Creativity and Travel

Vacations are meant as a time to step away from the schedules and reconnect with family in a different environment. "The family that roller-coasts together screams together" kind of thing. For some of us, those frenzied days at amusement parks are thankfully over as are vacations spent traveling for hours, while cranky kids in the backseat squabble and ask "are we there yet." At this point in our lives, vacations come in two varieties--visiting the grandkids and soaking in every hug and humorous story they tell or flying to a favorite spot to work on our writing.

These are the benefits of retirement. We are relieved from work schedules and all those outside pressures. Calvin and I can at last be the "free spirits" we've longed to be.

In a week, we leave for two weeks in Paris and a week in Berlin. Since Calvin turns 82 on our return to the States, this might well be our last long trip. I'm a little apprehensive how he'll handle it all and he's concerned I'll get sick. Color us worriers.

Paris is our favorite city. Calvin lived there for a year back in the late sixties, writing at sidewalk cafés. He took me there on our second anniversary eight years ago and I was captured under her spell. The sights, sounds and smells I'd experienced are featured in my Red Hand Conspiracy romantic suspense series. I can't wait to go back for more story ideas. I have two in mind--a historical and a contemporary--I want to research while we're there.

We decided to rent a little apartment on the Left Bank, near the Sorbonne University. This large neighborhood in Paris is known as the Latin Quarter. Centuries ago, students at the Sorbonne spoke Latin exclusively as they roamed the streets and argued politics and art in cafés. Today, the students still do this, only in French or English.

Since both of us are diabetics, I can shop at the fresh produce stands at rue Moufftard, a few blocks from our temporary home, and cook a few meals to help keep our glucose levels down. Although all the walking we'll be doing should help, too. Paris is a city for walking, gaping at the beautiful architecture, listening to French spoken in machine gun rapidity and stepping into tiny shops to the friendly "Bonjour Messieur, Madam." offered by the shop owners.

Hemingway lived in an apartment not far from "ours" while he wrote A Moveable Feast. James Joyce and Orwell lived nearby, too. Not too far away, Picasso perfected his Cubist art style. Creativity is in the air--and I plan on inhaling!

Here's a picture of our living room...

We'll say goodbye to Paris and fly to Berlin to visit family. Calvin's only son lives there, working for the Bayer Corporation. Kelly's wife, a native Berliner, runs a large beauty shop. We haven't seen them in over two years, so we are due for some major catching up. Kelly is a taller version of Calvin...just as warm, as charming, as humorous as his dad. He holds a PhD. in High Energy Theoretical Particle Physics--and I have no clue what that is.

Our vacation will be a lovely mixture of family hugs and sharing stories combined with exploring our favorite historical artistic city. A great atmosphere for creativity to bloom, don't you think?

Mona Lisa's Room, book one of a romantic suspense series, takes place in Paris and Villerville, a small seaside community along the Normandy Coast. An American art teacher, Alyson, and Niko, a French counter-terrorism agent, are on the run from a ruthless band of terrorists called The Red Hand. This book was the winner of the HOLT Medallion Award of Merit in two categories--Best Romantic Suspense and Best Book by a Virginia Author.

BUY LINK: http://bit.ly/MonaLisasRoomeBook

Book two of the series, Rain is a Love Song, is set in Paris and Budapest. Gwen travels from North Carolina to Paris to visit her sister, Alyson. Her daughter is kidnapped in front of her eyes and rescued by French government agent, Jean-Luc. Determined to help him find these dangerous terrorists, she worms her way into the investigation, much to his displeasure and distraction.

Link to the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE2F3BCp_es

BUY LINK: http://bit.ly/RainLoveSong

Three weeks in Bayawan

Have you ever spent time in a tropical third world country? My husband and I recently visited my brother who lives in Bayawan on Negros Island in the Philippines. You won’t find this city listed in any tour book. It’s off the beaten path with the closest airport over two hours away in Dumaguete City, the capital of Negros Oriental.

I took copious notes and photographs and plan to use our experiences in a future story. In this blog I’ll share how we got around the city of Bayawan. That was an adventure in itself.

Cars are expensive to operate so you see few on the streets of Bayawan. The common type of transportation choices if you don’t own a motorcycle are riding in pot-pots (pronounced put puts) or tricycles. I’ll describe both. Here is a typical pot-pot looking for passengers.


Believe me when I say that padded narrow seat is designed to fit narrow-hipped Filipinos, not two broad Americano behinds! After several rides my husband and I learned how to wedge in nicely. Admittedly they aren’t comfortable but definitely very cheap. Cost: five Philippine pesos per person anywhere in town. The currency exchange rate is approximately 42 pesos to a U.S. dollar.




Tricycles are motorcycles with semi-enclosed sidecars which can carry up to seven people. It’s a wonder the bike’s gears don’t fail carrying these heavy burdens through town. You load people until there isn’t an inch of space left, and you can side sideways behind the driver too!

Bayawan is basically flat, has no stop signs, many four way intersections and pedestrians do not have the right of way. The ballet of pot-pots, tricycles, motorbikes and cars at intersections is amazing to watch and an unforgettable experience. Pot-pots have small bike horns they squeeze at intersections and when they want to pass or alert someone. Every time we crossed the busier highway riding in a pot-pot I closed my eyes and waited. Why see what you can't avoid? In my next blog I’ll discuss the exotic foods we ate in Bayawan such as buko, jackfruit, dinuguan, sisig, and biko.

What has been your most frightening ground travel experience?

Notes on a train

The Italian countryside flies by as our train smoothly moves from Venice to Florence. A while back we passed through Padua of Taming Of The Shrew fame and before we get to Florence we’ll see Verona. Or at least I hope we’ll see Verona, at least a little bit more than what we saw of Padua. All I saw there was a distant hint of towers and the dome of some kind of big church.

We just spent three days in Venice, a city where cars are replaced by boats on narrow canals, but since the place really is walking distance no matter where you are going, we spent most of our time wearing out our shoes. This is our yearly “big” vacation and we’ll spend most of our time on our feet when not on trains or planes or in the rare automobile. In two weeks we’ll visit Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples. All romantic destinations with just my husband and myself. A fine recipe for some cozy times together. I won’t get a lot of writing done but then again sometimes you need to recharge the batteries on your own relationship rather than write about the ones in your head.

On the other hand, I will have several hours of train travel to write… if I can tear my eyes from the lovely green fields rushing past. In the meantime I can tell you I got a great 4.5 star review/Top Pick from Night Owl Reviews for Bad Dog and the Babe.

Wait a minute… is that a CASTLE on the top of that hill?

Sorry to make this short, but I have to go now.

Ciao!

Janet Miller/Cricket Starr

http://www.janetmillerromance.com

Greetings from Algeria

Today I'm blogging from the beautiful seaside town of Zeralda, Algeria. I originally came to Algeria to research the Sahara for my next novel. When our travel plans were delayed, we decided to skip the heat and stay on the Mediterranean Coast instead.
Algeria's neighbors, Morocco and Tunisia, are well known for their tourism. But this is the Barbary Coast, famous for pirates like Barbarossa and Rais Hamidou. Fiercely independent and proud to be self-sufficient, Algerians have never courted foreign favor. U.S. Citizens must have a visa to get into the country, and the journey is physically challenging even in the age of aviation. So I felt privileged to explore a part of the world few Americans ever see.


Due to negative media reports, family and friends warned me not to go. Algeria is regularly featured on U.S. State Department travel advisories and terror watch lists. But the Algerian government has spared no expense in its fight against terrorism.

Security is tight in the capital and all touristic areas. Our hotel had a metal detector and x-ray machine for screening incoming luggage. Around the capital, one cannot go more than a few miles without passing through a checkpoint. Still, I found the omnipresent military and police forces more reassuring than intrusive.

Geopolitics aside, the best diplomats for Algeria are its ordinary citizens. We were greeted with friendly curiosity everywhere we went. The vendors selling traditional mint tea and homemade donuts on the beach were patient with my broken Arabic and inability to understand their currency.

The Algerian flag is everywhere, draped on corner cigarette stands and painted on the outside walls of apartment complexes. But don't mistake this for a ominous sign of excessive nationalism. It's all in preparation for the World Cup, soccer's biggest international event. Ordinary life has been put on hold while the country awaits their first match against Slovenia. Algeria is scheduled to play the United States on June 23rd. If you want to make friends with the locals, that's a good conversation starter.

My only regret is that I did not have time to see all of the historical treasures the region offers. The Casbah in Algiers, the Palace of the Rais, and the impressive Roman ruins at Tipaza have been declared World Heritage sites by UNESCO. Cleopatra's daughter is buried nearby. Other points of interest include Notre Dame of Africa, the Grand Post Office, and the "New Mosque", which is actually 400 years old.


Have you been to Algeria? If so, I would love to hear about your experience there. If not, what is the most unusual place you have visited to do research for a novel?