Category: Travails of a Guidebook Author

Air Chance

Peter and I are in Greece. Finally. When I booked our tix on Air France, I blithely made the “Air Chance” joke, completely forgetting that I had gotten screwed by them before. Instead, all I remembered was really good coffee, wine and buttery biscuits.

But then I had plenty of time to recall my previous mishap, after a couple of hours into our “flight.” I use the quotes because in fact, around 9:30pm, we had not gone anywhere, not even pulled away from the gate at JFK. Due to alleged “congestion” and then a thunderstorm, we didn’t leave for another four hours, which more than doubled our time in our plane seat. Luckily, we had been given earplugs and eye shades (I carry them anyway, but it was a nice gesture), and we had back-of-seat movies. And there was none of that tedious turbulence one gets when one actually travels through the air. And the wine was OK. Also, the captain was almost comically dismayed every time he came on the PA, and would always heave a huge sigh after saying, “Je suis tres desole, mais….”

So we got to Paris, eventually, and AF had the decency to put us up in a hotel and give us meal vouchers. And being stuck in Paris is not the worst thing that could happen. Peter and I had great ambitions about zipping into the city for dinner, and sent a text message to Tamara asking for advice, but when she hadn’t replied, it was about time for the free hotel dinner, so we thought we’d at least check it out.

Three plates of terrine, camembert, shrimp, sea snails, white anchovies, curried pickled veggies, rare slabs of beef and artichoke hearts later, we guessed we weren’t really up to another dinner. As Peter said, “If we were in the States, our room would be bigger and our dinner would be a hell of a lot crappier.” He also said he’d be perfectly happy to eat cheese, surrender and act like a monkey, or something along those lines.

After accidentally gorging ourselves, Peter and I zipped into the city and had a few drinks at a bar recommended by our friend Rod, via text message from Amsterdam. Savvy. Peter and I sat in the grotto-y basement of Chez Georges marveling at how people (just pairs of people, in fact) were ordering whole bottles of wine in a bar. I didn’t realize until I saw it that nobody does this in the US. Is there some law against it?

And then the next day, Air France once again managed to brainwash me, just by feeding me well. As I ate my cold roast beef, vinegar-y lentils, and ratatouille, and swabbed fluffy white cheese on my bread, all my rage over the previous day’s flight just evaporated. And I wasn’t even drinking wine this time.

Everyone who cares about food seems to have had a revelatory experience in France, but it’s usually out in the countryside, at the market, or along the coast fishing oysters out of the water or some bucolic crap like that. I’m here to tell you that French food is remarkable even at the level of cheap-hotel-by-the-airport-buffet. I mean, I could easily come back and plan a Sunday night dinner inspired by what I ate at the Hotel Campanile in Roissy–which sounds glamorous but isn’t at all. Comparing it to the States, it really makes me want to cry. How have we set the bar for food so damn low?

The world feels my pain

Finally, through that esteemed mouthpiece that is The New York Times, the world knows that it does often suck to be a guidebook author:

While the phrase “travel writing” may invoke thoughts of steamer trunks, trains, Isak Dinesen and Graham Greene, or at the very least, well-financed junkets to spas in Rangoon for some glossy magazine or other, writing budget travel guides is most decidedly yeoman’s work. Most who do it quickly learn the one hard and fast rule of the trade: travel-guide writing is no vacation.

So goes “A Job with Travel but No Vacation,” in this Sunday’s Style section. I am absolutely overjoyed, because I believe this is the very first time some aspect of my life has been featured in the Styles section. (Oh, except for Joel and Deb’s wedding last year.)

They didn’t quote me, but then I didn’t get jumped in Caracas while in service to Lonely Planet, which is the anecdote that leads the story. Though I do happen to know this guy, and he is truly living the life 24/7. I, on the other hand, only occasionally rally myself from the sofa to go somewhere relatively crime-free.

Aside from showing me pictures of people I know, and notfying me about their being victims of muggings in South America, the story also tipped me off to a quality blog, Killing Batteries, which is seriously hilarious kvetching about the nightmare that is writing LP’s guide to Romania and Moldova.

One slightly alarming thing I noted in the story, however, is that I already seem to be pushing the industry’s upper limit, age-wise. I turn 34 this weekend, and I suspect my pluck and vigor are diminishing rapidly. In fact, my deterioration probably accelerated exponentially this past year, what with all the marrying, and the house-buying, and the lying in the hospital bed with a life-threatening illness.

And I have to admit, I am not jumping for joy at the prospect of writing the books I have to write this year. When I’m lying in bed at night, trying to arrange my travel schedule in my head, I think I would just rather stay home and chip the paint off the tiles in the new kitchen.

But then when the hell else will I manage to go to Chiapas and drive every back road and talk to strangers and poke my nose in all kinds of strange churches and hotels? Yes, writing guidebooks pays crap and allows for virtually no creative outlet (I wouldn’t be bothering with this blog if it did), but it is an amazing way to see the world…or be forced to see the world. And for someone like me, who is terribly lazy and not particularly outgoing, it’s a job I dread. But once I’m finally up and doing it, I am extremely grateful for having been made to do it.

The Simple Life, New Mexico-style: episode 2

I know, as a travel writer, I should love the open road–it’s practically a requirement for the job, that you rhapsodize about lost highways and such. And New Mexico has plenty of open road – or, as Beverly put it, “there are lots of middle-of-nowheres in New Mexico.”

The trouble is that the open road in New Mexico is punctuated by these crappy ass-of-nowhere towns that block the incredible views: Truth or Consequences, a settlement that’s 90 percent mobile homes; Deming, where people die in dust storms; or Lordsburg, where the freight trains rumble right down Main Street and the chain-link-fence salesman made his first million. (OK, fine, there are some very cool urban-dropout types and awesome coffee in T or C; El Mirador in Deming is a classic heartwarming diner where the Border Patrol agents eat next to recent Mexican immigrants; and I did have an excellent lunch in Lordsburg, at the Triple J Cafe. But in the last case, the padded toilet seat in the bathroom was almost too poignant, one tiny bit of comfort in this horribly bleak expanse.)

I really hit the wall on the last day of my trip, after 2,000 miles of driving, when I made the mistake of cruising through Belen and Los Lunas on the business loop. Just how many cheap plastic signs, junkyards, and cinderblock big-box stores can one person take? Not to besmirch Belen and Los Lunas – these are perfectly functional towns, and they’ll even be getting commuter rail service shortly, and they have some history and nice big trees. But it was a relief to get onto Isleta Pueblo land, and not see any buildings anymore.

Now, I live in Astoria, Queens, and I am the first to admit the neighborhood is just not that pretty, but to make up for the plastic signs, the (small) junkyards, and the vinyl siding, it has people, plenty of lively, interesting people from all over the place, who are selling me things and providing services, and generally making life delightful for one another. And I think that’s all humans are out to do, is delight one another.

So it seems creepy and sad when people live in isolation. They start doing obnoxious things like putting framed prints of the Muhammad-with-a-bomb-in-his-turban cartoon above their cash registers and carrying guns and looking at people funny.

But I’m being a grump. I did see some beautiful, beautiful vistas:

The de rigueur fence-to-the-horizon shot

View from Rockhound State Park (an otherwise boring place)

And on my last morning, I had a big slab of pie, at the Daily Pie Café, in Pietown, New Mexico. That sounds like a total tourist trap, but it’s not. In a wholesome approximation of a strip club, about four men in trucker caps were lined up at the diner counter, while the waitress strolled up and down and sassed at them, and dished up the pie and the coffee.

And then the bell on the door jingled, and in came the hunchiest, funkiest, oldest man in a red-check shirt and boots and an impossibly sweat-stained and frayed straw cowboy hat, and the waitress said, “Howdy, Floyd.” And Floyd shuffled slowly toward the counter, so I could see the bowie knife on one hip, the pistol on the other, and the shells stuck in his belt. I was in yet another middle-of-nowhere, but I had my pie, and I was delighted.

The Simple Life, New Mexico-style

After five days of driving around the back of beyond in the Land of Enchantment, I sensed my perspective was shifting when I visited the Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in Las Cruces and found myself saying it was the coolest thing I’d seen in a long time.

After watching a mustachioed blacksmith make a nail, fondling different kinds of wool, and making my own stamped-leather souvenir, I was all softened up for admiring a row of attractively dilapidated old tractors. Just as I was composing a photo on my digital camera screen…


…up rolled a cheery guy on a bike. He was a museum volunteer, and he was already on his way home (he had his helmet on and his pants tucked into his socks), but he just couldn’t leave when he thought he saw a fellow tractor enthusiast.

“So, you’re into vintage tractors, are ya?”

I’ve never heard that sentence, and I probably never will again.

In truth, I was taking a picture of the tractors because I wanted to send it to Peter, as a bit of a joke. Years ago, Peter and I and a couple of other friends were in Hama, I think it was, in Syria, walking around at night in the downtown area, which was a pretty modest affair. But the John Deere showroom was huge and shiny, and there was a giant green super-deluxe tractor sitting there all spotlit on an otherwise dark, empty floor. We walked toward the tractor, and when we reached the giant plate glass, we saw we weren’t the first to be transfixed: the glass, at nose height, was smeared with greasy spots, left from the others who had (probably much more seriously) stood and wistfully imagined a day of the poshest tractor-riding money could buy.

I told the volunteer a truncated version of this story, leaving out the fact that it was in Syria, because that was just too confusing. (In most parts of New Mexico, I don’t even say I live in New York, because people usually say, “Why’d you wanna go and do a thing like that for?”) But then my story made no sense at all, and exposed me as not actually caring about tractors in the least.

The volunteer tractor fan was undaunted, though, and told me all about the clever John Deere folks, who introduced the short-lived Model GM during World War II (uh, apparently everyone knows that John Deere ordinarily only sells the Model G), so they could charge more for its innovative and sleek engine housing. The “M” was for “modern,” he wagered. And then he biked off, foaming a little at the mouth.

My pants are tight


This might be the year I get fat. I have eaten my weight in butter every year of my life, but three months of convalescence (read: no bike riding and many sweets from friends) followed by a packed schedule of travel-guide research and a long summer vacation to tasty destinations could well do me in. I’m only a few days into a short trip around southwestern New Mexico, and already I’m feeling the pinch. Ordinarily, the jeans I’m wearing would be all stretched out and unattractively saggy by Day 4, but now they’re just getting comfortable.

But I do it for you, of course. I eat ginormous chorizo-and-egg breakfast burritos at El Mirador in Deming, just so on your next visit to Deming (I know you’re booking it right this second), you’ll know somewhere tasty to eat. And I eat two desserts at the Barbershop Café in Hillsboro because I want to make sure they’re as good as people say they are. The carrot cake is pretty good, it’s true. And that scone from White Coyote (via Coffee Tea or C) in Truth or Consequences—totally gratuitous, considered I’d already eaten a giant slab of ham-and-egg casserole, but now I know recommendations of White Coyote do have a basis in fact.

Oh, I’m such a martyr. Anyway, the only point of this post is just to notify people that I am in fact in New Mexico, and to remind you that the travel writer’s life is not nearly as glamorous as you imagine. I’m looking forward to riding my bike when I get home at the end of the week.

It’s Here!


Yeah, baby. Moon Handbooks Santa Fe, Taos & Albuquerque is in my hot little hands, and it can be in yours too. Well, by the end of the month, anyway: the official release date is March 28.

So far, I have not flipped open to a random page and cringed in embarrassment, which is about the best post-book-writing sensation one can have. I know this doesn’t sound positive, but when you spend six months slaving over something, it’s hard to look at it again without have a little PTSD.

And a few of the photos I took turned out well too–at least none of them were obviously taken from a moving car, which is an improvement from a few other guidebooks I’ve seen. I feel a wee bit proud.

The best part for potential buyers of this book: I will be going back to New Mexico soon to research a whole-state guidebook, and I’ll set up a blog to post any updates to the Santa Fe book–so you’ll always have hot-off-the-presses info.

Fun in Hospital, Part I: from the Roving perspective

As you, dear readers, well know, I am accustomed to jetting off to Amsterdam, Tulum, and Santa Fe to assess the quality of hotels and other tourist accommodations. So the assignment I received in 12/8–NS/LIJ Forest Hills Hospital–was quite a novelty.

My research assistant, Peter, and I set off with a weekend bag and a frisson of excitement. We’d get to ride the V train, and neither of us had spent any time in this part of Queens called Forest Hills, known for its pretty suburban garden developments.

When we arrived, we found we were nowhere near the luxe Forest Hills Gardens; instead, we were on the less savory northern side of Queens Boulevard, amid LeFrak-ish blocks and some swoopy condo skyscrapers that likely dated from the 1960s: the Kyoto Gardens Towers was the name, but, to adapt Vonnegut, there were no damn gardens and no damn Kyoto.

But one shouldn’t judge a hotel entirely on its neighbors. Whisking in through the sliding glass doors etched repeatedly with “EMERGENCY” in a rather chic sans-serif font, Peter and I found a less-than-welcoming front desk. Having to get buzzed in to a room called “triage” is just not the best sign of hospitality, anywhere in the world.

Nonetheless, the staff was courteous, if a bit skeptical (had they guessed my travel writer’s credentials?), and I was told to wait outside…while they readied my room, I suppose. (I had been promised a bed in the elite tower wing, but due to some byzantine bureaucratic requirements–another bad sign for this operation’s professionalism–I was required to check in on the more low-rent side.)

The lobby was a dismal affair, dominated by a large TV with its hues out of whack: a green-at-the-gills Judge Judy declaimed from her emerald-hued bench, and the assorted loungers watched, rapt. One man had his shoes off. A woman was wrapped in a blanket. Either they were very, very avant-garde, or I was in precisely the opposite of a five-star hotel.

Indeed. This became quite clear when my name was finally called, and I was handed a folded sheet. A hostel operation, then.

Peter and I were showed what I was assured was our temporary bed: a less-than-twin arrangement on wheels. Still, we had a bit more privacy than your standard dorm-beds-to-the-rafters situation, with clever little curtains on runners and a bit-too-small folding screen that preserved the barest of dignity of the guest next to us. Service continued to be courteous but spotty, with cryptic claims of “We’re working on getting you a bed” delivered by a range of people, some of whom were just not flattered by the corporate uniform, an all-white smock. This was meant to convey boutique minimalist chic, but frankly it looked a bit dumpy on most of the staff–more tailoring, please! And if that’s a blood stain on your thigh, I hope it’s tongue-in-cheek.

But I shouldn’t quibble. In my experience (yes, I have spent my fair share of nights in hostels, remarkable as that may seem), these cheap-sleep places are all about the people, primarily the other guests. Once I got myself acclimated (in the handy, if drafty, pajamas they’d issued me along with the sheet–an odd perk), I peered around my privacy curtain to get a feel for the social scene in the common area.

Something kept me from plunging right in. Normally, as a guidebook researcher, I am happy to chat with fellow travelers and locals; I do, however, gauge a situation to see whether it’s worth revealing my real job, as saying I’m a guidebook author can lead to all kinds of tedious and repetitive conversations along the lines of, “Dude, that’s coooool!” and ultimately leave no time for tip-gathering.

This crowd didn’t look like it would be too curious about my secret agenda, which was just what I wanted. But it also didn’t look like it would help give me the inside scoop on this place called Forest Hills. One man was hopelessly drunk, which is certainly not out of keeping with hostel habits, but his big fur hat and pointy-toe loafers suggested he was not the typical backpacker demographic. Another woman I made a note to avoid at all costs: “Nurse, can I get some help here?” she kept saying. What a tedious conversation gambit.

Also, the music was setting a distinctly odd, asocial tone. I think it’s what the kids are calling IDM (“intelligent dance music”) these days, but it hearkened back to John Cage, with its series of three tones cycling ever so subtly in and out of sync. Ambient chatter and walkie-talkie noise filled out the drama. Frankly, it was the music of drug fiends and intellectuals. Which caused me to ponder: Perhaps there was some indigenous drug here in Forest Hills, something that intrepid young tourists traveled here to take? That would certainly explain the behavior of the Nurse-can-I-get-some-help-here woman–maybe she was freestyling? Though I can’t imagine what sort of pharmaceutical or natural herb could make one enjoy this particular fluorescent-lit setting.

I retreated to my bed. At this point, I’d given up on the staff’s promises of a better bed and silently handed out grades of ‘F–‘ to all of them. Peter was a bit miffed as well, but he’s very professional (though officially amateur in his capacity as hotel reviewer) and kept his lips zipped.

Finally, after I’d dozed off while musing over the local drug culture, I was started out of my sleep by a staff member ready to escort me to a different room. Amazing, if horribly ill-timed. I’d been waiting for a full 12 hours! Does that mean my bill would reflect half a night at hostel rates, and half a night at chi-chi club tower rates?

Which brings me to a hot issue in travel writing: freebies. After someone says, “Dude, that is so coooool!” about my job, they without fail continue with, “So I guess you get all your hotels and restaurants paid for?” It’s sad to burst their bubble, but, dude, no, I do not get any of that paid for.

I also do not get paid particularly well. But it is also my job to assess the quality of hotels well above my station, and these hotels will often offer me a free night or two. This of course creates a quandary. I without fail say that I cannot possibly promise the hotel will be included in the guidebook, but yes, I’d love to frolic on their 500-thread-count sheets. And bring up one of those buckwheat pillows.

But my free visit is constantly haunted with the thought, “What if I had to pay for this?” Sometimes that’s $70 a night; sometimes it’s $400. Sometimes the place measures up; sometimes it doesn’t. And I have to factor in the weirder, fuzzier element of “Would a person who’s willing to spend $400 on a hotel be impressed with this place?” In the case of this mongrel hostel/hotel scenario I found myself in, I wasn’t quite sure what the going rate was, but I hoped it didn’t include a free CD from the house DJ. And I was damn glad I wasn’t paying for it–I’d arranged this stay through a sort of PR firm known only by its acronym, HIP. Even at, say, $25 per night, the hostel operation seemed to be a rip-off–all the money was going into the pretentious music, the unflattering uniforms, and the armies of staff, many of whom seemed to do nothing but stand around chatting about where they were going to order dinner from.

The hotel proper, however, was a little better–though I can’t imagine the rates were cheap. I got hustled into a wider bed with a contemporary version of the “Magic Fingers” technology–an off-and-on full-body massage, with no coins required. Sheets were that trendy jersey knit, with what the bellhop called a “safety pad” laid across the middle. The pad had a rubber facing–what kind of clientele did they get in this place? The decor, which I could make out faintly in the 5 a.m. light, was a hideous mix of ripe pastels of the sort only seen on unfortunate prom dresses, but it was not so charmless compared to the sterile white scheme in the hostel wing.

I slept fitfully for the next few hours, and when the sun was fully up, I peered out the wide window to scan the view. There, to the left, was the glorious Unisphere, great symbol of Queens. I wasn’t far from home, but I was out of my element. Nor can I imagine any sort of traveler would feel at home in this place, so I can’t recommend this schizophrenic, institutional hideaway on the unfashionable fringes of Forest Hills. It just does not make the cut, freebies or no.

Crass Commercialism

Check out the links to my books at right, kiddies. If you click on those links and buy ’em, Amazon will send me 3 cents! If you search for things via the Amazon search box over there, and then buy them, I might get a check for even more cents! It seems a little tacky, but it also seems silly to put links to my books and not get any kickback. With this attitude, I should do well in a third-world country. Or New Mexico.

And I’m not kidding about emailing me about the Amsterdam book. It’s solid, but boy, a lot of things have changed. I saw somebody reading one recently, and I really wanted to go over to her and yank it out of her hands and start advising her right then and there, but I was afraid she’d think I was weird. Now she just hates me because the Stedelijk Museum was closed. Honest, I do this job because I can’t help giving advice.

(Oh, and you can email re: Mexico too. Hurricane reports on the Caribbean coast so far are not as terrible as US papers and TV made it seem. Of course.)

Hiatus

A-l-b-u-q-u-e-r-q-u-e.

I am so tired of typing that combination of letters. You’d think I’d be able to do it my sleep by now, y’know, having been doing it since typing class in 6th grade, and now having typed it about 20 times a day for the past week. But no. There’s always a u going missing.

And just so my two remaining readers can stop compulsively hitting ‘refresh,’ FYI, I’m going missing. I have to finish this stupid book. (No, no, it’s _great_ book! What am I saying?) Must write frantically for next two to three weeks. At least Santa Fe is a little easier to type.