I really lucked out during my 24 hours in Grand Rapids since after a delicious dinner last night, I strolled around the downtown area and found a fun coffee shop called Madcap Coffee. It’s been around for the last 11 years, and they’re known for their spacious, modern decor, strong and delicious coffee, and friendly service. They even make their own yogurt in house (for a coffee shop, that’s crazy!) and fresh fruit/granola blends.

One of the things that caught my eye on the menu this morning before I left for my customer meeting was the cafe miel. “Cafe miel” just means coffee with honey in French, but I haven’t been used to seeing this offered on menus anywhere before (no, having honey at the counter with the lids, straws, stirrers, and napkins does NOT count), so I decided to try it. Not only do they make your latte with honey as a sweetener, but they also add in some cinnamon and nutmeg to spice it up a bit. It was completed with a cute heart-shaped foam design on the top, and I enjoyed it with a cup of their house-made yogurt topped with marinated rhubarb, strawberries, and nutty granola.

It was a simple breakfast, but it was so satisfying, especially knowing that the yogurt and fruit blend was all house made, and that the coffee drink was so lovingly made with a unique twist.

I was also completely wired for the next four hours after having that cafe miel, so not only was it one of the most delicious coffee drinks I’ve had in a while, but it was also one of the strongest!

When I tell people I do a moderate amount of work travel, they either have one of two reactions: a) they think it’s glamorous and exciting, or b) they think it must be painful and annoying to have to travel away from home, in an unfamiliar place with likely few to no one you know, to do one’s job. I have a lot of colleagues who absolutely hate work travel, and they grumble when I tell them I’m not going to be in. But, at the same time, they see my Instagram stories during my work travel and accuse me of playing hooky because of the things I post. As someone who had done quite a bit of it after nearly 11 years working full time, I can certainly say that the only thing “glamorous” and “exciting” about doing work travel is the amount of frequent flier miles and hotel points you can accumulate from business travel (and thus, free hotel nights/flights/flight upgrades during personal travel).

There have been times when it’s been lonely and annoying, especially in places that aren’t as metropolitan as New York or San Francisco, but the way that I’ve made it into something enjoyable is to fit in a few things that I can do for myself that I will enjoy. It could be a walk through Olympic Centennial Park while I’m in Atlanta visiting a customer, a run on the beach during sunrise in Miami, or a stroll to see the Bean, one of my all-time favorite public sculptures (I don’t care how “touristy” it is) while in Chicago. Another thing I like to do is find a good, interesting local spot to eat at and/or enjoy some local well crafted coffee or tea. I have to eat anyway, and it’s nice to try something that is local and well loved by the people in the area.

Tonight, after sifting through a lot of generic and boring sports bars and “American pubs” in the downtown Grand Rapids area on my Yelp app, I came upon an interesting “new American” restaurant called The Little Bird. It just happened to be about three blocks away from the hotel where I was staying, so I figured I’d pop in for an early dinner and sit at the bar. The restaurant, which is open for all three meals of the day, had such a fun and worldly variety of plates on the menu ranging from pork katsu, Scotch eggs made with locally sourced sausage, to Spanish tinned sardines imported from Spain. I ordered the lamb meatballs served with grilled eggplant, curried lentils, feta, cucumber salad, and yogurt, and was really blown away by the combination of flavors, the spice of the lamb, and the texture of the eggplant. I could honestly say that I wasn’t sure what I enjoyed more, the eggplant or the meatballs. And the craziest thing was that only a few of the tables in the small restaurant were occupied. If this same restaurant were in New York, I’d bet that it would be packed to the brim by the time I left at around 7:30.

It’s fun, eclectic places like this that keep me going during my work travel, even in places that initially may not seem to be the most exciting. You really have to do little things for yourself while traveling alone to make it more bearable and interesting.

I’m in Atlanta today and tomorrow for customer meetings and for a customer marketing event we’re co-hosting tonight. Because of this, I have three different colleagues who are joining me from New York today. One of them happened to be booked on my same flight to Atlanta, as well as the same hotel in downtown. We sat together and chatted before our flight boarded, and I tried my best to be as patient as possible as she made up all these excuses for what she probably thinks she should be doing, but she isn’t. She’s likely going to be traveling at least 1-2 times a month for customer marketing events, yet she’s not loyal to any one airline (she is split among American, Jet Blue, and Alaska). Her trips are never more than 1-2 days long, yet she insisted today that between her and her husband (who travels maybe 1-2 times a month for work), they just “don’t have time” to travel for personal unless it’s a wedding/major family event because they both travel a lot for work (or so they think).

While I was listening to all these excuses she was making, I said absolutely nothing. I’m not even certain she was aware she was even making excuses. I sat, half smiling, occasionally nodding. It’s as though I was sitting there, bearing witness to her out-loud thoughts about all the things she should or could be doing, but she isn’t doing… perhaps due to one (or several, or all) of the following: 1) lack of planning, 2) lack of desire to plan, 3) lack of desire to travel for fun and maximize travel, 4) lack of willingness to admit that maybe, just maybe she and her husband just… don’t like to travel for pleasure. And that last part is actually okay! But can we all just be honest with ourselves?

So, she then proceeded to ask me about my travel plans for the summer. I told her we just got back from Colombia. I was in Miami last week for work, will be in Atlanta obviously this week for work, then Michigan next week. I have pending trips to Boston for work. At the end of this month through the first week of July, we’ll be in Asia, then in mid-August, we have another personal trip planned to Canada. My husband travels nearly every single week, and I travel at least 1-2 times a month, but the only reason I ever say I “travel a lot” is because of the combination of work and pleasure travel. I don’t really think traveling 1-2 times a month for work is a lot. But maybe that’s just me since everything is always relative. We make our trips happen because we plan out nearly our entire year in advance and block off dates. Work isn’t our life. We like to travel, and therefore, we make sure travel is part of our life.

She was really impressed with what I shared with her. “Wow, that’s such a smart thing to do!” she exclaimed, as I told her how we planned things out. “That also is so much work.”

Is it, really? Aren’t we supposed to work to make things that matter in our life happen?

I don’t expect everyone I know or like or chat with to want to travel. But, I’d like to think that everyone is honest with themselves. Sadly, this is clearly not the case.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Atlanta for a customer meeting where I will be presenting. I’m also taking one of my colleagues along who I am mentoring since he’s a newbie. Since he’s merely there to shadow me and will not actually be presenting, this is basically a work trip for him where he’s not responsible for anything. Isn’t that fun — to be able to travel for work and not actually do any work?

And well, he’s planning to go to the World of Coca Cola while I’m doing meeting prep. Doesn’t he have the life?

This afternoon, I took a break to meet with a San Francisco colleague’s friend who is interested in working at our company. We had coffee together over lattes, I shared with her information about the company, what my role was like, and my general work experiences.

While we were chatting, though, I was thinking about the latte I was drinking with her, and I realized that although it was good, it really paled in comparison to that incredibly smooth and rich latte I had in Bogota just four days before. I felt bad even thinking about it, but I couldn’t help but think about how satisfying every single sip of that Bogota latte was, even after it was no longer hot.

This is really how travel can ruin you.

I scheduled my flight to come back to New York at around 3:30 today so that I’d be able to have time to watch the sun rise along the beach, do a beach run, exercise, eat breakfast, and lazily make myself over to the MIA airport this morning. While I got to do and enjoy all of that since all my customer meetings were yesterday, what I did not enjoy was the total traffic jam that welcomed me back as I got into my Uber in the LaGuardia parking lot this afternoon at around 4pm. My driver and I moved about a few inches every few minutes for over 40 minutes. we had basically gotten from one end of the parking lot to the other, never actually exiting until we reached about 45 minutes of being in the exact same line. I was so irritated.

I guess I could have scheduled an earlier flight back, especially since the sun rises at 6:30 at this time of the year, but I was just being lazy. That laziness ultimately cost me probably an hour in excess waiting time to get back home…. definitely cannot do that again given the LGA construction situation.

Going to and from Colombia, we actually connected in Miami. So, you’d think that if I wanted to be somewhat sensible that I just would have stayed in Miami on Monday night since I’d have to come back on Tuesday for work, but nope, I didn’t. Instead, I flew back to New York late Monday night, slept in my own bed that night, then woke up and took an 11:30am flight back to Miami for my three-day work trip.

I was telling my colleagues this today, and they both thought I was crazy. “Why would you do that?” they both asked me. Well, this trip was already booked back in January, and it’s a personal trip. And if I stayed in Miami that night, I would likely have to pay the hotel out of pocket since I wasn’t really there for work at that time, and… well, who wants to do that? And I guess I can always use more miles because why not?

While on our day trip to Guatape this past Saturday, we spoke a lot with our guide and driver Luis about local life in Medellin, Colombia, and Guatape, as well as his observations when traveling. He also travels quite a bit and has visited the U.S., including New York City. As we were sitting down at lunch in the town of Guatape on Saturday and are enjoying a refajo, freshly squeezed passion fruit juice, and a limonada de coco (coconut limeade), we marveled to him about how good all the local fruits in Colombia are and how much we love this juice, especially with its nice frothy top. He agreed, saying that he loves the local fruit and especially loves mango and blackberries (funnily enough, blackberry juice (de-seeded) is extremely common in Colombia, always seen on the list of juices to choose from at fresh juice squeezing stands, yet in the U.S., that’s pretty much unheard of. “Can I just say that the orange juice in the U.S. is just terrible,” he said, laughing. “I don’t know what that is, but it is not juice from orange.”

We also laughed and agreed. I explained to him that the multiple types and level of processing and pasteurization of the oranges used for juice, predominantly sourced from Florida, basically ruined the flavor of the orange juice, resulting in that disgusting processed flavor. Even when juices say “100% juice” on the label, they’ve deconstructed that orange and made “flavorings” out of the orange that although are artificial, because they are somewhat derived from oranges, no company is required to label their bottles with “additives” or “artificial flavoring.” The food laws in the U.S…. are questionable and sad. In the end, it doesn’t taste anything like the fresh juice you can reliably get in Colombia (or really, any other country) at all.

Yep, in Colombia, you get fresh, real food. In the U.S., we get processed everything. Not everything is better in the land of the rich and “free.”

Once upon a time, Colombia, although known internationally for producing some of the best coffee in the world, did not actually consume much of its own coffee due to it being too expensive for locals. They exported the vast majority of their coffee so the rest of the world could enjoy it, but they themselves did not enjoy the literal fruits of their own land. In recent times, this has changed quite a bit, with farmers being financially incentivized to trade in their heroine and cocaine crops instead for coffee beans, and Colombians embracing their own products. With this came many fun and new coffee shops popping up all over major cities domestically like Bogota and Medellin, with coffee tasting offerings representing the different coffee bean regions of the country (six major ones exist), coffee latte and cappuccino art (you can ask for your foam to be in the design of an elephant, a butterfly, or even the Taj Mahal!), and the ability to customize what method your chosen coffee type is brewed in (French press? Chemex? Japanese pour-over? Yama glass, anyone?).

On our first day in Bogota on Thursday, we happened upon this artsy, quaint coffee shop in La Candelaria called Arte y Pasion Cafe. Given that it looked pretty cozy and seemed to have a vast selection of coffee beans, we decided to pop in to have a taste. We decided upon a tasting of coffee representing four different regions. Like with wine, our server arranged them from lightest in flavor to strongest. He quickly told us the regions (he said it so quickly that the only one I caught was Santander). The server then presented the cups with filters propped up, allowed us to smell the freshly ground beans of each, then very neatly poured each coffee type into the filter. He followed this up by gracefully pouring hot water from a kettle into each filter from high up, allowing each to slowly drip and steep the grinds to produce the coffee liquid below it. When he was done, he took a quick taste of each with a spoon to ensure that each was of quality and represented what he thought they should taste like, smiled, then took away the filters and kettle and left us to ourselves to enjoy.

These may easily have been the deepest and most complex coffees I’d ever tasted in my life. The first two of the lighter varieties were delicious and fruity, while the second two were extremely layered, deep, borderline chocolatey with one even being a bit smokey. These were quite generous pours, too; we essentially had four full cups of coffee for the equivalent of about $7 USD.

I’m not a big coffee drinker; I’m an avid tea drinker who strongly prefers loose leaf over bags (bags are really just for the office out of convenience). But because I grew up with my dad drinking and enjoying good, strong coffee, I’ve always enjoyed the smell and taste of coffee and can recognize the good stuff from the crap. But this experience was really special and memorable. And we followed this up by going to two more coffee shops on our last day today, first Bourbon Coffee Roasters, where Chris had the filtered coffee of the day and I enjoyed what was likely the best latte of my life; then, we finished our mini coffee shop tour with an end at Cafe Cultor, where they had beautiful graffiti-like art work decorating their front wall, a brew bar and comfortable seating area inside, an outdoor garden area with ample seating, plus their own roastery in the back. Cafe Cultor is a bit quirky because they originally opened up in a recycled shipping container. They’re also very involved in their local community, as they help farmers in high risk and conflict areas and also work directly with local indigenous communities who produce the coffee they sell.

At Cafe Cultor, the server at the front knew some English, so she explained to us the different bags of beans and told us that they recently had won some major coffee awards. We ended up buying three different bags, plus some local chocolate bars to take back with us. I couldn’t stop smelling the coffee beans. They just smelled so fragrant and delicious.

We have definitely had a very delicious and spoiled food and drink experience while in Colombia. I left today feeling very grateful for not only our culinary adventures and the beautiful sights we saw, but also for all of the kind and welcoming people we met everywhere along the way.

After leaving Medellin this morning, we arrived back in Bogota to have a leisurely lunch near our hotel, and then spent most of the afternoon exploring La Candelaria with the Bogota Graffiti Tour walking group. The Bogota Graffiti Tour started back in 2011 and is the original, free graffiti art walking tour in Bogota that operates on donations only. While showing you the local art on the streets, the guide also talks you through the historical, political, and social aspects of all these artists who have created these works, activists, and the daily lives of Colombians. They work in partnership with the local community and artists to fund community events and also local street art.

I’ve always really enjoyed street art culture in any city we’ve visited that had a lot of it, and Bogota and Medellin are definitely on steroids when it comes to the sheer amount of street art we have seen literally everywhere. The last time I felt we saw anywhere as much was for the brief time we had visited Sao Paulo, Brazil, back in June 2014.

The guide of our tour was actually born in Bogota, but raised in New York City and Miami. He decided to move back to Bogota from Miami about 14 years ago and considers Bogota his real home. During the tour, he said to us, “I’m pretty sure that when you told your friends and family you were coming to Colombia that they either thought you were crazy or questioned how safe it was for you to come here. Now, you can all go back home and tell them that you had a great time, it was safe, and now they should come, too!” Colombia is full of people who just want to make a living for their families and live a somewhat meaningful life. In that sense, they’re just like any other people anywhere in the world; they are hardly more dangerous than anyone else. So, our guide said that the worst thing we could do is to continue watching Narcos on Netflix or perpetuating Pablo Escobar-era stories of drugs and crime and violence of Colombia; instead, we should encourage more tourism into cities like Bogota, which are still in the process of getting accustomed to having visitors from all over the world. Yes, crime and violence exist here. Corruption at the government level exists here. But is that really any different than the U.S. at the end of the day, with a current administration which encourages anti-Semitism, hatred of immigrants (both legal and illegal) and people of color, sexism, and praises dictators from other countries? Really, the only difference for Americans like me is that we’ve basically become numb to President Dipshit’s stupidity and hatred, to his encouragement of violence, to mass and school shootings that are literally happening every single day; that is part of our everyday life, our daily consumption of the media. However, what is not day to day for us, at least in proximity, is drug trafficking, drug violence, and cocaine being grown on farms. That is unfamiliar to us, and what is unfamiliar to us scares us as a people. The familiar, no matter how screwed up it is, won’t scare us because that is our version of “normal.” Isn’t that kind of sad to think about, that somehow, hearing about *yet another* mass shooting is just numbing to us and oftentimes today, is met with indifference, yet if we were to hear (in the U.S.) of car bombings or shots being fired due to drug violence, that that would freak us out?