When I was younger and traveled far less frequently, whether it was for work or vacation, it was never about the journey. It was always about the destination. I paid as little as I could for what were probably the worst flights and the worst (unassigned) seats, and one time, my cheap plane ticket to Singapore required me to lay over in Beijing for over nine hours. There’s oftentimes a cost to being cheap when traveling, and in this case, it was probably my sanity, not to mention the fact that in the Beijing airport in March, they didn’t turn on the heat despite the fact that it was freezing in the terminal I was in. So, that was all fun and games. At least I had two friends to freeze together with me.

Chris, being the son of avid and frequent travelers, made fun of me then for my un-reserved-in-advance seats, my “pleb” airlines (I few Air China once – never, ever again), and my hostel stays. Once upon a time, I didn’t understand or want loyalty to an airline or hotel chain because I didn’t see the value in it. My thought was – I’m not going to said city to enjoy the hotel; that’s just the place I’ll be sleeping and showering. I’m also not going to Malaysia for the actual flight; the flight is just the method to get there. But now, having been loyal for years and seeing the benefits reaped, I think this is the best way for a frequent traveler to go.

Airplane food sucks – if you fly economy, or if you fly a U.S. airline. It is amazing when you fly premium economy or above, where you can get gorgeous bento-box-like presentations of Japanese deliciacies, like fried soft-shelled crab and salmon and salmon roe rice balls, or miso soup that tastes exponentially better than your standard, generic Japanese takeout. On Qantas, even in economy, though, the food is good. You can get mango Weis bars (the best fruit-cream frozen dessert bars in the world), Varlhona chocolates, and basically whatever wine or spirit you want as often as you want it. And you always get real tableware. Nothing comes in a disgusting TV-dinner-like setup.

Now, it’s about the journey and the destination. I still don’t love sitting for 14 hours on a plane to get to Asia or Australia, but I do love the Dreamliner windows, the food and dessert, and the lay-flat bed seats when I have them.

I love it when I meet people who find beauty in the things that others tend to ignore. This morning, a colleague and I were talking about our long weekend travels, and he was curious to learn more about Nova Scotia. Since he and his fiancee have a friend who is from Cleveland, they went out there for the long weekend to visit her. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Cleveland, but after I gave him some suggestions and told him the food scene there is actually quite good, he went in with an open mind. And he came back beaming and saying he really enjoyed his time there, from the general vibe of the downtown area to the food scene.

“I never thought I’d like it, but I had a lot of fun!” he said.

That makes me so happy.

Long weekends rarely feel long. Three-day-weekends always fly by too quickly. And even when we took off two extra days to stretch our three-day-weekend into a five-day-weekend to Nova Scotia, it still felt like it ended too soon and we didn’t have enough time to see all the beauty that is this beloved province. So I hate it when people ask about your “long weekend” as though it truly was long and felt like some great rest period.

But sometimes, the weekend may be too long for your skin, or at least, maybe the diet you are giving to your skin. I noticed on Sunday morning that i was developing bumps across my forehead, and I wondered if it was because of the lack of vegetables I tend to get during travel, or if it was because of all the seafood I am eating. No one ever said seafood was great for skin.

We had breakfast with Chris’s colleague yesterday, who lives and works here in Halifax. He was telling us about how Halifax was still fairly under the radar but of course, as with any up and coming city, is becoming more expensive. As we could see from the Halifax seaport where we ate together, a lot of construction is actively going on throughout downtown Halifax, with everything from condo and apartment high rises to new office buildings. One very old and tall building looked as though it would soon be knocked down.  And while Canadians certainly travel to Halifax, Americans certainly don’t en masse (no surprise). And even with the people who live right here in Halifax and Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Highlands National Park is not a place that people go to often or even at all given how far to the east end of the province it goes. It is literally at the very tip, and it’s considered to many to be no-man’s-land. Chris’s colleague said he’s only been there about three times ever, and once was for a wedding.

So after breakfast, we drove the 4.5-hour drive out there and settled into our cozy little cabin in the woods, and by the time we left today, we completed three hikes that overlooked the gorgeous Nova Scotia Atlantic coastline. We hiked through dirt, water, massive and unstable rocks, and thorny bushes, and I got my legs all scratched up in the process. The weather was also quite cold, as I realized I had slightly under-dressed. Although the sun just came out as we left today, I’d only imagine that on a sunny blue-skied day, the water would be a brilliant blue against the bright green that is literally everywhere in Cape Breton. That’s kind of the way I imagine Scotland based on the travel photos I have seen. This province is so underrated with so much natural beauty, and since it’s not touched much, it will probably continue on for quite a long time.

I’m happy we’re visiting it at a time when pretty much no one I know has gone here. It’ll be one of those places that will probably become more popular and well known, and we’ll look back and say that we went there before it became all the rage, and we advocated for it long ago. 🙂

Whenever we’re traveling, at some point when I’m taking time off from work or seeing my friends in the time leading up to the trip, colleagues and friends will ask me where I am going. Whenever I’m going to a popular place or a place that seems high on the “it” list for travel, like Australia, Thailand, or Spain, people will inevitably respond with oohs and ahhs, respond positively, and say things like, “I’m so jealous!”, “I want to go there so badly!!”, or “OHMIGOD, HAVE AN AMAZING TIME! TAKE TONS OF PICS!” When it’s places that are a tad bit off the beaten track to those who either don’t travel a lot, don’t travel at all, or only go to “popular,” well known attractions, I get questions like, “why are you going there?”, what are you doing there?”, “what’s there that makes you want to go?”, or lastly, “do you have relatives there who you’re visiting?” (this last one, I got a lot for Korea and Taiwan from white colleagues. I am not Taiwanese. I am also not Korean. And Chris is obviously neither). I realize they don’t mean any harm and aren’t trying to be judgmental, but why should Paris get oohs and ahhs while Halifax gets quizzical looks, and Taipei gets the relatives question?

I was having this chat with Chris, and when I told him a colleague who is actually from Canada (suburbs of Toronto) asked why I was going to Halifax, he looked at me plainly and said, “Because I fucking want to go there. And I don’t care what you think or what you think you know about it.” No one informs his travel decisions. We inform our travel decisions. “I don’t take travel advice from morons.”

Well stated. I love my fierce darling.

Before this trip, other than the greenery, the mountains, and the water of Nova Scotia, I was thinking about eating lobster. Chris and I rarely eat lobster while in the U.S. unless it happens to be part of a dish. It’s so expensive and oftentimes not very fresh, especially in New York City (for the record, I think Luke’s Lobster is just okay, and their crab roll is far better than their lobster roll). The only time I’ve had lobster and been extremely satisfied was the one time I went to Maine, and being in Maine, of course the lobster was extremely cheap and cooked just as I ordered it, so it was perfection. The second time I had it and loved it, it was in a lobster roll (buttered, no mayonnaise) at the famous and well-acclaimed Neptune Oyster in the North End of Boston, and I was so turned off by not only the wait to get in (2+ hours), but also the rude and surly service I received.

Well, when I was doing research for this trip, across the board, I found that seafood was (not surprisingly) far cheaper in Nova Scotia, bordering on Maine lobster prices, and with the added benefit of the U.S. dollar strength against the Canadian dollar, I was so excited to get our lobster fix for (relatively) cheap here. There’s lobster rolls on pretty much every menu, and some are as cheap as $15 CAD (that’s just over $11 USD!). I told Chris that I wanted to eat as much lobster as possible, the glutton I am.

Well, we drove out to Lunenberg, a UNESCO world heritage site town just over an hour west of Halifax, and the places that were supposed to have lobster rolls… had none. In fact, they were completely removed from the menus that I had seen online. When we asked the place we ended up eating lunch at about this, she said that the price of lobster was far too high at this time, and that they couldn’t sell lobster rolls at a reasonable price in order to actually make a profit, so they decided to remove them from the menu completely for now. We were both crushed.

It was fine in the end today. We had delicious seafood chowder and local scallops at rock-bottom prices and high freshness, but the lobster lust continued.

Today, we arrived in our fifth Canadian province, Nova Scotia, as part of our goals to hit every Canadian province (and territory). After an annoying connection and long layover in Toronto due to American Airlines not having any direct flights between New York City and Halifax, we pretty much spent the whole day traveling and arrived just in time for dinner. If we had flown direct, the flight would have only taken about two hours, so I guess that’s the price of loyalty sometimes. Luckily for us, Halifax has no shortage of good food, and being right on the Atlantic, seafood is plentiful, local, and fresh throughout the entire province, and at prices that are relatively economical.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about eating and viewing menus in countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is that there is a very strong Asian influence across menus, and it’s usually done tastefully and well. It’s not like when you’re in the middle of the U.S. and you see “peanut noodles” on a random Western-style restaurant, and you’re completely repulsed at the idea of what they mean when they say “peanut noodles” (what they probably mean is that they’ve mixed Skippy peanut butter with some oil and tossed it in some noodles, and who really wants to eat that?). Tonight for example, we ordered tikka masala mussels as a starter, and the curry sauce tasted legitimately like tikka masala, and the mussels were local and extremely fresh tasting. These mussels were definitely not frozen, and that tikka masala really tasted Indian-British, and could have potentially been made in a tandoori-type oven.

In Canada as in Australian and New Zealand, there seems to be a larger respect for Asian cuisine and culture in general. It’s not just about General Tso’s for Chinese, and people don’t just assume that when you want Japanese food that you want sushi. In these countries, when a non-Asian person gives you Asian restaurant recommendations, you could actually trust that their recommendations will actually be good and up to your standard. Sadly, I could never say that about the U.S., even though I’ve lived in three very metropolitan areas.

Up and coming. Trendy. Hipster. All the rage. For whatever reason in San Francisco, any restaurant that has any of those words associated with it will inevitably be a place I will not enjoy. I need to stop adding these new restaurants to my Yelp bookmark list and just stop going to them. I always leave feeling ripped off and like I paid so much for so little of a truly good experience. Aina, Statebird Provision, and The Progress are just some of the places I’ve been to recently and just think… Did I really pay $60-70 for my share of the bill for that? That’s all I get? My friends and I actually paid $8 each for a spam musubi bao – what the hell were we thinking?!

San Tung, El Farolito, and new hole-in-the-walls I find like House of Pancake seem to be the only places I end up loving and really wanting to come back to. These other places are trying too hard, and I don’t want to pay for them anymore.

In just six years, Boston has changed so much that there are certain parts of the city I barely even recognize. We stayed around the South End, near the water front area, and the entire place is completely unrecognizable to me. So many high rises, likely residences, are going up, and construction is endless. Streets are blocked off because they are being redone, and scaffolding is everywhere.

Other changes have happened, too, since I was last here. As in New York, San Francisco, and likely every other major metropolitan city, the constant catering towards people who are vegan and gluten-free is here in Boston and Cambridge. J.P. Licks, an institution of an ice cream shop, has dairy-free, soy-free, and vegan options. Juice Shop and Sweetgreen seem to be in every neighborhood we walked through. And even in the North End, there were multiple gluten-free handmade pasta options on the menus.

And now, Jamaica Plain is now moving from being semi hipster to being upscale and known for high rent. When I first moved to the Boston area in 2004, JP was considered dangerous and not a place to be at night. Now, everyone wants to move there. Chris’s friend’s ex-girlfriend, who recently moved from New York to Boston, now lives in Jamaica Plain. She and her dog love it there. That says everything about how much has changed here.