C is for...Chicago

Illnois, U.S.

The Oprah Empire expands outwards from here. Rapper Common spun words about it on his track, “Chi City.” Barack Obama called it home. So did that talk show stud, Jerry Springer. And now, I too, have a (little, 10-hour-layover) piece of Chicago in my heart.

The only way I could get a cheap flight to Europe was to stop here for nearly half a day. One of my girlfriends had just returned from an Oprah taping and raved about the city, so I decided to take a ride on the L-Train and head downtown.

I picked a random stop in the Loop (the downtown core), found a Rite Aid and bought a map for $7.99, which isn’t cheap but it was 3-D. So don’t judge.

My first stop was Millennium Park. Actually it was a rejuvenation stop at Starbucks, since my flight from Toronto had been at 6 a.m. Then I went to the park. Greenspaces like these, I must admit, make me wish I lived somewhere other than Toronto. T.O., I love you, but your parks are kind of hurting.

Millennium Park has fountains with live pictures of Chicagoans’ faces on them. It has this massive cloud shaped gate made of steel where you can see your reflection, increasingly distorted the closer you get. It has a Frank Gehry-designed overpass that was probably a distraction to most drivers when it was first unveiled. I would pay big bucks to listen to a concert -- with few exclusions -- at the park’s outdoor pavilion.

I finished my park tour and fell asleep on one of the benches for an hour (Mom would be so proud). After another caffeine jolt, I walked the Millennium Mile, a shopping heaven that spans more than a dozen blocks. I managed to buy only one shirt, for $6. (Mom would be so proud. Actually.) I then spent the equivalent or more on ice cream at the Ghirardelli Chocolate store (which should have come to Canada before Abercrombie & Fitch).

I walked back across town to get a view from the Sears Tower, since renamed the Willis Tower, Chicago’s tallest skyscraper and the fifth tallest in the world. They wanted $12 to ride the elevator to the top, and seeing as I hadn’t even landed in Europe yet, I decided to save the dough. Nice lobby though.

Blisters abounding, I hopped back on the L-Train. In my short time there, Chicago had blown me away. I guess that’s why they call it the Windy City.

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Uninvited guests

Ghosts. The dark. Getting salmonella from eating too much cookie dough. These are all very real fears of mine. I’ve never had a particularly bad experience with any of them, although it might be good for me to feel some sort of repercussions for my Pillsbury habit.

Ghosts go hand in hand with my fear of the dark. In fact, I don’t really like talking or hearing about “alive” dead people or “unfinished business” that much. One day in high school, however, my drama teacher was going on about the supernatural and informed the class that the most haunted hotel in all of Canada is Winnipeg’s Fort Garry. I was forced to confront a horrible reality: my family had been staying there for years.

The Fort Garry is a gorgeous hotel and although we’ve just stayed with family in recent years, I would consider returning -- in daylight -- solely for the incredible brunch. Two words: Chocolate. Fountain.

The thing with these old hotels (the Fort Garry was built in 1933) is they have such an eerie air. The hallways reminded me of what I imagined the Titanic corridors to be like, but wider. It was a creepy feeling. Other people have had much more graphic experiences.

Room 202 is said to house a female ghost, who appears in the middle of the night in a cloak or a robe and stands at the foot of the bed. The rumour has it that a woman took her own life in that room after finding out her new husband had been killed in a car accident. Another story goes that she and her husband were actually murdered in the hotel. Cleaning ladies have reportedly seen blood seeping from the walls. You could not get me in Room 202 even if they permanently moved the chocolate fountain there.

The hotel’s dining room has also played host to a supernatural guest. One employee said he saw a man eating a phantom dinner, seemingly ignorant of the presence of real people.

And then there’s the politician story (they never lie). In 1999, a Liberal MP claimed to feel movement in her bed, as if someone were trying to get more comfortable. This all despite the fact that she was totally alone. Or was she? Duh duh duh…you know the music.

Fortunately for me and my paralyzing fear of see-through people, I only read or heard about these stories after my family stopped staying at the Fort Garry and I now know to stay away. Now, if only someone could write horror stories about cookie dough.

My picture smells better than your picture

The only contest I've ever won in my life was the Top 7 at 7 on the radio station formerly known as Mix 99.9. I called half jokingly, got through, and guessed that song #5 was "Over my Head" by The Frey. I won 4 tickets to the zoo but they never sent them. They were going to be a present for Father's Day. The fact that my dad despises the zoo is irrelevant. Needless to say, I've been a little wary of contests ever since.

But yesterday I saw an ad for a contest Air Canada is offering, called "Capture the Moment." They're looking for photos that capture the five senses. I decided to go through some photos and find the smelliest, tastiest, most audible, tangible and sightly pictures (from various places) I could find. Here's what I came up with:

SOUND (mont tremblant, canada)

SIGHT (mont tremblant, canada)

SMELL(periyar, india)

TOUCH (florida everglades, usa)

TASTE (antigua)

B is for...Bolzano

Trentino-Alto Adige, ITALY

I recently did a six week backpacking trip in Europe, some of the highlights of which you’ll find littered throughout the rest of this blog. Just kidding, I don’t litter. But seriously.

Right in the middle of the trip, I decided to take eight days and travel completely on my own. I knew I wanted to spend the time in Northern Italy. After reading almost every single page in the “Italy” section of my Lonely Planet guide, I decided Bolzano needed to be on my map. This decision did not make much sense, seeing as the entire book dedicated one (1, una, eins) sentence to the city of Bolzano. And so, “alora”, as those crazy Italians say, I went.

When Italians in other cities asked me where else I planned to visit and I said Bolzano, the majority of them had no idea where it was. Their loss.

This place, in the Dolomites range of the Alps, was unreal. It is buried in the mountains, either snow capped or, lower down, greener with vineyards. It has about 100,000 permanent residents (thank you, Wikipedia) and the main languages and culture are split between German and Italian, which essentially means you can have a schnitzel for lunch and ravioli for dinner.
It also meant I had no one (minus waiters and the hostel guy) to talk to for 72 hours. I ate dinner alone, read my book on benches alone and drank the local South Tyrolean beer alone.

My days were spent taking buses to nearby valleys or mountains where I hiked (read: mostly wandered aimlessly) through the hills and counted my lucky stars I was there at all.

The Val Gardena is a valley of three main villages, which are jam packed during the ski season. According to Lonely Planet, come spring, the trails connecting them should have been bustling with other hikers. Erroneous. I came across one lady who was three times my age and obviously more prepared than I for the hike.

I loved it anyway. It was a cathartic experience walking for hours without talking to anyone, even deciding to ditch the iPod. I’d sometimes belt out tunes if I got scared in the woods, because for some weird reason that puts me at ease. It also further ensured that I would not be making friends on those hikes.

The scenery in Bolzano and the surrounding areas may have been the most beautiful I have ever seen. I know that’s a grandiose statement, so maybe I’ll go back in the winter – avec snowboard – just to confirm.

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The pursuit of happiness

I recently read a travel piece in my favourite magazine, NUVO, in which the author described his experience in the small kingdom of Bhutan. Located on the eastern end of the Himalayan mountains, this wee landlocked country has a population of about 670, 000. And like Canada and the U.S., Bhutan has traditional methods to measure the growth within its borders.

But what does 0.6% GDP growth mean if everybody in the country is sad? This is where Bhutan is leading the pack – they measure Gross National Happiness. Basically, it’s a way to measure quality of life in what they believe is a more holistic expression.

GNH is calculated by the wellness of the Bhutanese people in each of these categories: economic, physical, mental, environmental, workplace, social and political wellness.

One can’t help wonder though just how detached the GNH is from pure economic growth. I’m pretty sure there must have been serious implications in some, if not all, of those categories when the numbers came in at the end of 2007: 17% GDP growth. What?! Based solely on this number, one would expect even environmental wellness to improve as money seemingly blossomed on trees.

Alas, if we do go solely by economic stats, Bhutan remains one of the world’s poorest countries. But that’s the whole thing with GNH I guess – it’s not supposed to be all about the numbers. And since no one else has a GNH to compare it to, technically speaking that makes the Bhutanese the happiest people in the world.

If I wrote a song for everytime an airline messed up...

I might have enough to make a Greatest Hits album.

But I never wrote a song, and now Dave Carroll has beat me to it.

Carroll is a musician from the East Coast whose 16-year music career has never seen him have a hit. That's okay. But when his guitar was seriously damaged after a recent flight on United Airlines, and they refused to foot the $1200 repair bill, Carroll wrote a song about it. He is arguably the hottest thing on youtube since that kid David had his social life ruined when his dad posted a video of the boy flying high as a kite after a trip to the dentist.

"United Breaks Guitars" has racked up more than 3 million views in the last couple weeks. It's probably costing United's PR department a teensy bit more than $1200 to repair the damages to their image.

A is for...Agra

Uttar Pradesh, INDIA

There are two things that get your blood pumping while in Agra. The first is the traffic. In fact, this point applies to the entire country. The drive from Delhi to Agra was relatively calm. And by calm, I mean the camels alongside our van on the highway were travelling at a decent click and nobody fell off the roof of the tuk tuk in front of us.

But then you reach the city limit. Entering the city area of Agra and expecting to reach the actual city of Agra soon is the equivalent of crossing from Manitoba into Ontario and expecting to swiftly be in Toronto. Two hours of bumper to cow’s bum to bumper traffic later, we were there. But our journey into Agra, from just outside of Agra, was so long we had missed our tour to see the city’s sights.

This brings me to the second awe-inspiring thing about Agra: the Taj Mahal. Since we missed the end-of-day tour around 5 p.m., our only option was to go the next day at dawn (a little over 12 hours later). It was worth the extremely early rise.

Built by the Emperor Shah Jahan as a memorial to his favorite wife, Mumtaz Mahal, this edifice truly takes your breath away. Perhaps it was just the time of day, but I could swear it was glowing. While my sister paid a guy to take her picture in front of the Taj, posing as if she were touching the top, I stood in awe of how it was perfectly reflected in the pool that divided its walkway. Up close, it was just as stunning. The “inlaid marble work” – a term our tour guide Sonny used so much we should have made it a drinking game – was art in its greatest form.

Maybe the loonngeestt drrriiivee eeevvverr was a blessing in disguise because I can’t imagine the Taj ever looking as majestic as it did when the sun came up that morning. One of the best parts was how few people were around, too. Because when you wake up at 5:30 a.m., you tend to beat the traffic.

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Welcome/Bienvenue!

This blog is dedicated to my dear friend: travelling. I absolutely love everything about travelling. I love the packing and the unpacking and the repacking that requires you to sit on your suitcase even if you only bought, like, two things. I love the part when the plane goes really fast before takeoff and I love the free pretzels. I love getting the aisle seat. As a teenager…er, young child, I loved the horrified look on fellow travellers’ faces when my sister and I would attach a massive fake hair piece to distinguish our big black rolly suitcase from the next. We named her “Tufty.” She was blond.

Now living at home with my parents in Toronto, the extent of my travels at the moment is walking downstairs to get the dog’s food. So I’m going to dig up some stories, and live vicariously through myself. And yes, I would argue, that is possible. Maybe they’ll take you back, too.

The A to YYZ…and back blog is an alphabetical catalogue of some of the coolest places I’ve been to. Once I get to Z, I hope to start again at A. But it’s also a bulletin board for anything travel related I feel like writing about.

I haven’t exactly been around the world but everywhere I have visited has been memorable for some reason or another. It is the seeing of new places and the meeting of new people that has really got me hooked.

So, please buckle your seatbelt. And if you get bored, try pretending, as realistically as possible, to use the air sickness bag located in the seat pocket in front of you. I once taught two unaccompanied minors sitting next to me to do it, and I think they were better people for it.

Thanks for reading.

Alexis