving ably along, his way much easier now. It took me about 300 yards to catch my breath.

Ten minutes later I stood in line at a Turkcell office on the bustling pedestrian street of Istiklal Caddesi, where all the high end shops provide temptations for credit card shoppers. I’d been directed to the line as the place to register my phone but things didn’t seem to be going well there. Two young women sat behind computers trying to register phones and activate sim cards for customers but it was taking forever. Eventually I was able to ask a young woman who spoke English what was going on. She explained that the computers were acting up, the Internet was down, and they were succeeding only about half the time. Considering that I wouldn’t really need my cell phone but now 40 minutes into this debacle I decided to stick it out a little longer. After two more customers walked away shaking their heads in disgust I muttered to myself, “This is madness.”

“Yes, it is,” said the man behind me.

It turned out he was Dutch, had arrived just the day before to study for a semester, spoke English and Dutch (of course) and also Turkish. When my turn came and I said I simply wanted to register my phone the patient young woman at the computer explained everything to me in slow words that meant absolutely nothing to me. She tried again, and then my Dutch friend leaned over and intervened. They had a spirited conversation, she brandishing my passport and phone in one hand as if they were the cause of all my problems, and maybe some of hers.

“You’re not going to like this,” my friend said. “You can either buy a Turkcell sim card to put in your phone, or buy a Turkish phone to put your sim card in, but you can’t use your phone with your sim card.”

Despite having an unlocked GSM phone that I’d used successfully in other countries, I was thwarted here in Turkey. Of course I could have bought a Turkish sim card, but that would have meant leaving my place in line, going through the process of buying it and a service without speaking Turkish, and then joining the endless line again hoping the computer systems would reboot themselves and the Internet would light up again, all in about 40 minutes before they closed for the weekend. If I didn’t make it I’d have to wait until Monday, when I’d be two days at sea.

It was time to abandon ship, as they say. I thanked my Dutch friend for his help, wished him luck on his semester here, and headed for my home away from home, Cafe  Kahvedan on Akarsu Caddesi, to have a beer. I like to think it was a kind of payment for my labors, and I toasted my two anonymous friends.

Floodlights lit up rows of food stalls selling the makings of a grazing feast: shish kebap, grilled corn on the cob, waffles with syrup and fruit, gozleme (hand-rolled pastry filled with cheese or potato or spinach and grilled like flat bread), gyros, dried fruit and nuts, grilled chestnuts, baklava and all manner of fried sweets, candied apples and multiflavored, multihued toffee twirled on a stick. Then of course there was Turkish coffee made in small long-handled metal pots laid right on the coals and a waterpipe smoke to finish you off.

Carnival rides and games such as air hockey anchored one end of the festivities. Tables and chairs filled the areas behind the stalls so diners could eat in comfort. The call to prayer or some other devotional chant drifted over the party like gossamer and I didn’t see an unhappy face in the throng. No one seemed to be left out. Women wore all manner of costume, from sexy Western dresses to jeans and t-shirts to headscarves and long wraps to full burkas (well, not a burka but a kara carsaf; see the comment by Anastasia for explanation).

With the Blue Mosque illuminated on one side and Hagia Sophia on the other, I could see that these nights were never-to-be-forgotten moments for the children scurrying to and fro or holding their parents’ hands. I must say I shared the same sentiments. If fasting all day means you get to have a party like this every night for a month I might start celebrating Ramadan every year. But the setting of the party was hard to beat. I guess that means I’d need to settle in Istanbul.

By the way, I love the way the stalls are made to look like shops on the street, with the false second story facade showing windows, siding, and other details that a real building would have. See the first photo in this post to see what I mean.

If you play the game right you can avoid losing time or money, but you have to be prepared to present your most earnest self. You must engage the man as if he were a long lost friend. Treat him as if you are positively delighted to see him, telling him about yourself and your travels and asking about him and his family and telling him about yours. Often this line of defense will disarm him and he’ll loosen his resolve to sell you something and let you go on your way. It can be taxing, but it’s less taxing than losing your temper or sitting through a carpet presentation you have no interest in. And sometimes you get an unexpected response: you discover that you like each other.

On my current visit I was surprised to encounter something different in Gihangir, in the Beyoglu district where I’m staying. Walking the streets I’ve been pleased to find that my unwanted companions are missing. Block after block I’ve wandered and no one has harassed me, no salesmen, no touts, no merchants eager to sell their wares to tourists. My only companions apart from the local people going about their lives are the cats - dozens of them - that live in the streets and are fed by the neighborhood residents who look out for them. There are lots of cafes and restaurants and galleries but not the Blue Mosque or Aya Sofya (Hagia Sophia). For them you need to head to Sultanahmet (not to be missed, despite the hustlers).

I visited the new Academy of Sciences with my five-year-old yesterday, enjoying a preview visit for new members. It was stunning. The building is spectacular; it is open and airy, without the dingy 19th century feel of many Natural History Museums. The living roof is truly extraordinary, with views of the park and city. Flowers grow, apparently animals make homes; my son was in awe. He kept reiterating how the living roof was keeping the building cool. We will surely return to see the evolution of the roof ecosystem.

There were vestiges of the old Academy of Sciences, including the seahorse gate surrounding the alligator swamp. My son marveled at Claude the Albino alligator and marched right up to a docent to ask if he was alive. Claude didn’t move much but made quite an impression.
Much was still under construction, the café was closed and training new workers, but the high points included the shark and ray display, the interactive kiosks and of course penguin feeding time. There was Pete the five-year-old penguin who likes to sit on the penguin feeders’ lap and of course Pierre the penguin a famous 25-year-old senior citizen who had a wetsuit designed for him because he was balding. He was apparently unable to swim or regulate his body temperature and was being picked on by the other penguins.  He even has his own Wikipedia page. I’m happy to say Pierre’s feathers grew back, thanks to the wet suit, and he is thriving in his new environment.

The staff was omnipresent and keen to offer information. Two of my favorite “exhibits” were the hand dryers in the bathrooms and the water fountains. The hand dryers are these newfangled, super fast blower things; it was hard to get my son out of the restroom. The water fountains - so hard to find these days in public spaces - have signs touting the benefits of tap water over bottled water. All in all, the San Francisco Academy of Sciences is the greenest museum on Earth, and well worth a visit.

~~~

“Perrrrrrrrrrrrrrrro,” I stuttered, failing completely to roll the r’s as my eight-year-old daughter laughed with glee.

“No, it’s perro,” she said in a perfect Spanish accent. “Like this.” She twittered like a bird demonstrating how to do it. “You need to practice.”

“Do you think I can learn?”

“Yes. Practice all the way home.”

So I did, spewing spittle left and right as I tried to trill my r’s to my daughter’s delight. All the way home - which meant about a ten-minute walk from the beach in Puerto Vallarta to our rented apartment deep in the old part of town - I was a blithering idiot cut loose from some overcrowded psych ward, but Érne loved it. She couldn’t wait to tell her sister and mama.

My attempt to learn to roll my r’s using the Spanish word for dog had less to do with my desire to speak Spanish than with my daughter’s love for animals - at the moment, the dogs of Colonia Emiliano Zapata, the neighborhood where we were staying in this resort city. There was the fluffy mutt whose head appeared through the bars of the balcony railing on the second floor almost every time we passed, day or night; the nervous poodle that hung out in a doorway and usually had a yelp and a growl for us as we lowered hands for her to sniff; the family of Chihuahuas about as small as dogs can be at the combination piñata shop and home of a couple seemingly old enough to have ridden with Pancho Villa.

We couldn’t walk past the open doorway on Aquiles Serdan without stopping to pet the mama, daddy, and pups that lived in a cardboard box under a chair just inside. After we’d spent several days getting to know our neighborhood and passing the ancient couple’s door many times, they smiled in recognition. Their faces wore the ruts of a long, hard life, dark and brown as the parched Mexican soil. Their fingers never ceased working with the colored crepe paper they fixed to forms to create the piñatas that dangled from the ceiling - burros, sombreros, stars, bulls, other creatures large and small. Our conversation through the open façade couldn’t travel beyond “hello, how are you?, nice dogs” because of my pitiful Spanish, but it was a lesson for the children and a reminder for me.

Speaking the local language is by far the best way to get to know a place and people. Without it you can communicate a lot and get by with body language and charades, fractured sentences devoid of grammar that show you’re a good sport doing your best to meet the people on their own terms. But what does that really get you beyond a few laughs, good-natured acknowledgments and the conviction that they think you’re all right? For me there’s always the undercurrent that, yes, well, they seem to think I’m O.K., but maybe they really think I’m nuts. Without speaking the local language you can make connections that cross the divide but you cannot have a meaningful conversation about things that matter.

What could they have told us about their long lives? Had they always lived here, in this home open to the street, making piñatas for the neighborhood families? Did they settle here late in life after other adventures, struggles, pursuits, dreams? Was this a longstanding family business or something more recent? How did they view the world from this vantage point, inside a cool room open to the heat and noise and smells of the street and the sea breezes?

Of course I couldn’t get answers to these questions without speaking adequate Spanish. I was left to imagine their stories, to romanticize or trivialize their lives with best guesses based on what I saw before me. I was a tourist, on a short vacation with my family, and none of us were prepared - no matter how much we wanted - to get beneath the surface of things.

“It’s nice that the houses are open and children play outside with each other all the time,” Érne said. “I wish we could do that at home.”

Things were different here, and the girls were noticing.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to talk to that old couple with the dogs?” I said.

“But we don’t speak Spanish,” Érne replied.

“But we could learn. I could take a Spanish class. We could come back here again next year, and the year after that, and pretty soon we’d be able to talk to people. You’re learning in school. That’s where you learned to say ‘perro‘.”

She giggled. “Not like that, like this.” And she rolled her r’s perfectly again.

“Perrrrrrrrrro!” I sputtered, feeling truly like an idiot but enjoying every moment. After all, I was trying, wasn’t I? So we made our way up the street looking for dogs, cats, blackbirds with giant boat-like tails that squawked all day in the trees, and I practiced all the way home.

Whenever I travel, I like to bring a novel written about the place to dive into while away. Some of my favorites include Smilla’s Sense of Snow, a 1992 novel by Danish author Peter Høeg  which is a film as well. I read this on a trip to Iceland and it really got me in the mood.  I know the book is set in Denmark and Greenland but I took a little imaginative license and got myself in the groove for a blustery March trip to the lunar-like island.

Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, by Jorge Amado, set the tone for a trip to Brazil years ago and helped me understand the culture and geography of Bahia. This book was also made into two films for Brazilian television. Sometimes, films offer an appetizer for the main dish of the trip. Recently, I recommended two films to a colleague who was headed to Vietnam: The Scent of the Green Papaya and the Academy Award winning Indochine.The former gives you a taste, a visceral sensation of the place, the latter offers historical insight and helps one understand some of the dynamics that led to the Vietnam War.  Do you have a book or film that inspired or enhanced your travels? Let us know.