Gary Carter and the Mets

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The New York Mets hold a strangely special, but very small, spot in my heart. One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was returning home from being out with my mom and dad on a December evening in 1984 and learning that my beloved Montreal Expos had traded my favourite player, Gary Carter, to the Mets. Feeling like a jilted lover is how I now recall how I felt that night. Whether or not it is possible for a ten year old to feel that is beside the point. I was devastated. After Blue Monday in 1981, this was the second of a long line of baseball-related traumas I experienced leading to my Expos leaving for Washington.

Time heals everything, and while I haven’t yet got my Expos back, I’ve learned to love baseball again. So when work took me to New York for a few days back in September, I added on a couple of nights to hang out in Queens and watch the Mets play the Phillies. The Mets to me are the team that got Gary Carter his lone World Series victory, and wearing this Expos hat got me into some great conversations around the ballpark.

At Citi Field

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My kind of town

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On my previous visits to New York City, I never made it across the East River to Brooklyn. When I started planning my most recent short visit, that was something I wanted to rectify. For my first foray into Brooklyn, a grey, dreary and humid Saturday morning, I hopped a subway to lower Manhattan, then popped above ground and headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. Sometimes when you travel, experiences don’t live up to the hype, but walking across this span over the East River was everything I hoped for. Crowds of joggers, families and tourists like me. All of us (except the joggers) stopping every few steps to take pictures and to take in the Manhattan skyline. The bridge itself is also spectacularly beautiful.

Brooklyn Bridge

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Escape from New York

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I have a love/hate relationship with New York City. The bright lights, energy and controlled chaos are exciting and alluring at first. And then as the days go by, it becomes a touch overwhelming and I find myself wishing I could find a place to hide out from it all to recharge. On previous trips, I’ve used parts of Central Park to regain a sense of normalcy – those parts where the noise from the city disappears and you feel like you’re completely surrounded by nature. On my most recent trip, while I never made it to Central Park, I found another spot to get away from it all for a spell – the High Line park along the west side of lower Manhattan.

What makes this such a special place, both disconnected from New York, but also entirely in its place in the city? Many things… and on my visit, it started with a couple dancing on a park bench as the sun set that brought a smile to my face.

Dancing at High Line Park

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Pairs well with baseball

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Champagne and salty, buttered popcorn. A deep, rich California cab and a medium-rare grilled steak. A plate of fish tacos and a margarita (or three). Some things are just meant to go together. While I’m a bit of a beer snob and can give you food pairings for just about any type of beer, I think beer may be best paired with baseball.

While sitting outside on a perfect summer night at a ballpark, a cold beer in my hand is the perfect accompaniment to the three hour drama that is a baseball game. While my Philadelphia trip was mostly about baseball, its secondary theme was definitely beer. Trying new beers at the games, sampling beers at interesting craft beer bars and breweries, and beers for the hotel. I picked up these beauties shortly after landing and cracked open the definitely non-craft Yuengling first. For me, Yuengling tastes like Philadelphia and brings back all kinds of memories of being in the city in the late 90s and early 2000s.

Craft beers in Philadelphia

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Mural mile south

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With so much time spent in Philadelphia over the years, the time around the edges of my baseball trip gave me a chance to dig a bit deeper into the city. Having previously explored museums, public art, music, sports, and food (oh, the food!), I was scratching my head during the planning for the trip on how to dig that little bit deeper.

What I came up with for a morning of exploring was a series of urban murals that are part of a public art initiative. A density of murals south of Market Street made that an easy choice and it also helped that by walking south of Market and east of Broad, I would be heading in the general direction of my favourite cheesesteak place, Jim’s Steaks, on 4th.

On a humid morning not out of place on the east coast in late July, and sweating through my shirt before I was only a few blocks out of the air conditioned comfort of my Center City hotel, I started my exploration. If you know me, you’ll know that “Gimme Shelter” by David Gunn, painted on the side of the Morris Animal Refuge, would tug at my heart strings. The shelter commissioned this beautiful mural to help tell their story of providing adoption services for abused and abandoned animals.

Murals in Philadelphia

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Take me out to 5 ballgames

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I aim to take full advantage of my solo trips. When I’m traveling alone, I make the kind of plans that I couldn’t get away with if I was traveling with others. My favourite solo trip plan, something I’ve been doing the past few years in an annual tradition of sorts, is to camp out in a big American city for 4-5 days, and spend most of that in a ballpark nerding out over baseball. The last few years I’ve pulled this off in Baltimore, Minneapolis and Chicago. This year… Philadelphia.

Five nights, five baseball games. After arriving in Philly via a red-eye and fortified by a brief nap at my downtown hotel, I hopped on the Broadway subway line and made my way out for night one at Citizens Bank Park in south Philadelphia. I treated myself to what would be the best seat of my visit a mere ten rows off the field. Here’s the first pitch from that glorious seat.

First Phillies game

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Sea of green

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It is a full on annual tradition now. Summer in Saskatchewan means hopping in the car, making our way south to Regina, getting dressed in green, and heading to a Riders game. And like our football trips the previous two years, we were given yet another spectacular day to sit outside and cheer on the good guys. As one super Rider fan used to quip… sea of green, sky of blue.

Mosaic Stadium

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Memories of New Brunswick

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Beresford, New Brunswick is a long, long way from Saskatoon. Three flights across the country gave me a lot of time to think about the fact that I’d be visiting the new home of my parents for the first time a few months after they moved away from what was our family home just outside of Halifax. While this was first and foremost a visit to catch up, it was also a visit to check in and see how they were doing in New Brunswick and to visit an area I hadn’t seen in close to twenty years.

Shortly after getting off the plane and reuniting with Mom and Dad, I got to catch up with the other family member that had made the move… Tia. Good dog!

TIa

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When vacation begins

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October 4, 2018 – Lisbon, Portugal

Quiet.

The morning noises of the city are far, far below this lookout and only the early risers are up here milling around. Behind me, the church bells rang twice and a tranquil concopheny of languages fills the air. I can see cars driving across the bridge through a light haze, and flights on their descent to the airport cross the sky every minute or so. 

These are some of my favourite moments of my trips. Being still, while hard for someone as restless as me, comes easier in Europe. Some combination of the view, the sounds, the taste of an espresso and the light breeze have me relaxed for what feels like the first time in ages. This vacation has been a long time coming. While having been here for a few days already, I think this moment, high above Lisbon, is when my spirit has arrived with my body on vacation. 

Lisbon, Portugal