As a writer, I’ve always had a particular kind of wanderlust: I’m not into doing anything extreme or uncomfortable.\u00a0 I like going someplace where the challenges are along the lines of learning a new language, or deepening the command of one I already know.\u00a0 Someplace where I’ll be drawn into deep contemplation of a landscape, a street, even a marvelous meal.\u00a0 I have hungry eyes.<\/p>\n
I’ve never felt the need to rack up “points” by seeing a lot, though. I want to savor a place I visit.\u00a0 When I was in London a few years ago, I went to my favorite museum The Wallace Collection<\/a> twice, timing my second visit when there would be as few other visitors as possible so that I could spend as much time as possible contemplating paintings I wanted to see again and truly appreciate.\u00a0 And a perfect day in Florence for me was visiting a church and enjoying its art, savoring a long lunch, then taking in another church followed by a long dinner–with both meals at the Piazza Santo Spirito, and the churches nearby.<\/p>\n If I’m abroad and I find a restaurant or caf\u00e9 I enjoy after having tried a few others, I keep going back.\u00a0 I don’t need to continue trying others, looking for some Holy Grail of Dining.\u00a0 In the new city the familiar setting, staff, and menu appeal to me and I’d rather try as many different dishes on that menu as I can.<\/p>\n Spending a week in Ghent recently, it didn’t take long sampling eateries around the train station of Gent-Sint-Pieters to decide that Caf\u00e9 Parti was where I could happily have lunch and dinner as often as possible.\u00a0 The vibe was hip and neighborly. The staff was friendly and I used as much of my newly-acquired Dutch as possible, though my French is so much better.\u00a0 I got good recommendations for specials, and I chatted just a bit about what I was doing there, where I was going (Antwerp for the Rubens Museum<\/a>), and when I got back, the differences between Antwerp and Ghent.\u00a0 It made me feel as If wasn’t just skimming across the surface of the culture.<\/p>\n In the same way, I took more cabs than trams in Ghent because I’ve often found that I learn a lot from cab drivers in foreign cities.\u00a0 My father was a cab driver years ago in New York and that’s always a point of connection; I sit in the front passenger seat to make conversation easier.\u00a0 When my Dutch failed me, I asked if I could switch to French, which was usually fine, but there was always English as a fallback.\u00a0 I learned that in Ghent, tourists came predominantly from Germany, The Netherlands, France–and China.\u00a0 And, unexpectedly, that the park near my hotel wasn’t especially safe at night.\u00a0 I got a colorful and detailed warning despite not needing one, but hey, he was being friendly, and Ghent prides itself on being “The City of Trust and Love.”\u00a0 Of course, for me as a writer, there’s a story in that conversation….<\/p>\n Lev Raphael is the author of the memoir\/travelogue My Germany<\/a> and 24 other books in many genres.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a writer, I’ve always had a particular kind of wanderlust: I’m not into doing anything extreme or uncomfortable.\u00a0 I like going someplace where the challenges are along the lines of learning a new language, or deepening the command of one I already know.\u00a0 Someplace where I’ll be drawn into deep contemplation of a landscape, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[347],"tags":[841,835,823,832,822,840,824,837,842,843,834,833,836,838,839,341,380,495],"class_list":["post-2565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-antwerp","tag-belgians","tag-belgium","tag-cafe-parti","tag-flanders","tag-florence","tag-ghent","tag-london","tag-rubens","tag-rubens-museum","tag-speaking-dutch","tag-taxis","tag-the-wallace-collection","tag-tourism","tag-tourists","tag-travel","tag-writers","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2565"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5513,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2565\/revisions\/5513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}