If I Could Get Away, I’d Go to . . .

By
/ 2 July 2009

Photo: Spencer Weiner / Los Angeles Times

PM is on a break, so I might as well come off mine.

I’ve been traveling about for some time now, collecting pictures and anecdotes, which I’ll post as time permits. But while I was sifting through the shots and sorting out my thoughts, I came across this piece in the Los Angeles Times.

It was listed under their “Most emailed Stories” sidebar, but that is actually a misnomer, since it is mainly a collection of photos with a bit of text clinging precariously — apologetically (one might even say) — to the outer edge.

Proving (what we already know): that pictures often speak more authoritatively than words.

Anyway, clicking through the photos, the following thoughts came to mind (not necessarily in this order):

  • While the title of the piece was: “Bizarre and unusual destinations around the world”, there were very few places that would induce you to think: “right, I’m circling this on my map to be sure to travel to.” I mean: bedding down on a converted plane at an airport? Taking dinner in a treehouse? Attending a rodeo at a prison? The scenes depicted here were more like things that you do if, by some off-chance, you happen to be in the neighborhood.

  • As glorious as the shots may have been, this was more a case of how to lie with pictures. I mean: the lighting was good, the conditions were right, the camera was at the ready and so: voila! a delectable piece of eye candy. But a destination . . . ? Hell, I have a great shot of a bird sitting alone in a rice field when my train stopped on the tracks just outside of Narita station. It’s an amazingly good shot, it was a unique photo op, but I’m not sure that a destination it does make.

  • With 5 of the first 10, and 7 of the 20 photos in the Times piece hailing from the U.S., you wonder who was putting this compilation together. I mean, are these really the 20 most bizarre and unusual destinations in the world? Why not just call it something closer to what it was: “B & U Destinations in the States”?

  • Still, the restaurant under the aquarium was pretty cool. And, admittedly, there is no getting around how gorgeous the caverns and natural stone structures of the US southwest are.

  • But is it just me being negative?: does anyone else think it’s strange that a person would travel to that coastal resort in Chile and then take a swim in that long hotel pool, when such an astonishing, gorgeous ocean sits beckoning no more than 62 paces away?

  • Definitely, if I ever screw on the courage to take up scuba diving, then that so-called “Great Blue Hole”, in Belize, is definitely where I would go explore . . . I mean, assuming I had the $10,000 to get out there and hang out for a few days — not to mention splurge for a boat rental and some deep-water gear.

Photo: USGS

Which got me to thinking . . . And, soon enough, without forewarning and little ability to repress it, I became conscious of a voice snaked through my cranium, wondering: “If you had the money, if you could get away, where would you go?

Which then that got me to thinking again . . . this time, about you, fair reader (since I always, under all circumstances, and at every turn, think about you . . . unless, of course, my thoughts of you were simply an artifact of the fact that the voice that had just slithered through my brain had been in the second-person and, thus, I mistook that as being thoughts of you . . . when it was really all about meeeeeeeeeee!).

Well, whatever the case, since the subject has surfaced, let me ask: “If you could get away, if you could go anywhere, where would you go?”

If you have the time, and a notion; if you care to weigh in, then think about it like this:

  • If you had to pick a place from the Times list to get away, where would you go?

  • And then if you could go anywhere for a getaway — list be damned — where would it be?

Oh, and a “because” or two. Since no one launches ships without reason.

And after you’ve made your contribution, after we’ve had a right proper send-off, we can say with satisfaction that this entry is ready to sail off into the sunset.

Ready to make its own PP getaway.