I’ve seen a lot of articles lately about where to go in 2013 and it got me thinking about two things: 1. All the places I want to go in the world and how that list isn’t getting much shorter. 2. The way that pretty much every aspect of life is subject to trends. When I first realized — probably sometime in high school — that trends exist in categories beyond clothing I was astounded. People regularly talk about clothing trends or fads, but we don’t talk as often about trends in television shows or food or styles of teaching. In the end though, what is popular ebbs and flows…
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Blog Updates for 2013 and Where I’m Going Next
I made a few changes to the blog today. The most important is that I decided to buy my URL so, for the rest of the year, I am the proud owner of “anopportunemoment.com.” I also came up with a concrete update schedule. For now, I’m updating four times a week. On Sundays and Thursdays, I’ll be blogging about places I’ve been while on Tuesday and Friday I’ll be continuing my weekly features (Tea Tuesday and Weekly Travel Inspiration). Although I got home from Europe a month ago, I still need to write about the majority of The Great European Adventure. For that reason, my Sunday blog posts will continue…
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Tea Tuesday: Tealuxe
Tomorrow I will have been home from Europe for four weeks. I’ve mostly been spending the time with friends and family as well as sleeping in and organizing my closet. Today, however, I spent some time exploring my home state. I was meeting a friend in Providence (Rhode Island’s capital) this afternoon for coffee, but first I decided to stop by a local teahouse called Tealuxe. Yes, I got tea before going to my coffee date. What of it? Anyway, Tealuxe is a local chain with locations in Boston and Providence, and I always feel good supporting small(er) businesses. (Afterwards, my friend and I got coffee at Blue State Coffee–another…
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Copenhagen: First Impressions
I left Amsterdam at 11:00pm on an overnight bus bound for Copenhagen. The ride took 15 hours with a transfer in Hamburg. It was to be the first of many such travel experiences in Europe–in total, I rode two overnight buses and 4 overnight trains over the course of my trip. When I arrived in Copenhagen at 2:00 in the afternoon, it was sunny and I was exhausted. The bus dropped us on a random side street around the corner from the train station and it was some consolation that my fellow travelers looked as weary and confused as me. I hefted my backpack onto my back and started walking…
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Weekly Travel Inspiration: The Fault in Our Stars
“It happened all at once: We exited the highway and there were the row houses of my imagination leaning precariously toward canals, ubiquitous bicycles, and coffeeshops advertising LARGE SMOKING ROOM. We drove over a canal and from atop the bridge I could see dozens of houseboats moored along the water. It looked nothing like America. It looked like an old painting, but real–everything achingly idyllic in the morning light” —The Fault in Our Stars, page 156 The Fault in Our Stars is a bestselling novel by the author John Green, which was published on January 10, 2012, and celebrated its one year anniversary yesterday. It is a heartbreaking and humorous…
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Amsterdam: Last Look
Amsterdam and I had our ups and downs, but as soon as I bought a bus ticket to Copenhagen, I felt a pang of sadness at having to leave such a lovely city that I was really just beginning to get a feel for. Regardless, here are a few final photos from my trip to Amsterdam. Perhaps I’ve been a bit redundant in my posts about this city, but I’ll say one more time that the architecture and the canals were just stunning. When Amsterdam wasn’t wowing me with its beauty, it was making me laugh. The next photo encompasses beautiful architecture and questionable water sports. Plus, sometimes a city…
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Tea Tuesday: Christmas Presents
I’m the avid tea drinker in most of my friends’ and family’s lives, so tea and tea accoutrements have become people’s go-to Christmas presents for me. I have no problem with this trend. My best friend visited Rhode Island this past weekend and, because I hadn’t seen her since I got back from Europe, she gave me my Christmas present then. You guys, it was so exciting. This is no ordinary tea tumbler (which is really just a fancy way of saying thermos that has a tea strainer in it). It’s lined with Yixing clay. Yixing clay is especially porous clay that retains the flavor of the tea you brew…
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What I Learned in Amsterdam
or, I Visited Amsterdam and Didn’t Get High I went to Amsterdam for Vincent van Gogh, and Anne Frank. I went because friends had been and spoke highly of this fun, cultural city. And I listened when people told me that Amsterdam was an amazing place to party. That’s where I went wrong. Amsterdam was the first place that I traveled to by myself, and although I had one contact in the city, he was in the midst of studying abroad and busy with classes and his own life. I stayed at hostels that didn’t facilitate meeting other travelers (no common room!), and I was new to this, so I…
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Weekly Travel Inspiration: Hobbit Safety
I know this video came out a month ago, but I saw The Hobbit recently and it seemed appropriate. In case you haven’t seen it yet, Air New Zealand came out with an airline safety video that is Lord of the Rings themed. Peter Jackson has a quick cameo, and the whole affair is silly while still providing real safety information. They even made their slogan: The Airline of Middle-earth. I hope it makes you feel like hopping on a plane even if it can’t actually fly you to a fantasy world.
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Tea Tuesday: Dobrá Čajovna
I first fell in love with teahouses in Barcelona, at a teahouse called Čaj Chai, which was founded by some Czech immigrants to the city. I have written, and waxed poetic, and gushed about this teahouse before, and I will do so again, but for now I want to tell you about a teahouse in Prague called Dobrá Čajovna, which I was pleased to stumble upon. It was so good, I went twice over the course of my five days in Prague. When I found it, I was surprised–an Asian-style teahouse in the Czech Republic? Apparently this isn’t at all an unusual thing. The teahouse in Barcelona that I so…
