biking in acadia national park

i seem to be doing a lot of catching up after a few months of non-stop travel! this summer has been busy, but such a blast. a lot of activity outdoors and and a lot of learning how to eat more fresh veg!

my family went up to bar harbor on mt. desert island in maine for a few days of biking in acadia national park. amazing--one of the most beautiful places i have been to go biking, without a doubt. bar harbor itself was quite the cool town to dink around in. it felt like a mix of lake george village and chatham, ma. i would love to get up there more often, but it is a HIKE from boston.

in addition to biking straight up cadillac mountain, a highlight of the trip was meeting a south shore firefighter on a sunset sail on the margaret todd. he was such a nice guy, and was so much fun to talk to. apparently, firefighters spend a lot of time fighting one of the biggest problems we have in this country, obesity, and spend a lot less time fighting what they originally signed up to fight, fires. we ended up randomly running into him again on a stop during our lonnng drive back. it felt like we had really made a friend. ha ha. life is good.

view from the top of cadillac

cadillac mountain road- are we in the united states anymore?

famous blowhole of some sort

http://www.barharborinn.com/

paying a little visit to westport

we spent the weekend at camp dudley in westport catching up with some very dear friends. i usually return from weekends away exhausted and wanting to take a snooze. but not this time.

thought i would share a quote which was included in the sunday chapel sermon, delivered by a man i truly admire!

"This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations." 

-George Bernard Shaw

saturday market in sainte-foy-le-grande

we were lucky enough to have a few hours to spend at the weekly market in the town of sainte-foy-le-grande during our bike trip in bordeaux. the market is a huge part of the local economy--and the place where most of the people in surrounding rural towns buy their food for the week. the beautiful town is right on the dordogne river, and is one of the oldest bastille towns in france. don't bother asking me what that means, because i don't know--i wasn't paying attention during our tour.

i've been to quite a few open markets in my travels, and this was one of the best i have ever seen. the most fresh, beautiful veggies and fruits, fresh meat and fish, and also, the most expensive gummy bears that i have ever tasted. notably, related to my last post, i noticed that the meat in the marked actually looked like the animal it came from! and contrary to the idea that the french are unfriendly, some of the warmest, most friendly people we met during our trip. we had so much fun poking around. here are some of my favorite shots!

some of the oysters were opened to give customers an idea of what's inside!

we loved the look of these tomates

might have been ripped off b/c we looked like biking tourons, but 15 euro for a small bag of candy!

les animaux de aquitaine

as many of you know, i became a vegetarian (well, to be perfectly clear, a pescatarian-i'm still good on eating fish for now) last november. part of the reason for my decision was the realization that as americans, we are simply too far away from the food products we eat. we often don't internalize the fact that our cheeseburgers come from cows, our bacon comes from pigs, and our chicken nuggets come from....well, chickens. i had been cutting meat out of my life for some time, but after really considering the fact that meat comes from animals, i decided that i'm not interested in eating it any more. this might change in the future, but it is where i am now.

of course, like many other things, this mentality is very different in the rest of the world. i noticed that in rural france, people are very close to the animals they eat and use for milk and other animal-based products. in the US, our obsession with the idea that we need meat at every meal for "protien" has lead to the growth of commercial farming and poor treatment and living conditions for domestic animals. in france, the domesticated animals that we came across live with quite a bit more dignity than our animals do. here are just a few shots of les animaux from rural france! some were for food, and others were not, but were just plain cute.

i love hamilton, ny

while attending colgate, i didn't think too much about how wonderful  the small college town  of hamilton, ny really is! what a community. i won't deny that the community and the local economy are driven almost completely by the presence of the university, but still, a great town which some pretty great people call home.

while in hamilton for tim's sister's graduation, we caught up with the best folk singer in all the land, ed, at the colgate inn (newly remodeled!), and spent quite a bit of time walking around the town and the campus. it was the first time that i thought about what it would be like to live there-- and not be a student.

wonderful saturday farmer's market

colgate campus

downtown hamilton at the best time of the day

martha's vineyard in the off-season

it's SPRING BREAK for this graduate student! to mark the occasion, tim and i took a little bike trip to martha's vineyard. we'd both had never been there--and we lucked out with some incredible weather. in two days, we managed to bike almost the whole island and saw all the sights...oak bluffs, vineyard haven, edgartown, and gay head. the island was empty (it was, after all, a sunday and monday in the middle of march), but it was nice to get an idea of what it is like for people who live there on a year-round basis. not too much stuff is open!

http://www.harbor-view.com/

i could have spent a few more days here...

i just returned from a few days in mexico's riviera maya. although we were there for our "field studies in global consulting class" we managed to see quite a bit of the the area considering we were there for three nights. i also managed to completely fall in love and was tempted to skip the plane and stay!

previously, i would have thought that the riviera maya was just like cancun--large multi-story hotels, watered-down pina coladas, and late nights. the two areas do share the same airport, after all. i couldn't have been more wrong! centered around playa del carmen, the riviera maya is quiet and "beachy," if that is a word. playa del carmen has a bunch of small shops and restaurants, and many of the restaurants don't even have real doors.

we were taken on a visit to tulum, about an hour south of playa del carmen. i would have thought that tulum was just a bunch of tourist shops and vendors surrounding the gates of the mayan ruins at tulum. however, it  is more of a "yogi" destination--a no shoes allowed kind of place, with fresh fish, hippies, and small restaurants right on the sand. and as far as tourist spots go, it felt relatively untouched. i can't wait to go back!

i could eat breakfast here every day for sure.

downtown playa del carmen.

tulum-mayan ruins.

restaurant/hotel in tulum: http://www.zamas.com/

excusez moi, can you tell me how to get to the ice palace?

we stopped in for a visit to the brand new snow village during a short trip to montreal. the village includes a hotel, restaurant, bar, church, and conference space--all made out of snow. it is modeled after the icehotel in sweden. i've visited the icebar in stockholm before, but this place was on a different level! absolutely incredible.

kinda looks like you are walking on the moon!

http://www.snowvillagecanada.com/

a little inspiration on a monday morning...

life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. what seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such. -henry miller

jordan: the switzerland of the middle east

my term paper for my international marketing class this semester is a "nation branding audit" where we are asked to analyze a country's efforts to market itself to the rest of the world. as i am focusing my research on jordan, i spoke to a member of jordan's national tourism board today to get some thoughts on what jordan has done in the past to promote itself, and how the nation is tailoring its efforts amidst the arab spring, the perception that the middle east is violent, and the resulting decilne in visitors.

jordan has so much history, so many exciting things to see and to do, and so much culture to share. and the violence going on wall street today trumps any protesting going on in jordan. but once people get it in their heads that a place is unsafe, it's difficult for any marketing effort to change their perceptions. well, here are mine from my visit (the one where tim joined me!) in june 2010:

the souk in amman

amman skyline at dusk

the treasury at petra- so many versions of this picture, but still amazing.

snorkeling in the red sea, aqaba

sunset on the dead sea