Olympia is a charming little city in the Pacific Northwest, set down on rolling hills surrounded by forests of Douglas-fir, bigleaf maple and red cedar – a pretty, speckled egg resting in a nest of twigs.
This is the old part – the far end of the Oregon Trail, settled on Native American land by Europeans in the 1850’s – where Leopold Schmidt founded the Olympia Brewing Company in nearby Tumwater Falls and sold his beer, if you recall, with the slogan, "it’s the water," which I’m surprised none of the hundreds of water bottlers has adopted now that Leopold’s beer business has folded.
This is Downtown Olympia, with its century-old buildings, its perfectly-proportioned Capitol, its tree-lined streets on which people drive politely and you can always find a place to park – often without a meter – near the still-family-run bookstore or café or bike shop you want to go to.
But that’s not where I wanted to go, or rather needed to go, to help my son move into an unfurnished apartment. We needed to head over to the other part of Olympia and it is this part – which I imagine you’d find outside most other American towns of its size – that I’m still trying to figure out as the plane banks over Puget Sound taking me home.
It's no secret that my best friend, Missy and I love to travel. We met 25 years ago in the parking lot of a Winn Dixie grocery store in Valdosta, Georgia. I was in college there and she was home on Spring Break from Pepperdine in Malibu, CA. I thought she was the prettiest girl I had ever seen and never imagined that we'd grow up together and travel the world.
Dogs howling at the moon. I roll over and from bed I look up to eighteen thousand feet of snow-covered peaks, shimmering in the moonlight. Shit, I gotta catch a plane! I throw on my clothes and race down the stairs, grab my last pair of underwear off the clothes line, stuff them in my pocket, throw my bag on my head, stumble through the turnip patch and onto the trail. I drink in the vista one last time. Fields of blooming mustard greens tint the valley a hazy yellow, tall poplar trees line the paths, and every little house sports a well tended vegetable garden.
If you are looking for a most romantic place to celebrate an anniversary, holiday, or any day for that matter, then why not take a quick hop across one continent and one ocean to Paris. For centuries this has been the romantic center of the world regarded as such by those whose spirit soars with the magic of this beautiful city.
Montreal is a city of diversity – be it the multi-national communities, the varied, ethnic cuisines, fascinating neighbourhoods and marvellous mix of people. Everywhere you go the eye alights on interesting architecture (keep a lookout for outdoor spiral staircases along Laval Street), historical buildings, and a myriad of eateries. Of course, shopping the elegant chi-chi boutiques for designer clothes is also an important part of this vibrant city. Bookstores and bars, museums and markets abound whilst the nightlife is comparable to any major European city.
