La Ciudad

Setting foot on foreign soil is always unnerving, and after living as a country bumpkin for four years, so is arriving in a huge metropolis where green space, trees and even dirt is hard to find.

At first, the pollution in the air, the laneless chaotic freeway and frequent broken down cars allowed a feeling of regret to slide into my exhausted mind.

Joanna fell asleep during the hour long ride from the airport to our hostel in the center of the Palermo barrio on the Northwest side of the city. The solid 24 hours of air travel from Baltimore was weighing on both of us, but after our driver reached back and locked our doors as we ground into traffic on the freeway my heavy eyelids would not close.

When our arbitrarily picked hostel turned out to be booked up, we walked a few blocks to another, where despite heavy construction underway on the building, a clean room was available.

Shedding a heavy oversized bag that contains your life and makes you feel like a giant lumbering target in an unknown land is, literally, a weight off your shoulders. With our things in a safe place, we began to explore the barrio of Palermo in an attempt to stay awake, battle jet lag and get on a local schedule.

Walking through the tree lined streets past clothing shops, cafés and restaurants, each step seemed to boost confidence. The porteños - or people of this port city - are friendly, happy and comfortable.

After wandering aimlessly, mouths agape and eyes bleary with fatigue, we stumbled on a small park. The adjacent cross streets housed four lively cafés. A fountain flowed as the centerpiece of the park and people sat talking, reading or drinking maté around its edges.

We sat down among them and leaned against each other. People walked passed with dogs, children or alone. They all seemed in their own worlds, enjoying the warm spring air and last rays of evening sun. Sporadic pink blossoms sprouted from the otherwise bare branches of the trees.

Time became irrelevant, minutes could have been hours, or hours minutes, people came and went and we remained unnoticed, similar, just another couple enjoying the pleasant evening.

The life of the city transformed from a vast expanse of concrete into a vibrant flow of life, diversity and personality.

With every passing minute the life of the city becomes more familiar and more comfortable. It ceases to be a vast grimy machine.

It becomes beautiful, intricate and exciting. And for now, it is home.

AC

PHOTO
Alex looks out over the Palermo barrio of Buenos Aires from the sun deck of The Palermo House.
Photo by JMH.

Anxiety from the other half

While Alex packs, or attempts to pack, in a manic flurry, I am overtaken by something called The Common Cold. Never all that good of a patient, I'm not looking forward to starting the second leg of this journey with a foggy mind. Airborne after Airborne it is.

Plagued only partly by a sore throat, stuffy nose and tired eyes, it's really the panic-days-of-old that set in to genuinely freak me out. I've traveled before, a fair share even, so what's the big deal? Is it the yearlong buildup to the, quote-unquote, "Trip of a Lifetime?" Or is my breathing restricted and my stomach churning because my traveling companion happens to also be my life companion? Are memories of the Venice, Italy hospital stay flashing back? Did I save enough money?

Yeah, it's these bigger picture anxieties that consume me, soon masked by the superficialities of creating the cutest outfits to travel in. Avoidance, I think they call that.

But if I actually take a moment and breathe, the high stress and anxiety is my version of excitement. A whole new city, a new country. Adventures await, even overthe next 12 hours. Whatever I forgot to pack or brought "just in case" no longer matters. And now it's just a matter of taking it all as it comes. And savoring it.

JMH

Family time in Baltimore

Alex with his aunt Barbara and uncle Ron outside their Takoma Park, MD home.
Joanna with her paternal grandparents Bill and Ann Hartman at their place in Columbia, MD.

Adios

Sitting here in this strange but comfortable room, my head begins to spin and my eyes glaze over.

A seemingly random pile of various belongings clutter the floor in a half circle around me. Camera equipment, books, clothing, an array of medical supplies and snacks are strewn about the beige carpet.

Jo's soft steady breathing is a comfort, but my manic brain is envious of her slumber as it races to visualize how all the random piles around me will fit into my backpack, which appears smaller every time I look at it.

I have two piles of books, one is bigger than the other - a random collection of travel stories, a translation dictionary, sports novel and classic South American literature. The smaller pile only contains two options - an Argentine guide book and Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild.

I had started Krakauer's best seller previously, and while the tale of wilderness has little to do with my journey to "The Paris of South America," it was the title and the idea of leaving everything behind in search of the unknown that prompted me to make it a part of tomorrow's accessible carry on luggage.

As I prepare myself to board a plane bound for a new continent, my mind races with excitement and anticipation of the adventures and experiences that lie ahead.

But simultaneously, I can't help but feel a twinge of reminiscence creep into my head.

It was the last two weeks spent visiting with siblings, friends and loved ones that reminded me what we have here at home. It was the final phone calls to friends and family and the thank-yous for generous hospitality that brought the word home to the front of my mind.

Even for those of us seeking more - knowledge, experience, vision, vocabulary - who constantly crave the sight, sound and taste of what's out there and to live what others flip channels to find, home is always the same.

It is comfort. It is safety. It is warmth.

But most of all, it is love.

And in the end we know, home is that much sweeter after a long journey in a strange land.

- AC

One Day at the Manisses

Often times, traveling tends to center around food.

Days are often spent idling along in limbo between meals. Because of this, going to a place with cuisine connections often make that place all the more enjoyable.

So as we rode along through the mist and choppy water off Rhode Island on our way out to Block Island I knew we would eat one or two pretty good meals.

After all, I was traveling with the little sister of a chef at one of the finer restaurants on the Island.

While I did not know it yet, the Manisses - a lodging and dining staple - was one of, if not the only, place still open in October that offered fine dining.

The fresh seafood and monstrous fish and chips were good, but expertly prepared dishes of imaginative varieties would be few and far between.

Brian Hartman, the brother of my beautiful travel companion, is the sous chef at the Manisses, and the day after he cooked us up an unbelievably delicious rosemary and bacon meatloaf with mashed potatoes in the kitchen of his girlfriend's home, Brian invited us into his restaurant for a little dinner party.

There were six of us friends and family of the chef, and with an almost deadly quiet dining room, Brian had been preparing.

As our server took a cocktail order, we had no idea that the four course blur of hedonistic ingestion that would follow would mirror an entire day - all in one sitting.

We started with a waffle under braised pork and topped with a poached quail egg.

Mimosas were served alongside the "breakfast."

After that, a course of caprese brioche was brought out - of which the variety has been lost in the sweet ginger-infused Bombay Sapphire and tonics that separated courses for me.

The "lunch" pairing of Pinot Grigio didn't help my memory, but it helped my taste buds, that much I can recall.

For our respective "dinners" we each chose an entree from the menu.

My venison was cooked to perfection.

For desert, served along with a round of espresso martinis - or Flatliners - a dessert boat with dingy in tow was placed along the length of the table with samplings of sweet confections from the frozen to the chocolatey.

While we were expected to go with our all-too-generous chef to one of Block Island's two dozen watering holes after dinner - the six of us retired home, comatose and drunk, to dream of heavenly tastes swimming across out tongues.

- AC

The island with a new pond for every day of the year

Block Island, Rhode Island:

- Eight miles off the south coast of Rhode Island

- A total area of less than 10 square miles

- 365 freshwater ponds

- Barely 1,000 year-round residents (which they determine with a Groundhog Day tradition)

- But more than 25 places to get a drink ...

It seems I return to this tear drop-shaped oasis every two or so years. I first spent the summer of my freshman year of college working as a waitress at the popular restaurant The Oar. I followed my brother and his then-girlfriend Tara in an effort to bond with my big brother. That was the summer my mom died, so this place has since held a particularly special place in my heart.

I then came back in 2003 to earn some extra cash after getting sick while studying abroad. I returned in '05 to visit for Lauren Von Bernuth's 24th birthday and again this fall to visit Bri and show Alex a piece of my past.

It's a different experience each time around, previously marked by excessive teenage drinking which now revolves less around the bars and more around old friends. With less than 1,000 year-round residents, it's like school is out here because most island businesses have officially closed. Really, you have to check and double-check the hours of operation even at the Block Island Grocery store before knowing whether or not you could go hungry for the night. It makes Tahoe City look like it's got serious nightlife.

Since it's offseason here, locals are drinking Mudslides rather than serving tourists the vodka milkshake. So "when in Rome," that's how we started our island vacation - with a 'slide at The Oar.

The weather hasn't been great - windy, chilly and a little bit wet - but the company, per usual, has been great. Meg and Roscoe, friends from Telluride, Colo. (and UPS) are also out for the week. Chefs B-Love and Roscoe cooked up a meatloaf one night, followed by another overindulgent dinner at The Manisses where brother Brian works as the sous chef. We managed to squeeze a four-course meal - or "breakfast, lunch, dinner and a midnight snack," as Bri called it - into just a few hours, with perfect drink pairings, of course.

He's off to work doubles for the weeked, so it's vaca style for the rest of us - sleep, eat, drink, repeat ...

We're off to Baltimore to visit the Hartman's tomorrow, then fly out to Buenos Aires from Maryland on Oct. 16.

JMH

Motor City

After a week in Detroit, a little spot up in the northern part of the Midwest that most people told me was an armpit, I feel quite confident in making my own judgment about the Motor City.
It really doesn't deserve the harsh judgment everyone seems to so easily - without ever visiting - slap down upon it.
The greater Detroit area has shown me some of the most insane on highway tactics of anywhere I've been in the US. But then again, I'm told by locals that people here are car crazy.

They like to drive fast and have no patience for traffic.
So why not just turn around on the interstate and drive back up off the freeway on the on ramp?
After an afternoon walk through the unseasonably warm Indian summer air in downtown Detroit, the city itself seems starkly similar to that of the industry that supports it.

Gleaming towers topped with the GM logo rise up above the downtown area from the waterfront of the river, looking over towards Canada while simultaneously watching over the city. The solid glass tower and surrounding buildings gleam in the warm afternoon sun like a beacon of hope and future over a town that seems to be poking its head out of a dark hole.
An hour drive north to Ann Arbor on a Friday night brings the youth of Michigan into the forefront.
The University of Michigan is home to the biggest collegiate football stadium in the country. On most Saturday afternoons in the fall flocks of people join the some 40,000 students in utter mass chaos.
The pounding music from run down college rentals starts at some point in the early morning darkness on Saturday morning and continues uninterrupted until nearly Sunday morning.
Gangs of kids decked from head to toe in Wolverine blue and gold pack themselves into front yards of beat down houses blaring music.
The bass makes a post graduate kid's head pound – the scotch, tequila, tasty regional beers and other various poisons ingested the night before bubble to the surface.
But beside the hangover, a twinge of nostalgic collegiate youth simmers up with the football fervor.
20 minutes outside Ann Arbor lies the 100 acre estate of Mr. Lou Ferris, a Detroit born city boy who made good in the finance business and built himself a small Midwest empire.
Lou is a master on the barbecue, and over a deliciously smoking pile of tenderloin with his sweet hearted German Sheppard guard dog Duke at his side he spins tales of the old days of Motor City.
The race riots, walking at 5 years old to the Lady on the Hill to place bets for his immigrated Lebanese grandmother and the gangsters who ended fights - in one way or another – on his childhood streets.
"I loved my neighborhood," Ferris said of his Congress St. downtown burg which now holds towering office buildings symbolizing his city's and his generation's successes.
Our gracious local hosts tell us that a day after our departure the weather is supposed to turn. Another Michigan winter will set in and push out the chewable humid air.
But on our way out we'll swing through our host barrio of Royal Oak, a chic strip of tasty cafes, pubs, breweries and - the reason for our departing stop - ice cream parlors.
While the Motor City may not be a symbol of style and grace, it is also not the armpit I was assured and in all honesty, I look forward to my next visit.

— AC