Almost Abroad

Just when I'm thinking I'm loving standing still, I start itching to travel again. My new posters just came in for my apartment--luscious Cote d'Azur landscape, a 1950's tourism poster for Mexico and a view of LA's cityhall from Olvera Street. I finally got my library card and found out that the JP library is known for it's travel section, so I picked up Mexico, A traveler's history and La Revolucion. I've subscribed to new travel blogs and obsessively ask anyone who's been about beaches in Mexico.

The time (or budget) for travel abroad hasn't come yet, but I figure Miami is darn close. Every year this weekend is the South Florida Lindy Exchange. Since moving I've gone from host to hostee, but it's so great to return to Miami and feel at home again. There'll be the normal dancing all night, but I'm most excited to feel the humidity again, to see my old bartenders at Tapas, to watch the sunrise on the beach, to chat with the characters on Lincoln Road.

I think it was my move to Miami Beach in the first place that started my wanderlust. I packed up everything, got dropped off in what was, granted, the same time-zone, but a 24 hour drive away from anything that I knew. Spanish was the first language. Palm trees didn't signal vacation, they were your landscaping. The clothing, scarce and the parties, huge.

For this northeastern girl, I might as well have been in South America. That's the thing about Miami, you're so close to dangling off the edge of America, that you may have well not be in America. The papers are filled with news of Cuba and even the tourists seemed to adopt their own special 'Miami' personality now that they were on vacation.

Bring it on.