Site feature: Trazzler.com

I stumbled upon Trazzler.com at the beginning of this month, and thought the site idea was really interesting. Yes, it's another in a slew of travel sites that have been popping up lately, but Trazzler is focused more on conveying the experience of a moment rather than guidebookish, statistic-filled writing. As the company writes on its About page, "Trazzler places you emotionally into specific moments and locales all over the planet and helps you explore the limitless travel opportunities our world has to offer."

So as part of the signup deal (which is free, by the way), it offers suggestions of activities nearby, phrased as actions and not as places. And travel is really about doing, not seeing, right?

I've signed up as a writer and written a couple of trips just to test the waters, drawing on some of my experiences while I was in Europe. It's made me take a whole new look at travel writing, so expect to see some more up as I find the time over the next few weeks.

Bigger perspectives

This afternoon, I went for a run downtown to wind down and took a detour through my grandparents' old neighborhood. I passed the house where they lived for much of my childhood, before they moved down south when I was around 10. I don't pass through that neighborhood often, so it always startles me when I find the house looking about half the size it does in my mind. Some of the changes can be attributed to lack of upkeep on the part of the new owners--the untrimmed bushes that block the windows, the overgrown garden, the paint that peels in some spots--but I know the expansive porch where I see my grandfather smoking his pipe in my mind's eye is still the same one that is tucked away in a corner now, and that the looming staircase hasn't shortened into the one there today that I could take in a few leaps. I grew up in that house, and yet it looks almost like something I saw in a dream once. I imagine it's a similar feeling to when you meet someone at a high school reunion years after graduation and find it hard to place the image of the dreamy football star you remember from high school in the bald, paunchy, dilapidated person you see before you.

It's almost the exact opposite situation when I visit Washington, D.C. Before I visited on a business trip last June, I had only been there once, on an eighth grade school field trip. I vaguely remember being near the Lincoln Memorial walking along the National Mall at dusk, and walking by a big white building in the pouring rain, that I honestly can't place. I remember clearly who I roomed with in the hotel we occupied, the scandal that ensued after two classmates of opposite sexes were rumored to have sneaked a rendezvous in the boy's room after bedtime, and being shocked when a stranger sat down at a table my friends and I were occupying in a crowded cafeteria while we ate lunch somewhere. I don't even have pictures to refresh my memory: this was all before the days of digital cameras, and a friend offering to help me load my film into my camera did it incorrectly.

So when I visit now, I find it hard to associate what has quickly become one of my favorite cities with the dreary D.C. that barely made an impression on me beyond the chance to stay in a hotel with my friends. On that same business trip last June, I wandered around the National Mall for a few hours one warm afternoon, then sat by the Washington Monument and called my best friend to tell her I was moving there someday. I get a similar feeling there as I do in Boston--it has an honest, lovable feel about it that just makes me feel at home right away. I actually forget that I was even there as a 13 year old, because it seems like that place I visited way back then was in a completely different universe than the city I see now. I guess it's all about your perspective.

Photo courtesy NCinDC via the Flickr Creative Commons

Home, wherever that may be

For the past 11 years, my family has headed coastal North Carolina for a two-week vacation smack dab in the middle of July. To be specific, our destination of choice is Topsail Island (pronounced Top-suhl, not Top-sail), located just south of the outer banks. The island is exquisite: 18 miles of gorgeous sand, waving grass on the dunes, and enormous, dark blue waves, all visited occasionally by packs of dolphins who are adept surfers, to the delight of beachgoers. If you drive all the way south, then park and walk about a quarter mile out to the tip of the island, you'll think you just walked into heaven: the ocean and the clear blue waters of the Intracoastal Waterway merge together just beyond untouched white sand, forming ever-changing tidepools and currents to play in. If you stay out there long enough, you can sit on a totally empty beach and watch one of only a handful of water sunsets on the East Coast as the sun sinks below the mainland on the other side of the Intracoastal Waterway.

Sounds like a relaxing vacation, right? Now factor in the following: my immediate family of six drives--yes, drives--from our home in Massachusetts to get there, leaving on Friday evening and taking turns at the wheel overnight to arrive by breakfasttime. That includes my third-grade brother, who, God bless him, sleeps most of the night and wakes up claiming to have stayed up for the whole drive, plus four other full-grown adults. When we get there, we meet up with my father's five siblings and their families, including nine cousins and their spouses and kids, plus my grandparents. Every year, the gang seems to grow--long-lost second and third cousins, inlaws from other sides of the family, and new babies and significant others pop up all the time to join in the fun. At times, we number close to 50, although nobody will hold still long enough to get a good count. We rent houses in the same area and hit the beach by day, then share blenders full of margaritas and guitar duets on the deck by night.

Not to mention the character of the island. Even though we only spend two weeks there a year, the guy who owns the local fish shop remembers us every single year when we return. So does the owner of the putt-putt golf course, where we frequently stop for ice cream. The rickety old pier plays host to a whole cast of characters if you walk out far enough, and they'll all be happy to become your new best friend if you give them the time. We always make sure to spend a night at the Crab Pot, a sweaty seafood joint downtown featuring kareoke nights that my family invariably takes over with our enormous numbers. By the end of the night, we've extended our circle of friends by at least the 25 other people in the bar.

As we drive over that short bridge, we all feel like we're coming home.

This island is so much a part of my life that sometimes I literally ache for it. My Boston accent and prolific use of "wicked" as an adverb give away my out-of-towner status, but this one of the few places besides my real hometown where I'm truly not a tourist, even if I am even there for only two weeks of the year. It's a place where I've grown up and gained so much of who I am today that it couldn't ever be anything but home.

Place of the week: Newseum

Photo: Courtesy NC in DC via the Flickr Creative Commons

You don't have to be a news junkie to appreciate the Newseum, D.C.'s museum dedicated to--you guessed it--all things news. Start in the basement to see the largest display of chunks of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany, then take the glass elevator all the way to the top and work your way down. Take your time on the information-heavy top floor: the best place to start is the Today's Front Pages gallery, where you can see printouts of what people all over the world read on their front pages that very day. The outside terrace offers a great photo op with the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, weather permitting. The News Corp. News History Gallery features slide-out displays of historical headlines from the earliest days of the press up through recent years, outlining piviotal moments from the Salem Witch Trials to World War I. The 9/11 Gallery provides a haunting reminder of that day, with a wall of front pages announcing the news and a video showing the thoughts of journalists who covered the event. Downstairs, you can watch a live broadcast on NPR, try your hand at reporting in the NBC News Interactive Newsroom, or pay homage to journalists who died on the job.

Newseum
555 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 888 639 7386
Web: www.newseum.org

Place of the week: Holocaust Memorial

Photo: Courtesy ewen and donabel on the Flickr Creative Commons

Winter evenings are an especially haunting time to visit the Holocaust Memorial in Boston. Right in the middle of the action by Faneuil Hall, you'll find the six towers representing the six main Nazi concentration camps, eerily reminiscent of smokestacks. The glass surfaces of the 54-foot structures are etched with a total of six million numbers, like icy versions of the tattoos given to prisoners during the Holocaust. Take the time to fully absorb the magnitude of the Holocaust and notice all the little details, like the way the smouldering flames at the bottom of each tower light up an inscription of the name of a concentration camp.

The Holocaust Memorial
Located on Congress Street, along the Freedom Trail. To get there by T, head to the Haymarket, State Street, or Government Center stops--all are within walking distance of the site.
Phone: 617 457 8755
Web: www.nehm.org