tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-171598302011-12-28T15:02:33.107-05:00A travel blog for late bloomers, lazy bones, and people who get distracted by butterflies.<br><br><br>Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.comBlogger1581100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-10659173306111966632011-11-27T11:21:00.000-05:002011-11-27T11:22:39.134-05:00

On the last night in Paris, I visit the Eiffel Tower, because no one can be cynical about the Eiffel Tower, even in February. I went up once, but not to the top. It was closed because of the wind. But I have never really needed to go up, to get the true bird's eye. Once you have done it from the Tour Montparnasse or the Sacre Coeur, you don't need to do it again, to see miniscule Paris. Or maybe

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-85213669222812846232011-07-23T13:55:00.001-04:002011-07-24T00:22:41.461-04:00

In Copenhagen in winter, I try to escape. The amusement park is closed. The weather barely crests the freezing mark. The guidebooks tell of other islands, of tiny coastal villages. I want to get to them but don't have the time to make the journey, and even then, the cold will follow along with me. Dragor gets one line in my guidebook. The internet tells me a little bit more, but only a little. I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-40274562746535943912011-06-20T02:11:00.003-04:002011-06-20T02:35:30.858-04:00

In the cafe at the Karen Blixen Museum in Rungsted Kyst, Denmark, I hit the sweet spot. I have spent my last $4 on a bottle of elderflower soda in a bright green bottle, the brand name of which I cannot pronounce, and can hardly write thanks to the unfamiliar amalgam of consonants. I cannot pronounce the name of the museum either, as it turns out. Or the name of the blue-and-white seaside town –

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-51077908216368375382011-05-08T18:13:00.003-04:002011-05-08T20:55:27.712-04:00

I visited the shops at the Parc de Bercy in the rain in the spring, which is how I saw so much of Paris. Because of that, I tend to remember the city as an upside-down place, reflected most clearly in the streaky puddles on the street, green from the fallen buds.My feet got wet that day. I tend not to love the places in Paris that feel as though they're somehow trying to be like New York. The

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-37687441029284578802011-04-09T23:33:00.001-04:002011-04-09T23:35:06.466-04:00

I find it by following the crowd, by keeping to an imprecise line on my map, and then suddenly I am standing in the midst of it, under a bright-painted mural, beside an enormous sculpture of a seashell covered in a mosaic of mirror shards. Like I have popped through the rabbit hole into a patch of ground covered in art, twigs, piles of firewood, hand-painted signs, and pale brown dirt.I go to

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-2606314017813160762011-04-02T10:49:00.001-04:002011-04-02T10:50:21.789-04:00

VeniceCreteCroatiaDenmarkBruges

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-64996142052233419952010-10-09T09:56:00.002-04:002010-10-09T09:57:35.332-04:00

You're going to update your links. As a wise friend once said: Onward.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-28118374469993967142010-09-18T12:13:00.003-04:002010-09-18T12:46:19.213-04:00

In the Stars: A Tale of Two London HotelsThe Athenaeum HotelI am never happier than when I step into the slippers. The whole room is a dream, it's true, from the cornflower blue fabric on the headboard to the sparkling porcelain sink. The lights brighten and dim soothing slowness, as though a basic switch would be too harsh, too jarring a transition. The climate control system—its intake and

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The island of Stromboli looks like a volcano in a cartoon, in a movie where people get stuck on a tropical island. It springs up out of the blue Aeolian Sea like a perfect jutting triangle, the bottom two-thirds covered in a sheath of rippling grass and brush, like Shar-Pei wearing a green sweater. The top is dark with the rock of new eruptions, a plume of brown and white smoke coughing steadily

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-33307611796531446172010-07-19T09:13:00.000-04:002010-07-19T09:13:00.166-04:00

There is no real bus stop, but the driver recognizes that we're tourists and drops us off in the right place.   Walking up the hill toward it, we question why we're doing this in the first place. If it's going to be creepy. If it's going to gross us out.  “Well,” I say. “We can't go to Palermo and not see the place with the dead people.” Somehow, this works as an explanation. The outside of the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-14893235548916191132010-07-17T08:53:00.003-04:002010-07-17T09:06:28.275-04:00

In a city with almost no working street lights, where filthy dogs lie in the sun on their bloated, wormy sides, we go in search of something—a park to eat our lunches. We never find it.How this happens in a city planned out on four deliberate quadrants, the main streets dividing them as though they'd been hacked apart with a knife, we have no idea. But we manage it anyway, even with a map and a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-17203799193365567102010-06-26T07:54:00.002-04:002010-06-26T08:09:10.678-04:00

We sleep all day. But not before we try to accomplish things. We try so hard.We sit down to plates of pasta and grilled eggplant at an outdoor trattoria that looks like my grandmother's living room. We walk to the literal center of town, the four corners of the street hemmed in by fountains and statues. Back at our hotel, we study city maps with purpose. We inquire about ferry schedules and

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-76770346219436037002010-06-25T07:51:00.003-04:002010-06-25T07:59:25.997-04:00

So. I'll be at TBEX this weekend, talking up L'Americaine and trying not to appear really awkward, which is how it usually goes with me and networking events. It's in NYC this year, so I figured it would be fun to go. If you're going to be there, please say hello. I'll be the brunette standing the corner clutching her business cards, wondering why she's taking herself this seriously. Also, I just

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-45201184273228969132010-05-31T07:40:00.000-04:002010-05-31T07:40:00.306-04:00

It's 2 am. My sister is asleep and has forbidden me from opening any of the windows in our hotel room. Mosquitoes will come in, she says. And she's right. I mean, she is. And I'm not really forbidden, but we agreed on it. Before we turned out the lights, we made a promise that if any mosquitoes buzzed around our ears in the night, we'd immediately turn the lights back on and kill them. We even

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The storm on Burano coincides with our visit nearly to the moment and gives the impression, at first, that the entire island will run in the rain like a bleary watercolor. We huddle under the awning in a bar and drink too-expensive hot chocolates while old men rattle away in Venetian dialect around us. Day trippers scamper for the vaporetto and for the lace shops. The town hardly looks real with

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-70175496227465795082010-05-27T00:36:00.001-04:002010-05-27T00:39:41.944-04:00

After dark, the arrows point in both directions. They do in daylight too, but it doesn't seem so challenging then, when aimlessness is its own kind of reward—the reason why you visit Venice in the first place. Once the sun sets, though, the labyrinth turns Alice-in-Wonderland sinister—lit with high yellow bulbs and silent to the point of distraction, save the footsteps just around the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-84553674477929765712010-05-11T06:15:00.002-04:002010-05-11T06:20:15.467-04:00

On the Mexican island of Cozumel, all we really wanted was a good meal. Not a bargain on a snorkeling excursion or a bespangled sombrero for $50 USD, or a cheap rental car. This is what Cozumel promises in abundance when you first arrive, before your feet even leave the ferry dock. In the most touristed of places, a tiny island full of salesman hawking their wares to cruise ship day-trippers, we

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-6249443847593551332010-01-30T13:42:00.003-05:002010-01-31T06:05:59.780-05:00

I took this photo on a frigid May day in Paris in the Jardain des Plantes, just before I had dinner at the Mosque cafe with friends. Paris explodes with flowers and green in the spring, blooms into a whole new kind of place. It was raining.My hands shook taking these photos, so desperate to capture the colors and shapes of that rose garden. Because roses are so precise, so strong and structured

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-28352118054272922792010-01-10T10:58:00.002-05:002010-01-10T12:13:54.148-05:00

The wind in Cozumel puts a stop to everything. It wobbles the passengers on the top deck of the ferry and hitches the snorkeling boats to their docks for the day. It blows the fronds of palm trees straight backward and pitches blood red warning flags on every beach.On Cozumel, in the wind, there is nothing to do but sit and wait for the wind to stop. We try to sit on a beach. The proprietress of

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-79379741033032226172010-01-07T10:00:00.000-05:002010-01-07T10:00:04.293-05:00

Playa del Carmen is a carnival, a screaming strip of souvenir shops and bars with names in English. A Starbucks obliterates an entire corner, obstinate and white like a citadel. Shop owners hawk Italian lingerie, plastic watches, and t-shirts with printed slogans and lists like, “10 Reasons Why a Beer Is Better Than a Woman.” For us and Playa del Carmen, it is hate at first sight.We pour over our

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-80981543519791600172010-01-06T10:00:00.003-05:002010-01-06T10:00:05.041-05:00

Tulum Pueblo, a strip of buildings along a speedbump-heavy stretch of Mex. 307, is not much to look at. It is half-collapsed and dusty, all of its paint chipping. Rocks, hunks of cement, and leftover pieces of tin roof all crowd the tiny yards of tiny houses along with gnarled avocado trees, the occasional wandering goat or chicken, and little kids without clothes. Slogans and store names adorn

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-85573820334192284492010-01-05T10:07:00.000-05:002010-01-05T18:40:33.238-05:00

The bee stings me just as the man is getting to the part of his speech where he talks about how Italian is the best language for love. He pauses in the half-light for a moment, trying to decide what English is good for, his sentence trailing off. That's when I get stung. Looking back, it is difficult to tell how the bee got there in the first place. I have not seen many since our arrival in

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-11798276136474266332010-01-04T09:50:00.003-05:002010-01-05T18:40:33.239-05:00

The instant our feet touch the pillow-y white sand at Playa El Paraiso at Tulum, the clouds begin to gather in earnest. After a day of travel, of bus-switching and hotel-locating and mindless belly-filling, we are desperate just to get there, to see this thing that we've come to see. By the time we arrive, it's nearly sunset. The sand is so soft that the feel of it under our sandals makes us

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-64599128120055469022010-01-01T08:48:00.003-05:002010-01-05T18:40:48.691-05:00

The new decade arrives while I am sitting in the front seat of a van stuffed with eight people. An hour before at the airport, the ride is sold to us as a “private, direct taxi ” until we are told, with only feigning and half-smiling regret by a guy with a walkie-talkie, that there are “no more drivers.” We've already paid. It's nearly midnight. We are cotton-headed from the flight and in Mexico,

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-46150104160191404102009-12-06T09:59:00.005-05:002009-12-06T10:15:48.955-05:00

On a farm outside of Indianapolis, half-hidden down a gravel road past the pumpkin patch and the wire-and-wood cages of a few animals—a sleepy donkey, a pair of goats who stick their noses through the holes in the fence in hopes of being fed—there stands a vast corn maze.I have never seen such a thing before but understand that things like corn mazes exist in the world. (I have seen Field of

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-27791622522049231352009-11-12T23:37:00.001-05:002010-01-05T18:43:34.083-05:00

I don't have many photos of Nice because I was sick for most of the time I was there. I've been trying to think about and remember this day in particular, though, how I wanted so badly to visit the little town on that outcropping, but just couldn't. I was too weak, too unsteady on my own feet. So I contented myself with this one photo, a little piece of it that I could remember and take home.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-18563660992118351632009-10-07T07:52:00.002-04:002009-10-07T07:55:27.021-04:00

Because I can never go for very long without planning some kind of travel-related adventure, I'm taking a small trip to Indianapolis this weekend to see a friend. I've been promised a visit to a pumpkin patch, so I'm expecting that there will be plenty to write about. I'm flying U.S. Airways, and, as a coincidence, one of my pieces happens to be featured in their in-flight magazine this month.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-49309370204303041522009-10-03T10:57:00.002-04:002009-10-03T11:03:43.643-04:00

I took a walk like this before on another side of the earth, baking under midday sun on an island in the middle of the sea. I walked up a hill to a lighthouse along a narrow, scrubby path where prickly bushes pressed in on each side and salamanders scurried around my feet. I walked and walked, unsure of where I was going, or what I'd find at the end.This was different but the same, a whole other

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-38479363098849273852009-09-11T19:33:00.000-04:002009-09-11T19:34:41.638-04:00

We leave the hotel in Lenox, Massachusetts in the dark, so early on a Monday morning that it still looks (and feels, to my tired brain) like Tuesday night. I need to get back to Wassaic, to the train, so I can get to Manhattan in time for work. People make this commute every single day—from the public-transportation-free depths of the Berkshire mountains to the city. I have no idea how or why. I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-42769815826526450702009-08-23T09:58:00.003-04:002009-08-23T10:07:37.956-04:00

The morning after my lip blew up like a balloon for some mysterious reason of allergy or irritation, my sister drove me to the general store in Stockbridge for some Benadryl and then to the woods for a walk.I said I wanted to go hiking, and I meant it, and because I had no other discernable symptoms besides the lip (so grotesque at this point that Phantom of the Opera comparisons were not

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-26063579649096580932009-08-11T08:13:00.004-04:002009-08-12T13:45:45.141-04:00

One one of those mornings when I wandered around London in the dim late-summer sunlight feeling sad, I found myself south of the river in Battersea Park. I almost didn't find myself there because a cab nearly ran me over at the intersection at one end of the Albert Bridge. You would think, at this point, I'd understand how to properly cross a street in London. Judging from the cabbie's reaction—I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-43359560877498986932009-07-23T08:31:00.007-04:002009-07-23T09:01:58.792-04:00

Going to Europe for the first time? The twelfth? You will see cathedrals, you will. And basilicas. And abbeys. And chapels. Despite what the guidebooks say, they aren't all awesome, and they aren't all worth seeing. Here are some that are worth seeking out. And some that... aren't quite.4 to SeeBasilica Saint-Denis, ParisMost visitors spend their churchgoing time in Paris winding around the nave

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-18517704530019509272009-07-17T07:26:00.003-04:002009-07-17T07:32:24.254-04:00

In Bruges after dark, J and I decide to wander. I'm hesitant, of course, assuming that most places shouldn't be wandered in the dark. Peering at a tiny map ripped out of a guidebook under a single spluttering street lamp, I say, "Listen, I know I'm breaking the first rule of travel safety here, but..."Because I do know. Standing under a street lamp to look at a map? As a woman? Why not just shout

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-4610920597626582862009-07-10T06:41:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:42:00.833-05:00

On an afternoon in Split, Croatia in the spring, we decided to take a walk. We started at the ferry port—that teeming hallmark of so many Mediterranean cities—and moved southeast along the shore without a map or an agenda. It was warm for April, one of those days where you're not sure how to dress out of fear that the weather will make a soggy or a sweltering fool of you. On this day, it was more

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-39941655851547116132009-07-03T10:09:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:43:34.084-05:00

In Paris, I went to class each day in Montparnasse at the building set aside by the Sorbonne for its extension school. I say set aside because that's truly how it felt as a student there—as though none of us should ever confuse what we were doing, our charming little French lesson, with attending the real Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter, the domain of true French academia. Every morning, I took

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-87712352320293889472009-06-29T07:52:00.004-04:002009-06-29T08:33:06.948-04:00

If you're from any town in Northeastern Massachusetts or Southern New Hampshire, chances are you spent at least one childhood summer at Hampton or Salisbury Beach, and chances are your parents and grandparents did too. The hallmark of this area—a scrubby strip of beaches just north of the Massachusetts border—isn't some charming boardwalk or picturesque ferris wheel, but the bubble-domed nuclear

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-57574221636596161752009-06-19T06:59:00.003-04:002009-06-19T07:08:35.024-04:00

When I visited my family in Sicily last spring, I ate almost continuously for a week. In those six days, I forgot what it felt like to be hungry. This, I suppose, is the point of going to Sicily. I remember every meal I had there in almost freakish detail—a chive tied around a hard-boiled egg, the tiny, edible spines of fried sardines. At one point, my Uncle Turi said to me between bites of a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-34325945358707196832009-06-16T07:54:00.006-04:002009-06-16T08:21:03.565-04:00

Of all the design and public space projects to have gripped New York City since I moved here, few have gotten as much attention as the High Line. A park built on top of an abandoned strip of elevated rail line on the West Side, it had its own exhibit at MoMA when it was still in its design phases. And now it's open. Well, a piece of it is open. A portion above 20th Street is still under

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-14808015841726458692009-06-03T08:21:00.004-04:002009-06-03T20:59:24.029-04:00

I was told by a friend that I'm not allowed to complain too loudly about last summer. (I was backpacking the Mediterranean, so.) But I missed New York City terribly while I was gone—I'm allowed that much—and by the time I returned to it in August, most of the Fun Summer Stuff here was winding down or done. In short, I am psyched about my summer. And I'm psyched to write about it. Here's a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-52249605026811837742009-06-02T07:47:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:42:00.834-05:00

On the rainiest of rainy days, the water cascades along Dubrovnik's marble streets in rivers. It rolls down its steps and through its alleys in gushes, as though the hard white city can't bear to absorb a single drop. Water pours off the terra cotta roof tiles. I roll my jeans up to my knees. I had planned to visit an island or a ramshackle seaside town, but the weather nullifies my plans, makes

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-7765167035317399112009-06-01T07:02:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:42:00.835-05:00

Among all of Dubrovnik's white marble spires, there is the bell tower. You can only see into it from atop the city walls, floating above the streets, at eye level with the red-tile roofs for which the city is famous. We take the walk along the walls just before they close, at sunset, with the Chilean travel writer. We shared a taxi with him from the station. The walls that contain the old city of

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-90216759069433272812009-05-29T08:19:00.003-04:002009-05-29T08:28:05.270-04:00

At The General's Kitchen: House of Chipped Beef, the house specialty is—as the name hints—a dish called Creamed Chipped Beef, which sounds about as terrifying as it actually is, and slightly less terrifying than it actually looks.It comes on a white plate, accompanied by either grits or hash browns, but you will hardly notice them when it arrives, because it is the other pile—the chipped beef

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-80227608594618893372009-05-28T08:15:00.004-04:002009-05-31T10:28:22.134-04:00

Along the New Jersey Turnpike between exits 7 and 7a, there is a rest stop where we got stuck once because the brakes went. Well, they didn't go, but they made a grinding noise that we felt in our teeth and we got scared. We got especially scared because Amanda, our driver who was from Vermont, told her parents we were having a fun weekend seeing a band in nearby Montreal. We did see the band. In

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-83595754196162959292009-05-27T07:57:00.002-04:002009-05-27T08:22:58.480-04:00

Recently, someone made a really good point about this blog, and about travel blogs in general. As a writer of a travel blog, I probably should, in fact, tell people a little bit about how to see and do the things I describe here. Fancy that.Although some things in this travel blog are probably great examples of things you should avoid while traveling, I will, in the future, include things like

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-3838673927149544332009-05-26T07:44:00.002-04:002009-05-27T08:13:12.189-04:00

Macky's is our second choice, but it becomes our first choice once we get inside. The other bar, Seacrets—which, I'm sorry, sounds more like an oceanside adult entertainment complex—teems at 4 in the afternoon with dudes who are draped in gold and peeling from their spring tans, the bikini clad girls on their arms universally and uniformly tramp stamped, like cattle. I had been concerned about

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-43509267972317498872009-05-21T08:35:00.002-04:002009-05-21T08:48:37.725-04:00

It's warm in New York City. I'm happy about that. A couple of travel-and-blog-related updates:I wrote a little piece for TravelBlogs.com recently about what you should leave home when you travel. I wrote about one of my gorgeous-but-useless scarves. Or, useless isn't the word. Superfluous. In this circumstance.I'm really happy to report that my blog posts are now appearing on the awesome site

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-89608705151880056512009-05-16T08:47:00.000-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.950-05:00

In Dubrovnik, Croatia, in a city literally paved in gleaming white marble, there is a jewelry store just off the main drag, nearer to the city's Pile Gate than not. I don't know its name and I don't know the name of its bearded, bespectacled owner who opened up his dark wood cases for me with tiny little keys so I could peer closer, but I wish I did.I visited on a day when it didn't rain but

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-57645336568137049652009-05-10T11:14:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.951-05:00

The swimming pool at the Hotel Kastel at the very top of the hill in Motovun, Croatia is glassed-in and bright in the morning with the green of the garden just beyond the windows. Pieces of the original medieval stone have been used in the construction and you will see them—a stone beam here or there, the outline of an old window—as you float from one end to the other, disrupting the surface at

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-13109794583092269882009-05-02T16:55:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.952-05:00

The theme of the trip is pigs. For the flu, maybe, which is on every television screen we pass. But mostly for the ones on the agritourism farm in Istria, Croatia, which we visit on a day full of cloudy skies and cold rain. A day on which we are supposed to hunt for truffles on the same farm, but because of the rain, we don't.On this day, the truffle dogs shift in their houses, poking their heads

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-84872679733232629702009-04-28T02:35:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.953-05:00

When a city has nothing to attract tourists but its beauty, its back roads and cafes, it will ask that you do what its citizens have been doing since wooden-wheeled carts were the preferred method of transport. It will recommend that you climb its bell tower. Or its triumphal arch. Or its highest peak. Or to a little park that sits on a cliff. Or what little remains of its once-glorious ramparts.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-54866844391869838622009-04-26T17:15:00.001-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.953-05:00

Children race across the marble paving stones of this square on roller blades. It is the ideal rink—sleek and free of debris, the statue of a Medieval soldier in the center a perfect compass point. I watched them tonight for hours while drinking tea at a cafe across the way with my friend Ola, a fellow travel blogger. While the sun set. While the bell in the tower struck 7:30, then 7:45, then 8:

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-63322133070096571632009-04-26T16:56:00.001-04:002009-04-26T16:58:26.435-04:00

As you've probably sorted out, I'm currently traveling in Croatia and thought that you should know the following information:Five of my 12 days of travel on this trip were subsidized by the tourism board of Istria, Croatia with the agreement that I would write about my experiences there. The agreement is informal and I'm not required to write positively about Istria, or to cover any specific

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-18508029843736516742009-04-24T02:11:00.005-04:002010-01-05T18:42:36.955-05:00

I want to live in a walled Medieval town on the top of a hill, one that is surrounded by vineyards and green fields and the occasional dot of a house or a farm in every direction. I want to catch myself from slipping on the white limestone cobbles and I want to sit under a tree in the square near the old cistern—it still bears the symbol of the State, winged lions in flight—that's been capped so

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-27419441556868335742009-04-19T19:30:00.001-04:002009-04-19T19:38:55.217-04:00

I walked up and down the summit of a dead volcano today in the wrong shoes.This volcano is so dead that it's overgrown with a slippery layer of grass from top to bottom as though the whole thing is wearing a handsome green sweater. I choose to walk up to the summit from the West side, which is steeper and craggier than the rolling East side but the views out to sea and up to the peak are better.I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-32673700969051422442009-04-19T03:59:00.002-04:002009-04-19T04:07:00.151-04:00

We are all supposed to know where our food comes from, aren't we. We're supposed to have a healthy appreciation for the labor of unseen farmers and the science of hybridization and the ticking mechanisms of megaproduction and the living, breathing creatures we kill every year by the millions and millions.I imagine Jaime Oliver saying this to me with his arms crossed, wearing something stupid like

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-60335687222343960452009-04-18T19:18:00.002-04:002009-04-18T19:22:46.837-04:00

Everything in Edinburgh is green and brown and small. Doorways. Mountains. Knotty-limbed trees. My nose and fingertips have been cold all day. The sun didn't completely set until 10:00 pm. I've been wearing the same clothes for 48 hours. Today I took a walking tour and had shortbread cookies in the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote The Sorcerer's Stone. I wandered graveyards and took pictures. I ate

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-7699788115011106482009-04-09T23:23:00.001-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.122-05:00

Anna Maria and I walk across the Villa of Adrano under a bleachy white sky and a canopy of palm trees. It is before dinner and I'm hugging my shawl around me like a hunched-over widow. We don't speak much. I don't have much to say.My cousin is a little stooped and pouchy around the middle and her glasses make her eyes look bigger and fishier than they are. Her clothes—clingy t-shirts, quilted

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-23894317602628775662009-04-08T23:10:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.123-05:00

This is the Castello Normanno in Adrano, Sicily. My cousin Anna Maria took me there on an overcast spring day when I didn't have a whole lot to say, or maybe I was so exhausted from speaking Sicilian—from reaching so far back into my memory bank—that I just didn't have any words left. When I first saw the castle, I had no idea what it was and Anna Maria tried to explain but I couldn't understand.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-81481405455821060252009-04-07T23:32:00.003-04:002009-04-07T23:42:13.147-04:00

(Sometimes I like to play tourist in my own city. I like playing tourist in my own city even better when it's inexpensive to do so. This is a cheap, quick little New York City activity; it won't kill your budget or your feet.)If you're a fan of history, fusty old house tours, or Victoriana, I think you'd really like this museum. Ditto if you like spending $3 for an afternoon of entertainment,

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-31401158133591266702009-03-31T00:51:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:44:16.503-05:00

On a hazy June morning in the part of France that cannot make up its mind about whether it is a Provence blossom or a Riviera jewel, I took a picture of a stone building perched on yet more stone—a corniche, they call them—on the very edge of the shore. I had just begun to move in a great clockwise arc around the Mediterranean Sea, a thing I had wanted to do for as long as I could think the words

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-8464565185828921202009-03-14T10:30:00.000-04:002009-03-14T10:31:37.106-04:00

Well, my trip to Croatia is shaping up. Unfortunately, I've had to ax my plans to go back to France this year. The economy is too uncertain and my vacation time is too dear. Plus, I wondered if Paris would make me sad. Even thinking about the neighborhood where I lived—a not-so-elegant sliver of the 18eme, but I loved it—puts a kind of cramp in my chest. I'll write more about Paris someday—the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-10208756652972637142009-03-04T00:41:00.004-05:002009-03-25T08:44:38.688-04:00

I spent the weekend banging around Boston, my almost-hometown, with family and good friends. Here are the spoils, in brief: The Garment District: Amidst the wasteland of MIT buildings and pharmaceutical company HQs and behind a door that looks like it leads to a car mechanic’s office is The Garment District, an amazingly well-stocked (and even better priced) vintage store. Most of the students

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-10536406096191545292009-02-11T22:07:00.002-05:002010-01-05T18:51:34.124-05:00

Every single morning, Maria makes me coffee. I wake up with the sun, the beams of it streaming through and illuminating her dark, angular little house, the whole thing done up in dark greens and gold and tile—the colors of the landscape, the stringy weeds poking through the railroad tracks just up the street. I let myself sleep in. On the first night, she offers me her spotless bedroom with its

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-21026897953128795022009-02-09T23:51:00.000-05:002010-01-05T18:51:34.125-05:00

The man draws a circle around the whole island with a blue ballpoint pen. He says, “Ischia is good for swimming.”Two months before, I had never heard of the place—a tiny lump of volcanic ash nudging out of the Bay of Naples. And then I stood on it and I swam.I lay facedown on a tiny towel, the only person without an umbrella in the burning July sun. I’m so dark at this point that it hardly

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-39382070236447768522009-02-08T12:04:00.003-05:002009-02-08T12:08:56.607-05:00

Hi everyone! A few things before I set out to buy donuts on this splendid New York City morning:I’m going to be traveling again soon! I’ll be in Scotland, briefly, and then in Croatia and back to France for a bit. Yay for whirlwind travel! Yay for new things to write about! The Croatia portion of the trip is pretty much covered, but if you have suggestions for things to do and see in Edinburgh,

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-87540350004980459172009-02-01T17:23:00.004-05:002009-02-08T09:14:46.348-05:00

In the airport in Rome, I fidget. I kick a plastic bottle of Pellegrino out of a vending machine. I switch seats once. Twice. Watch an airplane long enough—even one that’s tethered to its gate, its belly opened by baggage handlers and fed by fuel tubes—and it becomes animate, picks up its head . You expect its wings to flap, its nose to bend forward, to scratch at a big-wheeled claw with its beak

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-44589292517265026682009-01-24T17:41:00.004-05:002010-01-05T18:44:16.504-05:00

Summer comes for the first time on a seaweed-strewn beach on the Cap Corse, the finger of Corsica that points, unwavering and unmistakable, toward France. (And Corsica, her storefronts striped with graffiti, her guttural dialect, knows exactly which finger it is.)That morning, my friend takes a flight back to Paris and school and I take a bus up the coast to a tiny town with a beach, a half-moon

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-69705290157778297972009-01-22T01:45:00.002-05:002009-01-22T01:47:23.157-05:00

In Dublin, on a strange little back street near the cathedral, is a library that’s almost completely hidden behind a tall hedge. I visit on a day when the sky and my spirit are overcast with floating gray clouds, but this is how the sky and I tend to travel. The man in the doorway smiles and welcomes me and hands me a piece of cream-colored paper and speaks in a voice that sounds like the ogre in

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-25992987785935782552009-01-08T23:33:00.002-05:002009-01-08T23:41:53.538-05:00

At Paleokastritsa beach on the saddest day of my life, the water is freezing and no one knows why. Old men shake their heads. The tour guide, a freckled Aussie with very white teeth, nudges his mirrored shades up his nose, and frowns.The swimming cove is the same shade as the sky and the beach crawls with Dutch and Norwegian tourists, their bands of yellow hair in thick braids. Children splash

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-68983274353557719132009-01-07T20:22:00.002-05:002009-01-07T20:51:44.510-05:00

Dear Reader,I'm happy to report that The Beaches, about the extraordinary La Maddalena Archipelago, is featured in the January/February issue of Eclectica. It was originally published here, in a slightly different form, under the title A Day at the Beach.Please grace the amazing Eclectica with your traffic and time.New essays coming soon...Laura

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-80823940289759160792008-11-09T10:51:00.002-05:002008-11-09T10:55:17.772-05:00

In Paris. Every morning on the 13 to Montparnasse. Not every morning. Some mornings. I would sit or grip the pole and wonder about germs and the people would shove in and not move to the center. A man with his face in my hair, a hand on my book bag. And I had no language to tell him to stop. Or I did, but I would be so afraid to use it. I didn't know how people said things. That's what it means

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-75475104349366749752008-10-09T23:53:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.125-05:00

On Ischia, island of flowers, garbage piles in the streets. In some places, it has not been picked up in a week, in two. It is not so obvious in the places that are frequented by tourists, but if you wind down the backroads, stepping careful on the wide black paving stones, you’ll see it — trash — wedged behind grates and bursting out of double-ply plastic bags. You will certainly smell it. The

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-64691564103446665462008-09-13T12:55:00.003-04:002008-09-13T14:00:39.212-04:00

St. John’s Wood is tony and manicured and green at the height of summer, when London is neither especially warm nor especially sunny. Red brick marches. White shutters are neatly pegged back, newly painted, pristine. Nothing moves. Not a leaf. Coughed up by the tube in late-afternoon, I am spun around and disoriented, turning the map this way and that. Finally, I look up, pull myself out of the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-81975771607272471192008-09-12T15:40:00.001-04:002008-09-12T15:56:31.709-04:00

The first in a very short series. This happened about 10 years ago.It was at 10 pm on a Saturday night when a sixteen-year-old girl with bleach-blonde hair and a dragging, sugary Midwestern accent loaded us into the backseat of her second-hand Cutlas and took us to see the house. Our original plan had been to dance at a goth club called Roadkill, which we’d read about online. I had even brought a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-60643068548059375322008-08-21T10:58:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:45:07.419-05:00

The sun sets over the mountains in a straggling seaside suburb outside of Bastia, and I get off at the wrong stop. Actually, it is the only stop. I sit watching the view, waiting to see the familiar contours of the streets around my hotel, but they never come. This bus is in a whole different place. The right direction, but the wrong everything else. “Terminus,” says the bus driver, eyeing the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-56273700055807921592008-08-13T13:03:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:45:07.420-05:00

On an island in the middle of the sea, in a city with a sleepy old port cut with the vertical lines of masts, and the mountains jutting up behind it, green with feather white clouds drifting across the tops, and closed in by two lighthouses, a green and an orange, protecting the tiny opening, or just pointing out its edges, we know we have left the continent. The city pressing against the port is

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-23904900829641605712008-08-05T09:59:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.126-05:00

The idea of climbing down a cliff to lie on a beach is not so bad, of downhill rhythm and exertion and then sleep, sand, water. The idea, though, of climbing one up after you’re done, of heavy limbs and mild dehydration and a sopping wet towel, is something else.Sorrento is on the top of that cliff, sungold and hovering above the sea like a city in a dream, and its beaches — tiny, with bath

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-76273824164393547802008-08-02T01:57:00.000-04:002008-08-02T03:00:58.612-04:00

The splinter comes fast, not exactly painless, twenty minutes after I have arrived. The culprit is a poorly sanded picnic table with peeling paint and no one cares. The conversation between students and wayward travelers and ex-cons continues around me and I just drop out of it, staring at my thumbnail, wondering what just happened.I did not even hit my hand. It just… swept. A sweep of the hand,

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-22506224231317298902008-08-01T04:19:00.002-04:002008-08-01T04:28:22.060-04:00

I eat alone on Corfu.Correction. I eat alone all across Europe, in tavernas and trattorias and bistros and little canopied cafes and gelato stands and usually, I like it. Being Mysterious Girl Alone. Scribbling in a journal or reading a book. Glances at curious waiters.But in Corfu, something changes. On this strange island full of teenagers that has a 24-hour bar and a weekly toga party. Being

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-63695465314293317372008-07-28T06:47:00.001-04:002008-07-28T13:27:59.090-04:00

In Fulham, we sit in the outdoor café of a restaurant stacked in by ludicrous heaps of cakes and pastries in the windows. Pavlovas and four flavors of tarts. Pies with inches of frosting. Crumbles and strudels. Cakes as dense as bricks and crusted with pistachios and almonds, dusted with granular and powdered sugars.We hover over piles of eggs. Eggs! Luxury. So rare and strange. And salmon.

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-78122275007689530952008-07-25T16:33:00.000-04:002008-07-25T16:35:11.303-04:00

The girl sitting next to me is shaving her legs.She walks into the room gesticulating wildly toward the electrical outlet, unplugs one of the laptops, and plugs in a pink electrical razor. She switches it on, plunks into a chair, and epilates.The room is the common room, and the chair is in the center, so anyone who enters — and there are lots of someones entering — can watch.We are sitting here

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-52578591997262616752008-07-24T00:46:00.006-04:002008-07-25T14:57:38.692-04:00

I find a tattered copy of The Power of Now sitting on a shelf and, exhausted by Homer and Toni Cade Bambara, I decide to read it. On the beach. At the bus station. Afterwards, I try to do what it says to do.I try to ignore the fact that some of its wisdom sounds like it was ad-libbed by Owen Wilson in The Darjeeling Limited.Be the Buddha.Afterwards, sweating in my bunk, I scribble in a notebook

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-9887840990681489142008-07-22T03:37:00.003-04:002008-07-22T03:37:00.845-04:00

Note: This, too, is a dispatch from the not-so-recent past. Below is recounted a daytrip to Monaco that we took in June, 2008.She is buried in the Cathedral in the cleanest, blandest historical town center in Europe, under an engraved slab of marble that’s exactly like the one that covers her husband and his ancestors except for her name carved there, goofy, obviously American despite the Latin

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-16925439766892629312008-07-20T14:32:00.003-04:002008-07-21T01:24:23.575-04:00

I want to ride on a scooter. With a scarf in my hair. A minty green Vespa or plum. Big sunglasses. Little sandals. This is a new idea, a thing I would like to do. And I worry about this thing I would like to do, because like, say, a crazy idea about moving to New York City, the things I would like to do tend very quickly to become the things I did last year. I worry because it’s dangerous. And

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-25691084105045127522008-07-19T16:47:00.000-04:002008-07-19T16:48:10.751-04:00

In paradise. I want to see the wreck up close, so I pick my way over the rocks, which are pock-marked and bleached in the sun like the surface of another planet. I saw it from the boat, but I must see it up close, from shore, its precarious sub-horizontal tilt, crashed against the rocks, peek through the holes in the hull all the way to the blue water on the other side. It’s been there for twenty

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-75371474318810329532008-07-17T03:17:00.003-04:002008-07-17T04:57:43.315-04:00

The ferry feels like a refugee camp with people huddled on the floor under blankets or dozing in corners. I take an empty seat and the guy sitting next to me asks where I’m from. “America!” he says. “Americaaaaa! America good.” Sensing that I am being put on, I nod and smile and dive immediately into a book. He continues to try to talk to me, even though he speaks no English. Then he pulls

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-90935004757543313672008-07-16T02:52:00.001-04:002008-07-16T02:52:00.826-04:00

I start to ask the man a question and he waves me closer. I follow and ask and thank him and he says, “Can I see your ticket please?”This is when I realize. When I moved closer to the man, I walked into the ticket control area. And because I wasn’t sure where I was going yet, I didn’t validate my ticket when I crossed the boundary.“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry. It’s not validated. I can do that now.”He

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-89252017438794676032008-07-15T02:48:00.001-04:002008-07-15T02:55:54.827-04:00

There are days when. I do not want to sightsee. Or walk around. Or think. Or practice this thing we call personal growth. Or lie on a beach. Or visit a cathedral. Or wander shaded little streets. Or take pictures. Or think of things to write about. On my blog.The one significant thing that happened to me today was this.In the National Archeological Museum in Athens, Greece, I was gazing through a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-12052929356018531152008-07-14T08:20:00.002-04:002009-01-09T18:53:50.891-05:00

As soon as I arrive, I realize that I need to leave.They serve ouzu to us as a welcome in little plastic cups that are designed for shots. The liquid has been tinted a neon, vaguely toxic pink. It's 9 in the morning.Just drink it. This is what I tell myself. But after 12 hours on a ferry, four of them spent crunched in half across two pullman seats — one hand on my luggage the entire time — I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-1230360345642003032008-07-13T03:06:00.000-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.127-05:00

Note: The events described below happened in April, 2008, while I was traveling in Italy over spring break. Please forgive the lapse in my timeline. Sometimes it takes a girl some months to get things down on paper. Sometimes it takes a lifetime, so in this particular case, consider yourself ahead of schedule.Transportation in Italia is either a crystal-clear, timely, marvel of a thing, a wonder

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-74864275477280122642008-07-12T05:51:00.000-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.128-05:00

A guy takes me to Brindisi, across the wide ankle of the Italian boot, in his van. He picks me up where the taxi driver left me at 5:15 in the morning when light is just splitting the sky open — an underpass outside of Salerno that seems like a prime location for, say, a drug drop or a rumble.This, I am told, is a far better option than the train. (When I ask why, the travel agent casts me a

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-5618599891101181242008-07-11T06:33:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.129-05:00

High above the water on the winding road amidst the fingers of cliffs, I realize that I stopped being scared. Even when I said I wasn’t scared, I was scared. Never trust me when I say I’m not scared. Just like you should never trust me when I say I’m not drunk.But on the road in the morning as the landscape changed, as the cliffs reached higher and higher into the sky, I knew. I want to know when

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-70422528200072763632008-07-10T05:45:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.130-05:00

I spend €30 before I have even arrived, before I have set foot on its alleged and celebrated beauty. Pablo Neruda waxed poetical. The emperor Tiberius tossed his enemies off the cliffs. Frank Sinatra sang low and sweet.And so I went to Capri. Say goodbye to the Isle, sang Frank. And so I wanted to, before I even said hello.On the beach, I break my ass on pebbles and have forgotten my towel, but I

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-30473843646707274042008-07-09T07:06:00.000-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.130-05:00

The Canadian woman and the Spanish woman and I make our way past swaths of bamboo and lemon trees and trees full of fluorescent blossoms, following the signs and hardly believing that we are going to the right place, because we seem to be walking away from civilization, from reality. It is dusk. My towel has not dried in three days. We walk downhill, toward the cove, which we can see in the

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-1391476127270255742008-07-08T06:59:00.000-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.131-05:00

There is something I hate about this hostel and I cannot put my finger on what it is, because it is clean and spacious and blue and up a tangling little street and situated in a former convent and the owners are kind and they like to organize trips to eat pasta and lounge in the hot springs and I am mostly comfortable here.Mostly.Because while I know rationally that this is one of the top-rated

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-31153281822586112182008-07-07T06:55:00.001-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.132-05:00

It should not matter, but it does. It sticks.I tell him that I’m from Boston and he looks at me and says, “Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. These are both Italians. Stefano Talerico. You know this?”This is how it starts. He talks to me for an hour before I have even put my bags down. He says, “You are so sweet, like the Pannetone that bears your name.”It’s ridiculous. But I let him keep talking

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-52647560554358243882008-07-05T14:00:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.133-05:00

I am in Positano, Italy, in a place that might seem like the most beautiful place on earth if I had not already been to so many beautiful places. I have been without regular Internet access, without a totally reliable phone line, without tons of money, without anything but 25 kilos of luggage, a bathing suit, two bottles of sunblock, and a stack of used bus tickets.I am resoundingly OK.I climbed

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-28969762383798612052008-06-30T02:51:00.003-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.134-05:00

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } Fishing or Floating, originally uploaded by Miss Laura M.. In Sardinia, island Italy, I sleep on the beach in a white-stuccoed little hut with a peaked, red-tiled roof. The campground calls it a tukul and I get a deal

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-66967979668318451492008-06-28T12:58:00.001-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.134-05:00

.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } The Oldest, originally uploaded by Miss Laura M.. He quotes me a price and it’s high, but it’s less than what I expected, and less than what the guidebooks tell me to expect. It is the price of being alone at the wrong

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17159830.post-17548600814587215092008-06-22T11:32:00.002-04:002010-01-05T18:51:34.135-05:00

J____ is back in Paris and I'm in Sardinia.I came into Golfu Aranci and a man. The nicest man in the history of nice people. Brought me in a taxi. For 80 kilometers. And changed me half of what he should have. On a Sunday.And pointed out towns and rock formations that vaulted out of the ground in odd shapes.They used to film westerns here, he said. Because it looks like... name me some

Laura Mottahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15982560813609451152noreply@blogger.com0