Tag: travel guide

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

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

An American in Paris

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“I love Paris in the Springtime”
–Cole Porter

Like so many little girls growing up in the US, I always dreamt of going to Paris. It consumed my personality: I had an Eiffel Tower lamp, an Eiffel Tower statue, and a calendar of famous Parisian landmarks. I even made a painting of the Eiffel Tower once. 

Anytime I saw a movie or tv show set in Paris, it seized my imagination, and I could suddenly picture myself strutting down cobblestone roads and seeing the Seine lit up with street lights late at night. 

Many great American writers lived in Paris for a time, like Hemingway, Baldwin, and Stein. It made me hope that one day I would do a stint in Paris as well, reading and writing in an epicenter of art and culture.

Despite all of my dreams of visiting, I didn’t always think it was going to happen. Paris always seemed nebulously far away, more of a romantic ideal than a potential reality, but when my friend Claire returned to Paris to finish her studies at the Sorbonne, I asked if I could spend Spring Break sleeping on her couch. I was thrilled when she said yes. 

Mon ami

While she went to work, I tooled around town, doing all of the touristy things that locals would never dream of doing. I waited in long lines, seeing the sights, and mumbled my way through the few French phrases that I knew (“Je suis désolé, est-ce que vous parlez anglais?” was the most popular and I left out half the words.)

The day that I arrived, we started by getting brunch at a restaurant called Jozi. We ate avocado toast and mimosas, while I fought my jet lag and lost. It was my first Parisian meal, not including the tiny bread roll that I was given on the plane, and it more than lived up to my expectations. 

After that, we walked along the Seine and waited in line for the Notre Dame Cathedral. The line was so long that it zig-zagged across the plaza.

It was one of the first times in years that Notre Dame Cathedral was open to the public since the fire in 2019. The bricks of the cathedral are now a lighter color than they used to be, but you otherwise cannot tell that the church is any different. The line moved shockingly fast and before we knew it we were being ushered through the church. 

We took our time milling through the cathedral, looking at the paintings, listening to the church organs, lighting candles, and buying rosaries for devout Catholic grandmothers.

The cathedral is just as beautiful as I imagined, with sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows, dimly lit by candles, and smelling vaguely of incense.  It has been perfectly restored since the fire. 

Parts of it were a surprise to me, like the statues of saints that lined the front of the cathedral and how they stared down at you, almost as though they were doing it from heaven. 

It’s hard to find an original thing to say about Notre Dame Cathedral, the beautiful gothic church that has captured the minds of writers, artists, and Disney execs around the world. All I can say is that it’s worth seeing if you ever find yourself in Paris (and Paris is not a bad place to find yourself). 

After that, I dragged my tired ass home. I could barely keep my eyes open or feel my feet, but I had gotten my first taste of the city. I was ready to spend the next day conquering the city, dominating the public transportation system, and getting to know Paris.

I’ll keep you posted!

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

P.S.: Check out my previous blog post about the feminist birthday party I attended a few weeks ago that raised money for nonprofits aimed at upholding women’s rights around the world.