This seemed apropos for #TravelTuesday. Read the full blog post over at Todd’s Wanderings.

Admittedly, it’s a hard sell for those of us who don’t have a year to spend traveling around the world. A friend I talked to today had an itinerary that involved one day in Paris, two days in London, and two days in Scotland. There’s not a lot of breathing room in that plan for an afternoon spent in a swimsuit.

But here’s why it’s a good idea, and not just if you’re the kind of person who enjoys Hawaii. A trip to the beach in Europe is just as valid a sightseeing day as one spent at a museum. And if you need more rationale, here are five solid reasons:

1. Because if you ever went to the beach as a kid, this beach trip will be nothing like that.

Whenever I’ve visited a European beach, my novelty-meter is completely full by the time I leave. As a kid, I spent time in Ocean City, New Jersey, where boardwalks and hoagies were the big deal of the day.

It’s a little different to spend time on La Grand Plage of Biarritz, France, where elegant striped cabanas line the sidewalk:  

When I first saw them, I thought: These people know how to live. It just seemed so…James Bond-y, circa 1966.

2. Because every vacation needs a break in the action.

Personally, I don’t have any interest in taking a cruise. I’m snobby about all-inclusive vacations. I like to strike out on my own, figuring out bus and train schedules, and booking my own hotels.

But let’s be honest: That’s a lot of variables, and a lot of work. Experienced travelers enjoy building in some slack into their itineraries, and I agree with them. Even if it’s an overcast day at the beach, there’s still something interesting to see.

In a few short days, I’ll be on the beachy island of Texel (pronounced “tessel”), part of the same trip that includes a week-long Dutch language immersion at Dutch Princess School. A juxtaposition of intense cultural experience and laid-back beachtime seems like a nice balance. Plus, the cultural exchange doesn’t stop just because it’s a beach town: The hotel website offered to reserve bikes for me during my stay. How very, very Dutch.

3. Because the natural world is worth the time as much as the human-made world.

Appreciating natural beauty doesn’t come easy to me. I’m a city girl. But a windswept coastline with a rickety bridge is a charming, memorable site. I didn’t need the explanation to enjoy it, or to know the connection to the Eiffel Tower.

Living in the Pacific Northwest, I’ve had to adjust my idea of what a beach day is. Oftentimes, it doesn’t involve baking in the sun, but appreciating grey skies like the kind you see above, or in this photo I took in Mull, Scotland, as incredible to me as any cathedral or medieval castle I’ve ever been to.

4. Because you might be there for Bastille Day or another happenstance celebration–the kind where everyone else is on vacation, too.

I love museums, and have done the art slog, trying to scrape 10 hours out of quality art absorption out of a timed all-day pass. On my last visit to Versailles–number three, mind you, which might have taught me a lesson about the sheer size of the estate–a sightseeing stroll turned into a full-on death march in 90 degree heat.

In Biarritz, I was lucky enough to be there for Bastille Day. Everyone around me was enjoying the fireworks and the time off work. It was cheerful in the way that national holidays, summer festivals, and other relaxed, warm-weather nights can be. No one was carrying a map, a guidebook, or an agenda. Instead, an entire town of people settled in to watch the fireworks:

That travel memory means more to me than rooms full of Dutch Masters I saw at the Louvre.

5. Because wherever they are in the world, beaches are some of the most beautiful, fun places on earth.

The hotel might smell of smoke or be too loud for your liking. The lines at the museum might keep you standing in the hot sun for an hour longer than you liked. The other museum you meant to see might be on the far side of town, and closed on Tuesdays. The restaurant might put too much salt on your food, overcharge you, or never bring you that drink you ordered.

But it’s hard to imagine a day like this one (on the Côte des Basques in Biarritz) disappointing anyone.

We were chatting during our trip, and I asked her, “Is there any place on the planet you don’t want to visit?”

She said, “Antarctica.”

I was surprised. Now, I know that kind of adventure might not be for everyone, but she’s very outdoorsy and likes to push herself physically. But when it came to the South Pole, she told me that it just didn’t interest her.

I’m dying to go, as I’ve heard the wildlife is unprecedented and the landscape is completely pristine. Mountains are impossible to fathom due to their massive scale. In my desire for full disclosure, my significant other has been there (hence these amazing photos). He said it was unlike anywhere he’s ever been.

Sign me up.

Maybe I’m not game for exploring everywhere. There are obvious no-no’s: Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan. And maybe not Saudi Arabia since a friend once told me that Riyadh is quite possibly the sketchiest place he’s ever been.

But besides war torn areas, I can’t really think of any place I don’t want to go.

I love going somewhere new, and the more off the beaten track the better. I remember once landing in Odessa, Ukraine in December. It was snowing, and the Cyrillic alphabet covered the airport, making it impossible to form language assumptions. My tax driver wore a fur hat and coat and we negotiated the fare and my destination with a calculator and hand signals.

My desire to go anywhere probably stems from my childhood dream of being a foreign correspondent, and my obsession with interesting over happy.

Is it reckless and absurd to say I’d go to North Korea? Perhaps. I don’t really care. It’s new. It’s totally foreign. And it challenges me.

Yesterday was truly the first beautiful day of spring in Seattle. I dusted off my Dutch bike to ride into work, and loved how this dark purple tulip looked next to its Dutchie kin.

Readers of this blog know that I’m obsessed with the Dutch, and with Dutch biking in particular as the ultimate, elegant solution for transportation bliss. I bought mine from David, owner of the Dutch Bike Co. here in Seattle, who also thinks that a little touch of Holland is the solution to life’s troubles.

I can never travel as much as I want to, but I can try to incorporate the things that I adore about other places in my life back home. For me, it means biking to work in heels for the first time–which, oddly, seemed to work out better than flats!

I’m inspired, in particular, by Copenhagen Cycle Chic, and photos like this one:

As well as perennial favorite, Amsterdamize:

I have such fondness for other Americans who share the same ideal, like the lovely lasses over at Let’s Go Ride a Bike. This pic of their friend Trisha in a birthday party dress is so charming, no?

 And if I’m not mistaken, that fab dress she has on is from the Zac Posen collection for Target. Total bicycling cuteness.

A few years ago, I was on Lake Atitlan in Guatemala in a kayak with a friend. Surrounded by Mayan villages, the lake is one of the deepest in Central America and thought to have mystical properties. Lush, green hillsides consisting of coffee plantations surround its clear waters.

I let the boat glide for a moment, and rested my paddle on my thighs. I felt extremely at peace.

My traveling companion remarked, “This is a trip of a lifetime.”

I grew uncomfortable immediately. My one-with-the-earth-moment vanished.

I absolutely hate that phrase: a trip of a lifetime. I deplore this mentality that we have only one chance to experience life, and that we have one trip in our lives to explore our dreams. This mentality feels very American: the whole “I only have two weeks of vacation a year” crap.

Going one step further, it reminds me of those workplace martyrs who get some bizarre satisfaction about not taking their vacation time. Instead, they accrue it year after year, thereby forcing their employers to pay them out eventually. Studies show that people who take their vacation are more productive workers, and live healthier lives in general. I suppose when they do eventually take their vacation, it will be a once in a lifetime trip.

There may be some trips that are once in a lifetime. Like going to Antarctica. Maybe.

But please don’t say that to me. It’s the ultimate downer. I’m living the most when I’m traveling, and because of this it is an integral part of my system of priorities. I truly believe that if travel is important to you, you’ll figure out a way to make it happen often.

When I travel, every trip has its own magical idenity, not singled out as once in a lifetime…to never have again.

nothing life-changing ever came about because a meeting in a room like this

Earlier this month, another travel conference happened. An “eCommerce conference designed by the travel industry for the travel industry.” With a keynote by a Bearded Boomer Dude.

Troy Thompson reviews it–via Tweets about the conference–over on Travel 2.0.

Here’s one choice tweet that pretty much sums it up:

Thank you @jeffhayzlett for reminding everyone at #travelcom that we don’t sell travel, we sell memories & experiences.

Ignoring the Hallmarkish tone, this sentiment is everything that’s wrong with the travel industry, and making it more and more irrelevant.

The idea of selling memories–happiness, really–as a commodity is repulsive.

We travelers want to be part of an authentic community, not a prepackaged one. We want to visit and explore what we care about, not what you recommend. We’re not looking to you for recommendations.

Welcome to the new era, travel professionals. You’re not the visionary hand steering a grand plan for the lives of generations of travelers.

You’re a mechanic. Get us in and out, and we’ll decide where we want to go–and what we want our memories to be.

What’s the opposite of schadenfreude? If it exists as a German word, it’s what a lot of people–writers in particular, and travel writers in particular particular–seem to have about the Julia-Roberts-starring film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love.

The preview dropped today. What’s your take: Pro? Con? Couldn’t care less?

I’m sympathetic to this idea because my own my mom tried something similar when I was fourteen. She created an itinerary for a visit to Britain that included a significant appreciation for Jane Austen and Beatrix Potter and other literary foremothers.

Meanwhile, I wanted to see the club where the Beatles played, and tour anything and everything to do with John Lennon.

It’s pretty obvious, when traveling in the U.K., that the only lady-sculptures you’re likely are of a chubby Queen Victoria, Boudica (yes, mom took me to see her, too) or some skinny lady like this one, in Inverness, Scotland:

Flora MacDonald, famous for helping some dude

Viv recommends walking in Dorothy Parker’s steps in New York and tracking down Gertrude and Alice’s apartment in Paris, which, weirdly, I’ve done. Maybe mom’s tour had more of an effect than I thought. So take heart, Viv.

On an only-marginally related note, John’s hometown is finally catching a break, and for the first time in decades, Liverpool is receiving more positive news coverage than negative.

But based on today’s review of Nowhere, the qualifications seem to be:

• An Andy-Spade-like preoccupation with pencil-scribbled notebooks
• Courier font
• An aversion to using paragraph breaks, or in other ways admitting you’re publishing on the web
• A feeling in every piece that, yes, the writer truly thinks he (or she) is Ernest Hemingway reincarnated

Don’t get me wrong. I love a blog with a point of view, particularly one that’s grumpy. But their mission statement is all kinds of annoying, and should have been left to bake in the oven before being trumpeted by the Times:

You can still get lost on this planet, but it’s getting harder. Travel has been confused with tourism. Travel writing with brochure copy. Adventure with novelty. Tour buses clog the road, guides lurk in the most remote backwaters and Ten Awesome Things To Do articles have been written by people like me about every destination within a day’s drive of an airport. But you can still disappear, if only in your mind.

There’s no reason for this journal. No hidden agenda here. Nowhere is a place between places, an imagined depot for stories from the road. We collect found experiences through writing, art, video and sound then illustrate them with objects brought back from the field.

Novelty is a bad thing. Okay–we’ll have to just disagree on that point.

Travel is for the truly pure at heart, unlike the–sniff!–tourists. Sure. Maybe you’re a local. We’ll just disagree about that, too.

But here’s a hint: If you want to sound like you’re not a tourist, it’s probably not smart to refer to the places you’re visiting–the places people live–as “the field.”

And by the way, they’d like you to support their art through this PayPal link. It’s the topper on the fail cake. “There’s no reason for this journal…” except we’d like to ask you to pay us for it. With PayPal, the online-payment tool favored by eBayers with ceramic-kitten collections to sell.

I don’t blame them, though. I blame the New York Times for elevating them. Times editors, isn’t there anything halfway between puff pieces about cruise ships and rambling, pretentious travel writing? If so, could you please point us towards it?

Also, you just know these Nowhere fellows are totally Neo Lumberjacks, right?

“All those statistical tide pools, filled with contradictions and disconnected observations, do add up to one incontrovertible conclusion: that enriching the lives of pedestrians doesn’t mean punishing drivers… Times Square works, not because it’s totally free of cars but because it isn’t. A pristine pedestrian mall would snarl traffic all around and feel like an artificial preserve. But Seventh Avenue and the east-west streets still dice the plaza, so pedestrians need to wait for lights and stay alert. This may be an oasis, but it’s still New York.”

A central plaza is one of my favorite things about some of my favorite cities in the world. (It’s worth mentioning that in general, I’m a Jane Jacobsite.)

Why can’t we have more of these in the States?

In Seattle, a sign has been hanging on a downtown building for months, advertising a woonerf–a Dutch invention that slows down cars to make neighborhoods more reasonable for bikes and pedestrians. A 2006 Seattle Metropolitan article describes the woonerf concept in detail, but if it’s been developed in the years since then, I haven’t seen it. It was probably a dream of the housing bubble era.

I love travel, and one of the things that’s most important to me is bringing good ideas back home, like a local version of Siena’s magnificent Piazza del Campo, pictured below. I’m sure it’s not simple–that developers, city planners, and zoning laws can stand in the way of a conversion similar to the one Times Square experienced.

But, still, New York demonstrates that a retrofit is possible. So–more,  please. More American cities following NYC’s lead, and celebrating the need for the bella piazza.

You want the campo? You can't HANDLE the campo.