Tag: travel blog

12 Quick Pics To Convince You To Go To The Beach This Summer

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I love the heat and I love the beach, so when the weather started to get apocalyptically warm this summer, my cousin Olivia and I decided to spend the day at the nearest one. 

From Moynihan train hall, it takes about 50 minutes by train to get to Long Beach, followed by a 10 minute walk as the crow flies.  

The idea was to get some hard seltzers and sandwiches, purchased at our corner deli, and then spend the day on a clean, pristine beach, unbothered and beautiful. 

A couple of weeks before going with Olivia, I did a dry run. I put together a playlist, some new swimsuits, and a new beach blanket, then hit the beach. I was ready to lay out on the sand all day, looking like an American Bridget Bardot (minus all of her controversies).

The water was numbingly cold, but swimming around made it enjoyable. I spent hours floating in the water and fighting the waves, blissfully losing track of time. 

In the distance were cargo ships, silhouetted blue, and it was weird but cool to see freight being moved a couple of hundred yards away from the place that I was laying. Every few minutes it seemed an airplane flew overhead, flying a banner advertising something. 

Since I went during the middle of the week, the only people with me on the beach were teenagers. There I was with the youth of America, watching them stage wrestling matches in a circle behind the life guard tower, then disperse once they saw the cops coming. 

(Oh to be young).

I knew even then that I wanted more days like that where I could listen to Olivia Dean and read a good book on top of warm sand, forgetting about life for a while.

When we went together, Olivia and I got to relive our childhoods, throughout which we were mermaids swimming in the ocean. We did hand stands in the water, then immediately had to lay out on our sides on our towels to let the water trickle warmly out of our ears. It was the two of us together, excitedly squealing every time a wave rolled towards us and deciding whether to go over or under it at the last possible second. 

Clouds sailed across the sky, which was a perfect robin’s-egg blue. Seaweed brushed against our bodies as we swam out. 

When we weren’t in the water, Olivia and I sat on our towels, playing good music and chatting on what became a perfect Saturday. We both had playlists with about 8 different vibes, mainly containing songs about how the singer is young and will always be young (good luck with that).

After sufficiently tanning and swimming around, there was soft serve ice cream with sprinkles on the boardwalk, and then we called it a day.

By the time we were on the train going back, our bodies were briny, water-logged, and sun-drenched, but we’d had a good time. Being in the sun and the saltwater softened me. Swimming has a way of clearing my head in a way that nothing else does. 

Before the summer’s end, everyone who can should make a pilgrimage to the beach, if for no better reason than to quiet the noise of everyday life. You will get a nauseatingly picturesque day if you go to Long Beach where the water may be chilly but the weather is often beautiful. 

And if you ever need a “beachy and peachy” playlist to play at the beach, feel free to use mine:

Wait A Minute! by WILLOW
Why by Dominic Fike
Meet Me At Our Spot by THE ANXIETY, WILLOW, Tyler Cole
Ciao Ciao by La rappresentante di lista
Closer by The Chainsmokers, Halsey
Watermelon Sugar by Harry Styles
Summertime Sadness by Lana Del Rey
HOT TO GO by Chappell Roan
DtMF by Bad Bunny
Disparate Youth by Santigold
Rollercoaster by Bleachers
Champagne Coast by Blood Orange
Dancing On My Own by Robyn
All My Girls Like To Fight by Hope Tala
The Less I Know The Better by Tame Impala

(And anything by Olivia Dean)

Have a good summer!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel


P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about all of the books that I have read so far this year

The Forest Through the Trees

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My East-Coast-to-Singapore-jet lag had me waking up at 4:00 in the morning as an energizer bunny, much to the chagrin of my aunt, but on my third day in Singapore, it actually paid off, as we got up bright and early for a treetop walk at Windsor Park.

(When I tell people that I’m “feeling outdoorsy” it really just means that I am leaving the house) and yet here I was at a nature walk that was in fact oozing nature all around me. 

The Treetop Walk is a 5 mile long hike that takes you through a monkey-filled rain forest. Long wooden walkways sprawl up and down hillsides with thick swaths of trees on either side of you. A narrow suspension bridge carries you over the trees. 

Monkeys stared at me from the trees, looking almost as fascinated by me as I was with them. The mothers walked around with their babies strapped to their chests. 

They crawled on top of the metal structures for the construction site that was happening next door and then ran alongside joggers, like they were their running partners. 

The monkeys are famous for trying to snatch items out of tourists’ hands in an attempt to bargain for food. At the beginning of our hike, a monkey started chasing my aunt around, trying to get her water bottle from her. That same monkey ran out in front of me and I ran screaming in the opposite direction. I was too terrified to get anywhere near it, much to the amusement of the other tourists around me. I eventually was able to walk by, unassaulted by the monkey, and continued on with the hike. 

The Treetop Walk is not for the faint of heart. The humidity was so strong it was like I was swimming just walking around. I sweated more than I thought was humanly possible with sweat stains going from my arm pit to my hip. It felt like every hot yoga class I had ever taken. I was so hot and sweaty that at some point I stopped making sense. 

We walked across a swinging suspension bridge which had a strict weight limit and instructions for what to do if a snake fell onto the bridge in front of us (panic).

For much of the hike, I wore a beautiful sunhat that my brother gave me as a birthday gift. It looked like I had a satellite dish on my head. Once I put it on, it actually kind of made me look like the flying nun. 

At some point, my aunt and I had seen countless monkeys and bravely walked across a swaying bridge. We wanted to go home, but, after much denial, we realized that we were lost. We had been wandering on the trails for a while and suddenly could no longer see the forest through the trees. 

We walked over the tree roots that all looked like kimono dragons to a tired and dehydrated traveler. We asked people for directions that only made us more lost until the trail we were walking on spat us out on a random sidewalk along the highway, an anticlimactic, but much-needed end to a treeline hike through the forest.

From there, we jumped on a bus going in a direction– we weren’t sure which–and then wound up at a McDonald’s. After returning to civilization, our legs destroyed from all of the walking and our bodies nearly wrecked from heat stroke, I went for a swim in the pool to cool off. 

After a long, hot day of being chased around by monkeys, walking across a suspension bridge, and getting stranded on the side of a road, I can finally say that I have seen nature in the wild. I have looked a monkey in the eye. 

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out how I spent my previous day in Singapore, exploring Chinatown.

Père Lachaise

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“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow.” 

–Oscar Wilde

When planning a trip to Paris, lots of ideas spring to mind for what you should do: shopping, going to cafes, visiting museums, and walking (or taking the elevator) to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Visiting a cemetery is not usually one of them.

Yet, on my second day in Paris, Claire and I ventured across the Seine to Père Lachaise, one of the world’s most famous cemeteries so that we could see the graves of some of the greatest icons to ever live. It is home to an estimated one million late citizens of the world, many of whom changed it during their time.

Père Lachaise was eerier than most cemeteries (which is saying something) with crows pecking at the moss-eaten tombstones that lined the cobblestone paths. The only thing that was missing was the thin sheet of fog descending on what was already a cool, overcast day. We made our way through the cemetery like we were window shopping, asking each other which tombstone we could see for ourselves. (“I like the headstone on that grave” “I think I would prefer one of the standing ones like that one.”)

We visited the graves of Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Edith Piaf, Proust, and Balzac, all of which were littered with flowers, love letters, candles, and other esoteric objects that signified people’s enduring love for them. I stood back and admired the various legends who were buried six feet below my feet, whispering to Oscar Wilde and Balzac that I had read their works for class.

Towards the end, we found Oscar Wilde’s tombstone. It was only a tiny bit obvious which one was his, since it featured a bust of him as a sphinx (no one can say that he didn’t have style). Claire later told me that a tour guide standing nearby said that the sphinx once had a penis attached to it, but that someone stole it in the 1960s. Now his grave is encased in glass, which people have kissed while wearing lipstick. 

Spending time in an iconic cemetery brings up many strange questions, like what is worth putting on your tombstone, what kinds of people would ever visit it, and what a person would have to do in order to be remembered for something centuries after their death.

These are thoughts that, much like the one million or so bodies in Père Lachaise, will fester.

From there, Claire and I went for a stroll in a park. It made for a nice relaxing end to our day, as we admired the waterfalls and flowers. It was a beautiful spring day in Paris.

Later that evening, I met up with my aunt and uncle and my uncle’s nephew (they all also ended up being in Paris at the same time as me). Together, the four of us went to see the Eiffel Tower and grab dinner at a nearby cafe. 

The Eiffel Tower is one of the few landmarks in world history that is just a little bit bigger than you think it’s going to be in real life. After years of imagining what it would look like up close, it did not disappoint. It shimmers on the hour every hour for five minutes and I was able to see the glittering tower just as it changed. Child Raquel was squealing on the inside.

We didn’t go up it. We just admired it from afar.

After checking out the Eiffel Tower, we had dinner together and then we called it a night.

I scratched off several things from my Paris itinerary in a single day: the graves of beloved icons and the Eiffel Tower. I was ready to see what my next day in Paris had in store for me.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel