The Happiest Place on Earth

Longtime readers of this blog, which means me, will remember my fascination with Iceland. It's the number one place in the world that I would like to visit, and as it turns out, it's also the happiest place on earth,* according to former NPR foreign correspondent and self-described grump Eric Weiner. After spending years traveling from one miserable place to another to report on mostly miserable events, he figured it was time to search for something radically different—happiness—and now has a book to show for it.

Weiner managed to score a spot on tonight's Colbert Report, which means his book, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World, will benefit from the Colbert Bump and hit a high spot on the major bestseller lists. I haven't read the book (hey, give me a break—I just heard about it an hour ago), but it did garner a solid four stars on Amazon. Since I tend to trust customer reviews, taking the most negative and the most positive reviews with a grain of salt, and since Weiner was booked on Colbert, I'm pretty sure it's worth checking out.

But back to Iceland. Call me crazy, but I love traveling to cold places. Give me Canada or Alaska any day over the heat and humidity of the tropics. Weiner's research tells me I'm no so crazy after all:

All things considered, colder is happier. Maybe we should all be vacationing in Iceland, not the Caribbean. And global warming takes on added significance…it's also likely to seriously bum us out. This might be the most inconvenient truth of all.

So there. Cold makes people happy. So does this, I suppose:

I want to stay in that house, somewhere on the frozen tundra outside of Reykjavik. Even though I'm living my bliss in Colorado, I wouldn't mind a week or two in another geographically blissful, glacially beautiful area.

 

* Okay, so it's one of the happiest places on earth, but I have no emotional tie with the others. Iceland it is.

Knit 'n Kneel

That's what I'm calling my knitting weekend at the abbey. 'Twas wondrous in every way---16 very cool, very real women; one very cool, very real instructor; Lord knows how many very cool, very real nuns; and great accommodations, meals, weather, and northern Colorado scenery. Oh, and church.

Mary Gildersleeve, knitting teacher extraordinaire, gets high praise for putting together a series of workshop sessions that were just right---not too much, not too little, with just the right amount of time for one-on-one help. Mary is so generous with her time that I'm surprised she got any sleep at all. Maybe she didn't, but it didn't show. She somehow managed to coordinate the workshop schedule with the many daily services at the chapel. The weekend never felt tiring, overwhelming, or rushed.

And the nuns---what a delightful group! One nun was a former knitter who gave a great presentation on creativity and the value of just sitting and knitting; another wore a perpetually amused expression that let you know that she knew something you didn't know, and she was not about to share; and a third seemed to think we were entertaining in a puzzling sort of way.

My favorite image from the weekend, though, had nothing to do with knitting or kneeling: a nun speeding down a dirt road on an ATV, her habit and veil flapping in the considerable wind, doing her best to steer with one hand and with the other hold down the straw hat that threatened to fly off to Wyoming. It was priceless.

Off to the Abbey

I'll be living my bliss this weekend, attending a knitting retreat at an abbey in northern Colorado. How cool is that, I ask you? One Mary Gildersleeve, a certified hand-knitting expert and knitwear designer, will be leading the retreat and causing the rest of us to do penance for being so envious of her skills and creativity. Keeping us in line* will be Sister Hildegard, guest house director of the Abbey of St. Walburga** in Virginia Dale, Colorado.

The last time I experienced anything that sounded this medieval, I was in a real live medieval castle in England. Really now---Gildersleeve! Hildegard! Walburga! How can you not have great expectations for a weekend filled with such a wondrous array of appellations?

Alas and alack, there will be no cell service, no Internet connection, no technology more advanced than electricity, so there will be no real-time blogging from the big event. Rest assured, my lads and lassies, I shall report on this extraordinary journey back in time when I return to the 21st century. If I return.

* Not really.

** St. Walburga lived in 8th-century England, and to this day her bones produce a healing "oil" throughout the winter.

Whew!

Okay, that was one long break. Next time I'm sick for two weeks, I'm going to blog my little brains out anyway just to keep up the habit.

Moving is taking up major portions of real estate in that little brain these days, with my move to Colorado Springs a mere two weeks away. So if life was perfect, and I could live anywhere I wanted to, here's where I'd live:

• Colorado Springs (Hey, I'm not about to jinx the move by placing this one lower on the list)


• Montreal


• A remote cabin in Yellowstone (remember, we're talking "perfect world" here)


• Santa Fe


• Asheville


• Alaska, even if just for a year or so


• Way up in the Colorado mountains


• Somewhere along the coast of Maine


• Newfoundland, just to experience it


• Any village in the French countryside

What's your top 10? And what keeps you from living where you really want to live?

Blogging Withdrawal Syndrome...

...has struck. See here.

Didn't See This One Coming

Nobody likes to be frisked and searched by airport security. And nobody likes to stand in long lines waiting for that frisking and searching. But of all the new security measures that have been implemented, one I really hate is the curbside "no standing" rule outside baggage claim. You do your level best to arrive at just the right moment—when the person you're picking up is all ready to go, when the two of you have coordinated everything by cellphone down to the very nanosecond, when Jupiter is perfectly aligned with Mars, when the forces of good have finally vanquished the forces of evil—and something goes wrong. You miss each other by that same nanosecond because nature has called at the worst possible moment or some long lost friend had the nerve to bump into your passenger just as she hung up the phone with you.

Imagine my shock when I arrived at Orlando International Airport to pick up my daughter and discovered signage directing drivers to a "cell waiting lot." Whoa! What's this? A free parking area where we can wait until that magical moment arrives? Instead of circling the airport multiple times until said moment? What's up with that? This is an incredibly helpful idea! How on earth did they come up with it?

I've come to expect so little when it comes to travel, especially airline travel, that it's downright startling when a positive change is made. Did I mention that the cell lot is also a wi-fi hot spot?

And then—and then—get this: when the perfect moment came to pick up my daughter, there was a security officer directing traffic. Not just yelling at drivers, but actually directing traffic. I positively swooned at the sight, which made for some tricky maneuvering.

If you need a ride from the airport, give me a call. I'm so giddy over these new services that I'm happy to oblige.

Chillout Music, For Sure

Last winter, while everyone else I knew and didn't know was dreaming of vacationing somewhere in the Caribbean, I was making plans of my own for a springtime holiday across the pond. Not in London or Paris, Rome or Madrid. No, my intended destination was far more exotic: Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland.

I knew a fair amount about Iceland, enough to know I wanted to go there. A house fire disrupted my plans, which were actually never much more than wishful thinking, but I haven't given up hope of vacationing there someday. But now, there's an even greater lure calling me to Iceland, stronger than the glaciers that cover so much of the country.

That lure is the music.

And I don't just mean Björk, although—thanks to my daughter and www.last.fm—I've discovered a lot of her music that I'd never heard before, and I do like it. But my love of Icelandic music lies mainly with the incredible, spiritual sound of a group called Sigur Rós—"victory rose" in Icelandic. That sound is hard to define, so I'll take the easy way out and list some of the tags on last.fm that describe the music: ambient, post-rock, soundscape, electronic—even terms like heavenly, peaceful, dreamy, and the ever-popular and in this case, ironic, "chillout." You can download 11 songs, more than an hour of their distinctive sound, for free on the media page of their website.

Next week, the group is appearing in concert in Miami, a mere four-hour drive from my house, and at a fund-raiser in New York, a mere three-hour flight away. Forget it. I'll hold out and see them in concert in their homeland. Iceland in December? No problem. This could be the year of my dream vacation—on an island just shy of the Arctic Circle.

Googie's, McSorley's, and Minetta Tavern

Okay, I know there are lots of you out there who have memories of these three Greenwich Village hangouts. Let's swap stories. I'll start:

• Googie's: My all-time favorite NYC bar. I stumbled on this place by accident in the late '60s, not knowing it was already a classic. Friendliest place ever then, and apparently still so. On Sullivan Street.



• Minetta Tavern: Another place I found by accident. I ate there every time I went to the Village, which was way too often back in the '60s and '70s. I only recently found out that Reader's Digest started in its basement in 1922, and it later became a haven for poets and writers. Must have been all those literary vibes that drew me in. At Minetta and MacDougal.



• McSorley's: I'm guessing somebody told me about this place back in the day. It was known for having cheap drinks then, but I understand it's been yuppified, and drinks are now priced out of reason. On East 7th near Bowery.

It's been decades since I've darkened the doors of any of these places, but even though I can't/don't drink anymore, I'd go back in a heartbeat. (Well, maybe not to McSorley's, since apparently more than just the prices have changed.) My daughter is in NYC right now, and she is not to leave the city until she hits Googie's and the Minetta Tavern and calls me from both places. I love holding a written will over the heads of my offspring.

Yeah, there are lots of other places I could mention, especially on Bleecker. But these three places hold a special place in my heart. Great memories, all around. Share yours!

I Heart New York

What I like about you:

Your people. How can you not love New Yorkers?

Your transit system. It's so easy to get around the city.

Your not-New-Jersey-ness. Sheesh, I had forgotten what a cesspool the Meadowlands area is. I lived in the state for 39 years. I have the right to say this.

Your food. Still savoring the memory.

Your skyline. Saw it this weekend for the first time since 9/11, and the absence of two tall buildings made my heart skip a beat or two. But still. I love your skyline.

Your energy. I didn't need a nap the whole time I was there!

Declensions**, Anyone?

I took a quick trip to NYC over the weekend, and it proved to be uneventful travelwise—until the flight home. After our Continental pilot wished us a good morning at 2:45 p.m., he asked the first-class passengers not to conjugate* around the first-class galley.

Yes, I laughed out loud.

Things settled down for the rest of the flight, but then again my headphones drowned out anything else he might have said—until we began our ever-popular initial descent. That's when he thanked us for choosing Continental and wished us an enjoyable stay in Orlando, or "wherever your final destinations take you."

I hope my final destinations take me someplace enjoyable, that's for sure. May yours do the same.


* In case you need a refresher, this is something—not at all unpleasant, I might add—that you do to verbs. Okay, it also means "to couple." If first class was coupling around the galley, that may explain the pilot's brain lapses.

** This has to do with inflections of nouns, pronouns, and adjectives and can indeed be unpleasant.