Being Geek Chic is a blog about one woman navigating the male-dominated industries of production and tech. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi, Founder, CEO and Director of Mighteor - one of the world's first internet video production companies. Learn more about Mighteor here.
I am a really lucky person. As a young child, my parents hauled my brother and I through airports, mountains, resorts, unknown cities and through backwood forests whenever they had a chance. It’s a rare gift, because it makes you unafraid of the world. Too often, I meet people who only discovered their wanderlust after making their way overseas during a study abroad trip in college. For me, studying abroad was no big thing - I was a veteran of being in unusual places by my twenties.
Earlier this month, I was reminded of my great fortune when my two dear friends joined me on an adventure to Las Coloradas, Mexico. I didn’t think twice about renting a car in Mexico. Or driving three hours to a remote part of the country. Or using my rusty Spanish to figure out if it was a safe region or not. My friends didn’t even tell me until we were on our way back that they were a little bit afraid of this decision, which I appreciated. The fact is: Nothing will make you feel more confident about your decision than people keeping their reservations to themselves.
But here’s the thing: It was totally worth it.
Going to Las Colaradas is not for the faint of heart. It requires driving through some fairly remote areas of Mexico. There are entire hour stretches with no gas stations, no rest stops, no nothing. It’s a challenge, to be sure. And with that, there is very limited cell reception.
So you don’t want to get lost. But you also don’t want to miss the opportunity to see something so perfect.
And that’s what really brings me to my point. If you’re a creative, you spend so much time inundating yourself with inspiration. My first step on any new client or any new project is to start a search of visual inspiration. I scour Vimeo. I play video after video on YouTube. I scroll through photos and graphics on Pinterest for hours. I put endless visual ideas into my mind. I let them swirl around and eventually, I start creating myself.
All these visual ideas are right there, at my finger tips. That constant access to the beautiful, creative work of others is a double edged resource, though. It’s a delicate balance between being inspired and falling into feelings of inadequacy. And once those feelings of not quite being good enough or not being able to reach the bar set in, it’s next to impossible to push them out.
Until you get your damn smartphone off the grid.
And you see something so amazing that no image on Pinterest can compare to - that no video can compete with - that no script can overwhelm you. And that’s why these adventures are ultimately worth it. Not just because you get to see something amazing, but you get to FEEL the beauty of something without judgement of yourself or the person that created it. Instead, you experience beauty exactly as it is - right in front of you.
The next time you find yourself creatively exhausted, go see something beautiful. And ideally do it without any hope of cell phone service.
Growing up in Minnesota, you learn two things early: 1. Paul Bunyan may not be real, but he’s real in our hearts. 2. The headwaters of the Mighty Mississippi call the state home. As a land-locked liver who formerly dwelled near 10 lakes within 10 minutes, you miss water. Long for it even. So when I started planning a little birthday shindig for my besties, I decided that there was nothing more important than spending an evening near the sound of aqua making its token gurgles.
Enter the Covington Inn. An amazing tugboat docked at the St. Paul Yacht Club on Harriet Island under the shadow of smaller of the Twin Cities. Was a delighted to stay there? Immensely. Was I charmed by its every detail? Completely. Would I tell you to stay there? Absolutely.
As my love of traveling has evolved, my love of staying in odd places has grown even more. You can always stay at the Holiday Inn, but a Holiday Inn is the same in St. Paul as it is in Santa Fe as it is in Moab as it is in New York. Why shouldn’t our restful hours also be an experience? Why should these bed dwellings also not transport us?
Well, I think they should.
So how does one find experiences like these? I’m here to help. In the case of the Covington Inn, you can simply go check out their website should you find yourself in St. Paul, Minnesota. And as it turns out, the owner wants to move onto her next adventure, so if you want to buy it… well, that might be a worthwhile thing for you.
But this isn’t an ad for the Covington so let’s move onto the rest of my resources:
First, you need to bookmark this site: Design Tripper. This helpful web wonderland compiles all the best places and gives you real user reviews of the accommodations. And truly, these places are not your average dwellings. Treehouses? Check. Yurts? You got it. Vintage charm? Plenty.
Next, skip AirBnB (seriously, the company is full of some questionable people) and check out VRBO. This helpful acronym stands in for Vacation Rentals By Owner. They are really best for amazingly huge places that will host your entire family if they want to get away. This is what my family does and it’s lovely and amazing every single time.
And lastly, make a note of The Guardian’s helpful interactive map, which can be found here. They’ve mapped out all the best/weirdest international hotels and you are the lucky recipient of their hard work.
There’s just something about checking into the “Captain’s Quarters” instead of room 410 that makes travel all the more delightful.
If you really just read this post because you love the movie The Life Aquatic, I’m sorry. But not really. There is plenty of Wes Anderson love in my archive, which you can partake in here.
There is one thing I know for sure: 2015 has been my year of serious Wanderlust. This year, I’ve traveled to Hawaii, Mexico, Italy, Netherlands, Utah, California, Minnesota and Washington. I think there will probably be a few more in there too before the year is over.
This is the ultimate movie about France. Forget all the movies that feature the love stories about people going to Paris and kissing under the Eiffel Tower and go straight for the Eiffel Tower of French stories.
If you’re not much on love stories, then enjoy this story about love lost. This lovely film about a woman whose wedding is canceled just days before the event is one of my favorites I’ve seen as a single lady, because it’s honest and relatable and doesn’t fall into stupid tropes about heartbreak.
Song of the Sea (Amazon Prime)
An animated movie is a necessity on this list. In this case, how about an adorable one about a Celtic family on the sea? The cast is incredible and the art is just pure joy.
This movie got a ton attention from the Academy Awards in the early 2000s and with good reason. Frida was a real woman of adventure and boldness. She’s the kind of person whose art was inspired by real life - wherever real life may take her.
Kumiko the Treasure Hunter (Amazon Prime)
Imagine traveling across the world to find something extremely obscure and everyone in your life thinks you’re crazy for doing so? Yeah, I may have not gone on a mission to find a long lost tape, but I relate the Kumiko’s tenacity. And the cinematography makes snow look heavenly.
I am a different person right now. Different from a year ago. Different from 6 months ago. Different from 60 days ago. I have getting completely, totally, frighteningly lost in Italy to thank.
Imagine this: I get on a train at Milani Garibaldi on a Thursday afternoon heading to a piazza that is supposed to be on one of the old canals of Milano. The pictures I had seen on various travel blogs made it seem like the inspiration for a scene in a Disney movie - how could I not go?
It’s a beautiful northern Italian day. Low 80s. Hardly a single cloud in the sky. Less humid than usual. I’m in my trademark black outfit. Skinny black jeans. Unusually hemmed black tee. Black sunnies. I pull up some directions to this beloved location on Google Maps and I confirm with the train conductor to see if I’m headed in right direction. When he assures me, I waste no time buying the ticket and boarding the train.
Alt-J in my ears, I zone out for 5 stops, careful to listen for the familiar bing noise that comes over the speaker right before arriving at the next station. One. Bing. Two. Bing. Three. Bing. Four. Bing. Five. Bing. Get up and get off that train. Transportation is simultaneously the hardest and most universal thing about travel.
When I get off the tracks, I put my music away so I can pay attention to the careful directions I read online when I still had WiFi. No WiFi anywhere here. Believe me, I check. Incessantly. To the point where my phone battery is almost dead from scanning for hot spots. Instead, I must rely on my memory and gut instincts. Go right, past the fields of green and then turn right when you see a bus stop. There should be a T in the road.
After 25 minutes of walking and no right turns and no Ts in the road, I knew something was up. Sweaty from that 80 degree sun that no longer felt delightful and completely alone in the middle of nowhere, I started laughing. I was trying not to panic. I was desperate not to cry. I was hoping I wasn’t getting wickedly sunburned. Every single degree of the 360 degrees of space around me was just grass. Dying, beat down, fields of grass making way for autumn as summer slowly passed.
Where in the actual hell was I?
Totally lost.
It was just a field. Surrounded by empty nothing. I had walked so far, I couldn’t even see the train station anymore. This place was so random, so remote, that it could have easily been the set for an abandoned farming plot of a lost community out of a dystopian novel. So now what? Seriously, now what? There was no one to ask. There was no using my smartphone. There was only walking back.
So I started walking back.
Here’s my advice: If you have never forced yourself to be ALONE, truly alone, for at least three days - you MUST do it.
And here’s why.
When you are forced to spend that much time alone (or in my case, 34 days alone), you are forced to see your life from a new perspective. You are forced to see yourself from a new perspective. Ideally, you’ll be so far from home that your phone won’t operate properly so you can’t reach out for comfort when you get lonely. You’ll be so committed to this journey that you won’t allow yourself to pay the exorbitant data fees for using your phone. And hopefully, you’ll be ready, even if you aren’t ready. And you might get lost. Actually, you will probably get lost. It will suck. It will be scary. But it is the big fish you have been trying to catch. It is the thing you were looking for and didn’t even know it. Because when you reel that in, you can see what you were hoping was on the line.
Maybe that metaphor is out of control, so let’s put it more simply: Even though limited access to my phone, loneliness, unconnectedness and fear were the very things that bit me in the ass when I was standing out in the middle of that field, they were also the things that forced me to dig deep and actually see myself. Not a reflection. An inflection. An inner observation of my real worth. My real strength. My real will.
I walked the long ass walk back to the train station and waited for a train headed back to Milano.
I never found the piazza. I did find a bit of myself.
You don’t go to Italy and not drink espresso. That’s just the reality. So in August, I said goodbye to my French Press and got used to the idea of sipping shots of espresso out of tiny, adorable cups while I toured across the country that looks like a boot. These are the things that real Italians do and as a woman who is 50% Italian, I’m not about to deny my culture.
Every single day, I would set out to find a new cafe and give their caffe a shot. And you know what? Over time, I stopped missing my drip coffee. Why? Espresso is the mastery of a few key things: it’s quick. It’s efficient. It’s less hard on your stomach. And it smells so, so nice.
The truth is that Americans have really odd tastes in coffee. We love our sugary, whipped creamed, dessert like beverages in really large white cups. But our espresso? I have to tell you guys: it’s bad. It’s not Italy good. It’s not Europe good. We just do espresso wrong. My friends in London? Well, they’re doing instant coffee all the time - but they don’t really immerse in the loveliness of an espresso either. They do, however, appreciate the capuccino more than we Americanas.
Need proof? Tassimo has the facts:
Less than 40% of us in the go straight black with our coffee. And you know what? That’s where I think we’re going wrong. And I have a few revelations to share after more than a month of sampling caffes all over the great country of Italia.
1. Espresso is the most stripped down version of the caffeine boost you can possibly consume. It’s devoid of all the things that make coffee drinks unhealthy for us. No extra sugar. No whole milk. All the fattening agents are completely missing.
2. A cafe isn’t going to serve you a bad espresso, because they can’t hide it behind flavoring. Do you even know if the espresso in your latte is good? Probably not. If you’ve got a pumpkin spice mix all splashed in with your beans, it’s tough to decipher if you’ve got the real deal or not.
3. Espresso encourages digestion. Seriously! It’s science. Add more to it and suddenly its health benefits start to deteriorate.
4. You can enjoy an espresso multiple times a day without the crazy effects of large coffees and lattes. I am convinced my persistent eye twitching was cured when I stopped drink triple shot lattes that are loaded with sugar. One shot, simple. Pure. Energy.
5. Espresso is just adorable in those tiny cups. I can’t help it. I love a tiny little cup.
Since coming home, I’ve been committed to trying to find the best espresso in the states. And you know what I’ve discovered? I’ve discovered that I’m going to have to just make my espressos at home. It’s so much better for me. And it’s bound to save me a little money.
Plus, I’m really looking forward to shopping for those tiny, adorable, espresso cups.
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This post was brought to you by our partner: Tassimo! We love our partners because they help make Being Geek Chic happen. Being Geek Chic content is written and produced by real geeks and never comes from content mills.
