Round-the-world: Four days in Sydney

by Alex Robertson Textor on

The first four days of our round-the-world trip race by in a whirl of receipts, flat whites, great meals, urban hikes, and friendly Sydneysiders.

You’ll see that receipts head my list. Australia has become one expensive lucky country, make no bones about it. A late night dash to a convenience store for bottled water, a muesli bar, and biscuits sets us back AUD17 ($16). A copy of Monocle ($10 in the US). is priced at AUD20 ($19) at a bookstore in Sydney’s Newtown. My breakfast at Forbes & Burton (252 Forbes Street, Darlinghurst) a perfect cafe-restaurant, costs AUD18, not including coffee.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Fresh off Qantas 12, we check into our hotel, the Diamant Boutique Hotel Sydney at Kings Cross, with smart rooms and hallway lighting that stage-whispers discretion. Diamant Boutique is part of Eight Hotels, a small hotel chain with hotels in several Australian cities. The location, the attractive room design, the reasonable nightly rates for a boutique hotel ($161), and the Toby’s Estate coffee and pastries cart in the lobby are all strong pluses. The only minus of note is the annoying charge for Internet access in rooms, at AUD30 for two days of access. (Wireless Internet access in the lobby is free of charge.)

We spend our four days walking: through the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Sydney Opera House, across Surry Hills, Redfern, Paddington, Newtown, and Darlinghurst. One day we start out from Potts Point to Paddington and then continue all the way to Bondi Beach and then along the coastal walkway to Tamarama Beach, a pleasant five-mile stroll.


Bondi Beach on a late winter afternoon.

Newtown is probably the most interesting area in Sydney for new neighborhood watchers, a mish-mash of vintage shops both high-end and junky, a fantastic knitting café (about which more later), various hippie paraphernalia shops, one very fine bakery (Luxe Bakery at 195 Missenden Road, recommended by Australian travel journalist Tim Richards via Twitter after he noticed from my tweets that I was in Newtown), and a share of chain stores to keep things real. Luxe Bakery doesn’t appear to have a website, so I direct you to a beautiful post on the place at the fantastic food blog he needs food.We eat well in Sydney. There’s Fish Face (132 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst) where we start our meal with incredible sugar-cured ocean trout, and The Battery, (425 Bourke Street, Surry Hills) another seafood restaurant, also good and quite a bit easier on the wallet than the former. There are decadent breakfasts at the aforementioned Forbes and Burton. There is Single Origin Roasters (60-64 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills) which pairs a great, very seasonal lunch with extremely detailed coffee bean nerdism. And then there’s Bodega.

There’s been a huge buzz around Sydney’s Bodega (216 Commonwealth Street, Surry Hills) for years. The tapas restaurant doesn’t take reservations, and we arrive at 5:45 pm in anticipation of the 6 pm opening. We may have been the first to congregate by the door, but by opening time there are 30 people waiting to be seated. Everyone is projecting a squirming politeness, which I take to signify a failure to embody actual patience. This is a good sign.

The meal is grand: thick local oysters; pumpkin and feta empanadas; beef empanadas; Spanish salami; fried cauliflower; a rich corn tamale; an octopus, chorizo, and potato salad. We end by sharing a banana split, a dessert with just the right amount of salt and tang to count as a fully transformed version of the original. Our waiter tells us the staff are excited about Porteño, the brand new Argentinian steak house opened last week by Bodega owners Elvis Abrahanowicz and Ben Milgate.

In terms of art and design as well as cuisine, Sydney teems with homegrown energy. There are tons of great shops across Sydney showcasing strong aesthetic direction and great curatorial instincts. I was especially excited by Object at the Australian Centre for Craft and Design (417 Bourke Street, Surry Hills) which features the work of designers and craft artists from across Australia. I was especially taken by the translucent resin bowls by Dinosaur Designs. Another great shop is the Artery (221 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst) a gallery focused on contemporary Aboriginal art. We pop in and ask a few questions and proprietor Alesha Glennon provides a fascinating impromptu overview of Aboriginal art across the country. The Artery, which opened in 2005, specializes in part in work from the Utopia region, an area northeast of Alice Springs known for its female artists.

Next up: a trio of especially exciting, well-curated Sydney shops focused on sustainability in one or another form.

Check out other Capricorn Route series posts here.

Chinese artist creates sculptures from suitcases

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Ever packed so much in your suitcase that it felt like you were carrying around a whole city? Apparently you’re not the only one. Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen had a similar feeling during her recent travels and decided to turn it into art. Xiuzhen has recently been using suitcases and discarded travel clothing to recreate miniature model cities in a project she calls “Portable Cities.”

The idea for Portable Cities got its start when the artist was waiting at the airport baggage carousel for her luggage. Xiuzhen began thinking about how we carry our homes around with us when we travel; the natural extension of that thought was to think about suitcases as the symbolic “home” of the global traveler. Ever since her revelation, Xiuzhen has been recreating intricate sculptures of her favorite cities like Seattle, Berlin, Vancouver and Beijing using pieces of random travel clothing as her medium.

For a generation of travelers groomed on round the world trips, AirBnB and Technomadic lifestyles, Xiuzhen’s art makes perfect sense. What is a home when you’re constantly packing your life into a suitcase? Is it a physical place? Or simply a state of mind?

[Photo via DesignBoom]

[Thanks Liz!]

A round-the-world trip: Why?

by Alex Robertson Textor on


When I am asked why I love to travel, it’s hard sometimes to come up with a fully satisfying answer, beyond simply stating that I love all the things that travel sets into motion. Travel enables cultural exposure, prompts the recurring and exciting recognition that there are different ways to go about everyday business, and allows strange and interesting things to happen in unfamiliar places. In addition, there are the site-specific aspects of travel: architecture, landscapes, local culinary specialties, languages, scents, and forms of communication, to name a few. All of this is terribly intoxicating for anyone who loves to travel.

When asked why I want to travel to a given place, say an upcoming itinerary stop or a particular region I bring into conversation with annoying frequency, I feel similarly caught off guard. I usually just smile and suggest, as politely as I can, that I don’t know how to answer such a question. As I see it, any place can arouse interest. Coming up with a rationale that makes sense to everybody for wanting to visit a particular place seems to be beside the point.

The questions that surround a round-the-world trip, on the other hand, somehow seem more justified. For hardcore travelers, a round-the-world trip may feel like a rite of passage or a somehow obligatory experience, but for most people such an undertaking seems extreme. What may strike the more hardcore traveler as formative may seem overwhelming, frightening, or distasteful to many.

So here’s the answer to the question, part one: I’ve wanted to do a proper, multi-stop round-the-world trip for quite some time.

And here’s part two, also known as the clincher: The timing is right. Five years ago, when my partner applied to law school, he filled me in on the post-bar exam tradition of taking a big, ambitious trip and suggested that we think about taking one of our own. My imagination ran riot. I immediately began planning out dream itineraries. It would be a dream trip, a long and involved endeavor. I began to refer to it jokingly as our seven-week trip, then our eight-week trip. Then I fantasized about a three-month trip, of hopping around the Pacific and then the Indian Ocean, and then visiting some places I’ve wanted to visit since I was a child: Namibia; São Tomé and Príncipe; Mayotte.

For years it sat on the horizon, a future event made all the more tantalizing because we had to postpone it for a year due to work constraints. In January we started to think more seriously about it and figure out the basic parameters of the trip. We would have five weeks, not the hoped-for 15, and September looked like the ideal month for taking off. We wouldn’t make it to every exciting corner of the globe. We would aim for seven or eight pit stops over our five weeks.

We knew that this trip wouldn’t be repeated anytime soon, not at least for decades and decades. A block of five weeks is difficult to arrange. We also knew that it would be more expensive than any trip we’d ever taken together, by a long shot.

In subsequent posts I’ll explore the how and the where of our upcoming itinerary.

I’m calling this trip the Capricorn Route. All but one of our stops will be in close proximity to or south of the Tropic of Capricorn.

(Image: Flickr/Will Ellis)

Justin Glow and Rolf Potts embark on round the world trip — with no bags

by Grant Martin on

Two of our favorite people in the world, Gadling editor-at-large Justin Glow and travel writer and personality Rolf Potts are teaming up on a wild project starting this week, traveling around the entire planet with absolutely no baggage.

The journey begins this morning on a flight between Kansas and New York City, where the team will be spending two days prior to their departure to London, Paris, Morocco, Cairo, Johannesburg, Bangkok, Singapore, Queenstown and Auckland, to name a few places, all with nothing more than the gear loaded in their SCOTTeVEST clothing and various and sundry camera equipment.

“Why?” you might ask? It’s partially to show the ease and fluidity of travel when unburdened (figuratively and literally) by luggage and it’s also a challenge. A challenge about making compromises on the road, pushing their gear to the limits and keeping cool while traversing the planet in one set of britches.

Rolf will be the pointman for the operation, and you’ll be able to see dispatches from his sexy gourd in both video and words every day over at rtwblog.com. Justin, the (no less sexy) camera and logistics man will deal with all things technical and with getting the dispatches updated. Along the way, they may even have a few visitors swing through.

Keep an eye out for updates as the weeks pass by and try to contain your jealousy. It sounds like a fantastic trip.

On long-term travel, snobbery & judgmental blogging

by Mike Barish on

If you read Gadling, there’s a half-decent chance that you read other travel blogs, too. Don’t worry. We’re cool having an open relationship. We read other sites, as well. Some have the financial backing of investors or media companies. Others are independent labors of love written by one or two people who enjoy travel, started putting words to HTML and hoped that someone would read the stories they shared. Many of the travel blogs that have been popping up lately focus on round-the-world (RTW) travel, career breaks and long-term (or, seemingly, permanent) travel. It’s that last category of traveler (and their corresponding blogs) that has begun to grind my gears.

I love travel. I assume you, a Gadling reader, loves travel. But is traveling all of the time – with no home base – really that fantastic? Furthermore, do people who adhere to that lifestyle have the right to belittle those with stable lives and jobs? There’s been a lot of idealizing of traveling permanently and, quite frankly, I find a lot of it condescending. It’s time for a reality check.One of the most well-trafficked sites dealing with long-term travel is Nomadic Matt. That’s also the name by which the site’s founder, Matt Kepnes, is known. Matt has been traveling virtually non-stop since 2005. At 29, he’s known very little of adult life beyond traveling. Which is why I was so insulted by his recent post, “Why We Travel,” on The Huffington Post. For someone with such limited exposure to the “real world” of steady jobs, rent payments and the stresses of daily life, he has some very firm opinions on why his lifestyle is far superior to the alternative that the vast majority of Americans call normal. The following quote is indicative of the message he was attempting to convey in his post:

“In this modern world of 9 to 5, mortgages, carpools, and bills, our days can get pretty regimented and become pretty boring. Typically, our days rarely exhibit huge change. Under the weight of everything, we often lose track of what’s important to us and what are goals are. We get so caught between commutes and errands or driving the kids to soccer, that we forget how to breath and to smell those roses. When I was home I could plan out my days months in advance. Why? Because they weren’t going to be much different — commute, work, gym, sleep, repeat. Yet on the road, every moment represents a new beginning. No day is the same. You can’t plan out what will happen because nothing is set in stone.”

I should note that I know Matt. I like Matt. The limited time we have shared has been pleasant and he seems like a nice guy. However, I do not think that his perma-travel lifestyle is one that should automatically be envied or revered. In fact, I don’t want that life at all.

What someone at the age of 29 who has been traveling for much of his adult existence could possibly understand about the life that he rails against is actually less perplexing than his broad generalizations about those of us who do not abide by his philosophies. While there are certainly countless people who are lost in a sea of TPS reports and hollow pursuits, to write off all people with stable, non-travel lives as working stiffs is condescending at best and offensive at worst.

There are more than enough “mommy bloggers” – many of whom also write about travel – who enjoy driving their kids to soccer while also taking them on holidays from Disney World to Djibouti. Is there a trade-off that comes with starting a family? Well, the number of blogs out there about taking kids on trips all over the globe would indicate that there doesn’t have to be. And for the people who do stay home or perhaps only occasionally take traditional vacations, if they are happy, why is that bad?

While defining why he travels, Matt says, “[w]e want to see the world, see something different, see something change. Travel allows for change…We all want something different from our daily routine, something to challenge us.” Again, these are generalizations and gross misrepresentations that diminish the enriching and often diverse lives that people with roots firmly planted in one place have created for themselves.

His post also neglects to mention things like hobbies, families, friends, social functions and fulfilling lives that include careers and pursuits that make those so-called working stiffs happy. I have friends who are not travel writers. They have jobs in fields such as marketing, education, law and insurance. They are husbands, wives, parents, dog owners, volunteers and caregivers. They are also drummers in bands, founders of supper clubs, distillers of whiskey and triathletes. In short, they are well-rounded human beings.

I’m not alone in believing that people can have stable lives, travel only occasionally and still enjoy everything that the world has to offer. Over on the Resident Wayfarer blog [Disclosure: I know the author but am respecting his/her wish to remain anonymous], a post addressed this very topic. “To me, travel can’t define a life, travel must be the thing that holds a mirror back up to yourself, to your life, and forces you to see it in a different light, through different eyes, reversed.” In other words, travel provides a broader context within which you attempt to understand things, including yourself. The post closes with the following declaration:

“I remain the person with a home base that I love, a well-balanced wanderlust, and a pretty low bullshit-o-meter.”

In a very succinct manner, the author managers to sum up why not everyone with a 9-5 feels the way Matt suggested that they do.

Over on SoSauce, Alisha Miranda also expressed her disdain for judgmental travelers who view their opinions on the subject as the gospel. [Disclosure: I am also friends with Alisha] She wrote,

“…don’t tell me the right and wrong way to travel. I don’t want to hear it. I’m doing fine on my 2 passport stamps and don’t need your worldly views dragging me down for whatever reason you feel necessary. I’ll travel however I want, whenever I want, to whereever [sic] I want. The lifestyle I choose as a traveler is entirely my decision…It seems like travel writers these days won’t tolerate anything less than a full-time backpacking lifestyle.”

To insinuate – or outright declare – that there is only one way to travel is narcissistic and condescending. It insults your audience and creates a false debate about the nature of travel. A debate that is actually more about the writer than it is about travel.

People travel for myriad reasons. Be it to take a break from work, introduce their children to Cinderella or learn about new cultures. They also do it to run away. Or to avoid a reality that scares or confuses them. Is eschewing the “real world” to travel permanently as difficult as those long-term travelers suggest? Is it more challenging than raising children, being an active member of a community or pouring yourself into a hobby that becomes a passion?

It seems to me that creating a fulfilling life – however you define that – is your own business. It may include travel. It may not. The travel could be road trips to ride roller coasters, all-inclusive getaways to tropical beaches or, yes, packing up completely and leaving your current life behind. That’s up to you. And you know yourself a whole lot better than any writer does.