How much do you know about the alpacas, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, live Christmas trees and other fab finds in North Carolina? We're talking here about hundreds of farms, wineries, agricultural festivals and bed and breakfasts you can visit in your travels.
Well, if you need to find out more, you should get a copy of Farm Fresh North Carolina, a statewide guide to all the farms and other cool agriculture-related places you'll ever want to visit in the Tar Heel State.
Even a "chocolate lounge!" (The cacao's not local, but the fruits, berries, honey, eggs and milk they use for their truffles come from nearby. And this guide is all about North Carolina agricultural products and buying local.)
It's written by my friend and fellow travel writer Diane Daniel. The food editor of The Washington Post, writes: "Her exhaustively researched guidebook will make you want to jump in the car and plan an entire getaway celebrating the family farm."
I'd heard about paradores, but had never been clear how they'd fit into the solo traveler's world. So after hearing from Holly Maguire of escapio, I offer the following Q & A.
Traditionally, a parador would be a place to stop off for the night on major traveling routes. The Spanish Paradores
concept had rescued historic buildings from deterioration by selecting
monasteries, palaces and churches across Spain and giving them a modern
makeover.
This makes
for unique historic hotels, with all the modern comforts and
usually with excellent views of a city or a beautiful landscape.
Why should a solo traveler choose a parador over some other type of lodging?
Solo travelers
would get much closer to true Spanish hospitality and history by
selecting a parador over a beach resort or classic city hotel.
Anyone
looking to discover typical regional cuisine will also be delighted, as
there are tasting classes and cooking courses at many of the paradores. These are a great way to spend an evening getting to know fellow travelers.
If you're an antiques freak, I highly recommend a trip to New Oxford, Pennsylvania, to get your fill of Victorian, Civil-War era and other antique furnishings, toys and kitchenware.
I don't see it as an ideal place to travel solo if you don't love antiques because it's not exactly a hoppin' town, but for a couple of days it would be absolutely fine as a place to relax too.
New Oxford is a one-horse town in rural Pennsylvania that, as I said, doesn't have the bustle of an urban center. However, considering you could spend HOURS perusing goods from hundreds of dealers you would be quite the busy shopper/browser.
I went with a friend because I'm writing a story for The Washington Post on learning to like, or at least understand, antiques. So I took along a friend who has furnished her house in solid-wood oak pieces, green Depression glass and Watt pottery. (If you don't know what these are you're in the same boat that I started out in. I, at least, have begun to learn how to paddle.)
I want to do this! Though it will have to wait until next year at least.
I first heard about hut-to-hut hiking and skiing in Norway, where they have a good system of backwoods huts. I didn't know they also have them in Maine.
It seems to me like a really cool thing to do, hiking or skiing to a destination, rather than just taking a random hike or skiing for an hour then returning home. I like the idea of pushing toward a goal. It's why I also like week-long bike trips.
The huts I saw in Norway were quite spare. Diane says the hut they stayed at in Maine was more like a lodge, (although the photos on the site don't convey that.) Diane does say the bedrooms are quite spare. All the more reason not to hang out in them but to join others in the common room.
A couple of weeks ago, The Washington Post explored the offerings of booking an Airbnb, that is, a cheap bed in a home in one of thousands of properties around the world. Now, this is where it pays to arrive alone. In many cases, you'll be sharing with the owners or renters of the places, so one extra person might be cozy while two might be a crowd.
And it ain't no Ritz. The concept seems similar to couchsurfing, as I wrote about here. Only you pay. Hm. What makes this a good deal? Maybe there are more properties?
Anyway, yours to take a look at. The name, by the way, comes from the fact that the guys who started it bought a bunch of blow up beds in order to host guests. Air B and B, get it?
"US Now," a soon-to-be-released documentary film out of the United Kingdom, is all about the new ways people are working together and sharing their lives through the Internet.
I was surprised and intrigued to see an extensive section about an American who tries couchsurfing. We follow our solo traveler as he finds his way to a London flat and knocks on the door. The host welcomes him inside. A scene shows them eating dinner together and talking.
It was useful to me for showing the reality of couchsurfing. I have to admit, I felt uncomfortable watching the two guys meet and get to know each other that first night. I was feeling awkward and I wasn't even there.
Couchsurfing is not like hosteling or staying at a bed and breakfast. You are there by the good graces of your hosts and you may or may not have alone time while you are at their houses. You need to be ready to interact with and share your hosts' lives.
And if it's truly a couch you're staying on, as opposed to a spare room, you may have no door to shut to be alone. Which is the point of couchsurfing. It's about "making connections between travelers and the local communities they visit," according to the web site. It's about your host being your conduit to that community.
If you want anonymity and freedom to roam as you please at any hour, or you're on a tight schedule, it might not be for you. That's the sensation I got from this one little episode. Of course, it's not a statistically significant sample...
On the upside, the American did seem to become an insider in London. In one scene, he's drinking with three other guys at an outdoor table. Yes, some of it could have been contrived because of the filming.
Still, it felt like a good view into the possibilities and realities of a couchsurfing experience.
One New Year's long ago, I was at a bed and breakfast in Edinburgh, Scotland. The snow prevented a boyfriend and me from heading up to Aberdeen by train. All the restaurants were closed, except the Chinese ones. So that's where we ate dinner.
It wasn't easy understanding the dialect of the folks in town. When our host told us it was snooie oot, we looked at each other. Then back at her. And just nodded. I don't remember how long it took me to figure out she'd said, "it's snowy out."
That was a year of firsts. A junior year abroad. A new culture. Trips to the Easternmost, Southernmost and Westernmost points in the United Kingdom. And loads of stays in hostels and bed and breakfasts.
That night in Edinburgh was my first New Year's in Scotland, obviously. I intended to celebrate Hogmanay at midnight and American New Year's at 5 am. Good in theory. Tedious and tiring in practice. Didn't happen.
Where's the "solo" part in this? Just that I would recommend a bed and breakfast for the warmth and comfort of a "family" away from home. Even if it's just a warm body talking to you when breakfast is served.
But our host in Edinburgh did more than that. That evening, she brought out Scotch in a decanter on a tray with a doily. And offered us home baked cookies and other snacks at midnight. I seem to recall a crackling fire in the sitting room.
Not a bad place to be, even if I had been alone. And perhaps she and I would have chatted more than we did that night.
To all my readers, Feliz Año Nuevo. Bonne Année. (Add your language here)
And happy, happy New Year. And for those of you in winter climes, enjoy the snoo oot there.
Suppose you really, really wanted to travel to do something. Say, go to the Superbowl. Or the inauguration of the first black U.S. president. Or to the Olympics. Would you stay home because you had no one to go with?
Yes, many people would. And do. But not a 76-year-old woman named Marlene who I had breakfast with the other week at a Washington DC, bed and breakfast (and blogged about here.) She has traveled to DC from Atlanta eight times, to treat herself to one of her favorite things: the opera.
And she went to Europe on her own last year. It's not that she's opposed to having a travel companion. But a good one's not that easy to find. "It's fine if you're compatible with your likes and dislikes but where I'm from, 'opera' is a foreign word."
Marlene likes staying at the Embassy Circle Guest House now that she's found it. "I like the personal relationships you build sitting around the breakfast table together." She usually stays pretty quiet though, listening to others, as she did mostly when I was at the table. Until we all turned to her and asked her about her travels.
Turns out her husband died in 2000. They had raised two children together and couldn't always afford to travel. When her life radically changed eight years ago, and she was left on her own, she started traveling immediately. Solo.
And get this. She has a terrible sense of direction, and yet she's out and about without hesitation. And gets lost all the time. She relies on people to get her turned in the right direction. "I'm not embarrassed to ask questions any more."
A lot of people she runs into can't believe she travels on her own. They ask her if she's afraid. "What's there to be afraid of," she says matter-of-factly. Excellent question, Marlene. What exactly is there to be afraid of?
I had breakfast the other day with people from Lebanon, Israel, Belgium, Georgia (the American one, not the former Soviet state) and California. These guests at the Embassy Circle Guest House, a bed and breakfast on R Street, NW, in Washington, D.C., were engaged in a lively discussion about public education when I showed up.
The owners, Raymond and Laura Saba, were nice enough to welcome me to breakfast after I explained over the phone a week earlier that I write a solo travel blog. (Even though I wouldn't be paying to stay the night.)
So I rolled out of my own bed and showed up to join their paying clientele.
Even had a flaky croissant from an organic market. And some fruit salad that included raspberries and pomegranate seeds, along with melon, bananas, pineapple and other fresh fruits. Because I was busy "working," I didn't have time to really scout the food selection. So I missed the smoked salmon, the cheese, the hard-boiled eggs, the cereal, the scones and the other goodies in the continental breakfast.
But I was bowled over (no cereal pun intended) by the intellectual discussion. What do you expect when you show up at a dining room table in an international city? Where guests show up for things like neuroscience conferences, law enforcement conferences and the Washington Opera.
The conversation went from the quality of education in various countries, to one guest's admission that she'd like to start her own bakery business, to growing up in an orphanage and being schooled by French priests to someone's passion for photographing old U.S. theaters with Middle Eastern motifs.
In the short video that follows, the people around the table introduce themselves. Just trying to give you a sense of what I experienced. Keep reading after the video:
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