Journey Juju

#best09 - Best Advertisement

In Paris in February, I saw a poster ad for Ray Ban. Of course there was a hottie in shades, with the slogan:

Never Hide.

I like that. It jives with my efforts to live an authentic life and to share it with others. But I have a confession to make.

I use my sunglasses to hide. Living in sunny Colorado, I've gotten used to wearing sunglasses all the time. But there are overcast days in Paris and Amsterdam and elsewhere where one doesn't need sunglasses.

And I still wear them.

So I thought this would be a good time to thank my shades. I've been through five pair in the last two years. Here they are, and no, none of them are Ray Bans.

Lisbon May 08 > Berlin June 08 > Panama December 08 > Hvar, Croatia September 09 > Vernazza, Italy October 09

Thank you, shades!

P.S. Which are your favorites?

Latest from the Magic Treetop Studio

A few weeks before Labor Day (US), I feel like summer is over. I’ve allowed myself a lot of free time while integrating back to life in the US and now I’m eager to move on to the more focused energy of fall. I’ve been home five months now and while it’s been a pleasant summer, it’s time to drag myself out of my magic treetop studio and into my office. I’ve been developing several new projects that I want to share with you.

Lisboa City Shrine

Lisbon was the first city I spent a few weeks in. I fell in love here, with the city and one of its fine men. It's not an easy city to fall in love with. Lisbon demands a closer look, a willingness to look beyond the derelict buildings and graffiti-covered walls. But it's worth the effort, for this city's charm is disarmingly compelling.

I found this cigarette case at the Feira da Ladra in Alfama one Tuesday morning. I scoured the market before I found this perfect shrine container. Painted tiles are a traditional Portuguese art. I collaged images from the Museu do Azulejos, and two tiles are part of the shrine: the square one with an image of houses and a scrap of tile I found on the street with a heart on it.

Without scissors, I got into folding and tearing scraps from my journey. The accordion theme began here with the fold-out I made with a postcard, a couple of journey blessings, metro and tram tickets. The metro cards are bright green and say ‘viva viagem’ Live the journey!

I made this shrine during my last May week in Lisbon. I was having a great time with my new paramour, João, and making the shrine helped me to stay calm and focused on my work - traveling as an artist. Love can waylay even the best-laid plans, so having a project was helpful to keep my focus on me.

Of course, the fairy tale romance that ensued was a bit distracting, but worth it all the same.

It’s so fun to make these shrines. The ritual of choosing images and items to represent my experience makes it more meaningful and creative for me. At home they live in Shrineland and remind me of my journey juju.

Find creative travel ideas like this in my e-book The Creative Travel Toolkit. It’s on sale with all my other e-books during the month of June, 2009.

Next City Shrine: Paris, my favorite!

The most amazing people sit next to you. This and other Journey Blessings on sale in June!

City Shrine series

 When I set out on my journey last year, I invoked a lot of juju to make sure that my travels would be smooth, safe, and tons of fun. I brought this juju upon myself with a project: make 100 travel shrines and sell them.

Remaining travel shrines. NFS

I made 100 travel shrines, sold about 80, financing my plane ticket with the sales. 20% of the proceeds were loaned to Dorothy Siaw, an entrepreneur I connected with through Kiva.org.

While traveling, I made City Shrines as a way to remember these cities as I and my Muse experienced them. These are portable talismans that represent the essence of a place as experienced on that trip. It's an artistic expression that makes travel more meaningful and fun. The first City Shrine was created in honor of Lisbon. After that came Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam and London.

I gathered ephemera from the each city – museum ticket stubs, postcards, receipts, cards, the detritus that one collects while traveling. I sought out the perfect containers for the shrine. They had to be from the city, lightweight and cheap.

I made several City Shrines leaving the city by train. The speed and rhythm of the train, my little tray table open and overflowing with supplies...such a beautiful way to honor a place.

It's more than just a fun way to gather the ephemera from a trip into a container. My City Shrines evoke memories of the people I met, the adventures I had, and the magic that made my journey truly one of great juju.

Shrines are just one of the creative travel tools I share in my e-book, The Creative Travel Toolkit. It's on sale with my other products for a creative life during the month of June 2009 to celebrate my ten-year anniversary of Original Impulse.

I’ll be sharing my City Shrines with you on Mondays as a weekly feature on the Journey Juju blogazine. I only have a handful so it will be a short series. Hopefully they will inspire you to make your own City Shrines. You don’t have to travel to do it. You could make a shrine for your own city.

Your journey is sacred. This and other Journey Blessings on sale in June!

Journey Juju Strikes Again

I knew I would have to replace my Swiss army knife at some point, but it wasn’t on my list of things to do. One day, walking through Rossio in Lisbon, I popped into a newspaper and magazine shop. They happened to have Swiss army knives in the glass counter display. I looked at a few and ended up buying the same one I had lost, embarrassingly named ‘The Tourist’. I sliced a shallow cut in my finger while closing it, so I knew it wanted to be with me.

Later that night, after dinner with João, he rustled in his bag and got out a wrapped package. A surprise gift! I love those. The label was from a fancy pen shop so I thought it was a pen.

But when I opened it, the box contained a Swiss army knife. The same as mine, but with the bonus of scissors. Scissors would make collaging much easier. And cutting those noxious labels out of my clothes.

I couldn’t believe we had both bought me a Swiss army knife on the same day. When I asked when he had bought it, we discovered that we’d bought them at the same time.

They say great minds think alike, and I know João and I are very similar, which may have been a bad thing for our relationship. Who knows.

It’s Journey Juju in action, life giving me a coincidence to make me smile and remember that all is well.

I love my new scissor-enabled knife. I put a cute pendant that I bought in Amsterdam on it. I wasn’t able to return the one I bought; they’re not so keen on returns in Portugal. I’ll continue the cycle and give it as a gift to someone.

Another fun bit of Journey Juju…on one of my last days in Libson I was walking home. I passed a tiny passage that leads to the stairs I walk down. I backtracked and headed down the passage, just because it’s charming, just because it was my last chance to do so.

At the mouth of the passage, I saw something on the ground. I picked it up. This is what it was:

A slide of a train. Total Journey Juju. I keep it on my desk to remind me of the mystery of the Journey, and to remember to follow my intuition down those little-used paths.

I Own This City

You don’t have to be a Mafioso to feel like you own a city. To own a city is to love a city, to feel its rhythm, to understand its nature, to have a sense of the endless discoveries that lie within its borders.

Cities I own:

Paris
New York
Denver
Lisboa
San Francisco
Boulder
Arles

How do you know if you ‘own’ a city? These are the criteria I use to claim a city for my own.

You know the neighborhoods. You may not know everything about every neighborhood, but you know the layout of the city. You can describe the flavor of each neighborhood.

You have favorites. Favorite bookstores, favorite restaurants, favorite bars and shops. You favor certain routes of the city, certain paths are special to you because you’ve walked them often or with special people. You can easily recommend what to do in this city if someone were to ask.

For me, this means I have a favorite:

• Vegetarian restaurant or other awesome restaurant
• Café to hang out and write and make art
• Cinema
• Park or gardens for respite from the concrete jungle
• Place to buy good bread
• Organic vegetable market
• Yoga studio(s)
• Used bookstore or English language bookstoreMuseum

You have a place to sleep. You know where to rest, whether it’s a favorite hotel or a friend’s pad.

You know how to navigate the city’s streets. You can easily get in and out – even if it’s difficult to do, you know the right combination of plane, train, airport shuttle or bus. You can manage the city’s transportation system and even know to buy the weekly pass for ease and economy.

When you arrive in the city, you feel an odd familiarity – you’ve probably been here many times, yet it’s still exciting and mysterious. There’s still an endless amount of things to discover and do, but you know the way.

In most cases, you would love the cities you own. I can see business travelers owning cities but not really deriving great pleasure from it. But if someone asked you to go to one of your cities, you’d jump at the chance.

There’s great pleasure in owning a city. It’s one of the benefits of traveling to the same place again and again. It’s comforting during those moments when you breach a new city, knowing that you have the ability to claim a city for your own if you want.

What cities do you own? What cities do you intend to own in your lifetime?

Next cities on my list to own:
London
Madrid
Carcassonne

Can you match the cities in the photos with the cities on my list of owned cities?

Thousands of Pastelerias

London has its pubs, Paris its cafés, and Lisbon its Pastelerias. These diner-type joints sprout one, two, three to a street. They remind me of classic American diners – sparse décor, formica or zinc countertops, simple setting, simple food.

They are everywhere in Lisbon and Portugal. There must be thousands in Lisbon alone. They’re not just for pastries, though you can get the usual suspects: pastel de nata, French pastries such as croissants and madeleines, as well as savory pastries like pastel de bacchalau (codfish fritter). You can also get basic sandwiches: cheese and ham on the great Portuguese bread, or a tosta: the Portuguese grilled cheese with or without ham.

It’s typical to see the specials of the day handwritten on the paper used to cover the tables. Portuguese fare: grilled fish, octopus rice, beef dishes.

A common formula for lunch: soup of the day, sandwich, juice. A lot of soup and fresh juices are served in pastelerias. Fresh juice (sumo) is drunk a lot here.

Drop in for a coffee, stand at the counter and enjoy one of Portugal’s greatest institutions. You'll have no problem finding one.

Random Notes about Life in Portugal

When I walk around Lisbon, I make little mental sticky notes: blog about that. Remember to write about that. It really helps to write these notes down in my Moleskine reporter's notebook. Then I bring them back to the computer in the hopes of compiling a decent blog post. Sometimes they're just bits of things, so here today you'll find a list of random things I think are interesting about Portugal. There's a lot more than this that I love about Portugal, but here's what I've got today.

1. You’ll often see people at cafes double fisting it. Not with two of the same drink, but with two of the greatest drinks that fuel people the world over: beer and coffee. Try this at home and you'll feel really Portuguese without having to go there. But you should go there because it's a wonderful place.

2. I LOVE the bread in Portugal. This was the biggest surprise, how great the bread is. Small buns of light bread with crispy outside and soft inside make the perfect salad sandwich. My absolute favorite is a small, chipmunk-shaped bread with raisins, cinnamon and walnuts. It’s slightly sweet and absolutely impeccable. This bread was the first thing I really fell in love with about Portugal. I also love these seeded buns.

3. I have decided that while during the day Lisbon is brilliant with sun and waving palm trees, she’s really a city to be experienced at night. I love the moody feel evoked by the breeze from the Tejo river under the night sky, and the way the imperfections of the dilapidated buildings are in shadow.  Best of all is the lighting of the city – street lamps hanging off buildings cast a haunting yellow light over the cobblestones that provoke a feeling of magic and mystery.

4. Portuguese men are not lecherous like you imagine they are in other Latin countries. Maybe it’s just that they’re not looking at me, but I never feel ogled in Portugal, which is nice.

5. Portuguese wine is really good. And cheap. Deep reds from Alentejo and fizzy vinho verde from the north of Portugal.

6. The dollar is inching its way back up. I use my debit card at ATMs to get cash, usually taking out 200 euros at a time, which since I’ve been here equaled $317 or so. Now it only costs me $294 to get 200 euros. Keep going, dollar! Every little bit helps. But I think it all equals out. I lived in Boulder, one of the most expensive places in the US to live. One night I went to get apples to make a pie. I buy organic food, which is expensive. I paid $12.00 for six pieces of fruit. The other day I bought a bunch of bananas, five peaches, six plums, eight apples and eight honey drop figs for under six euros, or around eight to nine bucks. So you see that while the dollar is weak, things are cheaper in Portugal.

7. Lisbon is a hip city and attracts a lot of tourists. I see tons of Euro-couples, young couples wandering the streets clutching maps and guidebooks. Italians, French, Dutch…not so many Americans. You also see a lot of Euro-hippies, wearing baggy clothes and selling handmade jewelry on the streets.

8. When you want to say something is intense or cool, you say “Brutal!”

What to Do in One Day in Lisbon

Visiting Lisbon? Here’s what I would do in one day in Lisbon, preferably a Saturday so I could go to the organic market. You'll get plenty of info from other guides on the tourist sites to see; these are the places that I will remember when I leave Lisbon.

Start the day in the center of the city at the Miradour San Pedro de Alcántara, one of the best in Lisbon. This giant viewpoint is an oasis of calm, with benches, trees and a view toward the castle. Step down to the terraced garden below and check out the fountain.

Walk up the street to Doce Real, where you can get what I consider the best pastel de nata in Lisbon. Forget trekking out to Belem for the mass-produced national pastry; get your goods here.

For more great bread, pop around the corner to O Moleiro, a great bakery and café where you can get little chipmunk-shaped buns with raisins. These are my favorite breads in Portugal, along with the seeded buns they sell here.

Wander across the street to the Principe Real garden, where you’ll see one of the most incredible trees ever. If it’s Saturday, stroll through the small organic market. Tons of greens, tomatoes, veggies and fruit are sold here. You can also buy jams, breads, grains, breads, olives, wine and other organic products. Get a jar of abóbora jam at the very last stall.

If it’s the last Saturday of the month, you’ll also find an arts and crafts fair here. Booths selling funky jewelry, felt art, clothes and prints are a great place to get inexpensive and handcrafted gifts. You’ll also find an antique fair, tables set up along the shady park path touting all that funky old stuff that reveals more about a place than just about anything. Peek into Portugal’s past this way.

If you need another break, get a drink at the outdoor café behind the market in the Principe Real garden.

Leave the garden and head toward Rua da Rosa, one of Lisbon’s best streets. One of Barrio Alto’s main arteries, this street boasts hips shops and restaurants. I love that there are two art supply stores. Check out 37, a shop that sells clothing and jewelry made by Portuguese artists.

Walk all the way down this street. At the end, look to the right and find the stationary shop selling Moleskine notebooks. The woman who works there is very friendly and you can get all your writing supplies here.

Life in Lisbon

My last few days in Lisbon are colored with melancholy, sadness and regret. Regret that I haven’t scoured every inch of the city. Regret that I am leaving such a beautiful city, one so easy and inexpensive to live in.

Leaving can be difficult, because we don’t know what’s coming next. When I am gripped by the fear of uncertainty, I swoop above the story of my life and remember all of the chapters I’ve already lived. Portugal was a wonderful chapter and many more are coming.

photo: the other night the full moon hovered in a shawl of cotton clouds. I've never seen a more amazing moonscape.

In an attempt to appreciate and absorb as much as I can, I’ve written about my neighborhood. I’ve spent a lot of time in my home working, and from here, this is what I’ve experienced.