When left to my own devices, if I’m going to take a week-long trip, I go Wednesday to Tuesday or Wednesday. I’ve found Wednesday to be pretty consistently the cheapest day of the week to travel. That makes sense, right? If people are taking a long weekend, they leave Thursday or Friday and come back Monday or Tuesday, leaving Wednesday as odd man out of the days of the week club.

But you’re not always taking a whole-week trip. If you’re only going for a long weekend, which pair of days make the most sense? My preference is to leave Friday and come back Monday, because this leaves the full weekend to be somewhere, including a lazy Sunday–nothing ruins a perfectly good Sunday more than having to wake up to an alarm and deal with transit.

What about times to leave? Do you leave in the evening after work or on the morning of the next day? That’s a trade-off between how much money you want to spend (on an extra night in a hotel) versus how much time you want to take at your destination (one extra evening and morning). Plus, there’s that additional thrill of bringing your suitcase with you to work, so everybody knows you’re going out of town, and having to leave the office at a specific time because you’ve got a flight/train/car to catch, and not having to wait several more hours for your vacation to truly begin.

And the one on which I disagree with most people: when do you go back to work? Do you come home and go back to work the very next day? Or do you take one more day off to get back into the swing of things, to do laundry, to go grocery shopping, to get your life back in order? (Most people only consider this for longer trips, but I know at least one person, namely the art director of this site, who thinks it’s required for even a two-day camping trip.) I think, if you really want to make the most of your limited vacation time, you’ve got to dive right back into work, so that you don’t waste a day off on running errands and catching up on a little sleep. I can understand, though, the people who want to take that one extra day. It sort of lets the relaxation of vacation sink in a little deeper. It lets you ease back into life. And hey, if it helps you enjoy the trip more, go for it. It’s your time, after all. You get to pick when you go, and you get to pick when you return, even if that’s a day after you actually come back.

She’s got a couple of interesting projects in the works. Right now she’s on a train headed across Canada with a group of travel bloggers headed to the TBEX Canada conference in Toronto. And this fall she’s going down to Ecuador to volunteer on community projects with Greenheart Travel.

On a more regular basis, though, she travels around mostly North America and Europe, sharing her insights into the cities she visits and giving practical tips, like how to get around (OK, maybe I’m dumb, but I didn’t know you could actually walk from San Diego into Mexico, and now I really want to do that) and the best time to go to the destination. She also shares general thoughts and musings about travel, because being a blogger gives you license to act like a psychologist and philosopher <ahem>.

Basically, she comes across as down-to-earth and casual, like a friend you’d actually turn to for advice. Plus, I’m pretty sure she knows everyone in the travel blogosphere, and perhaps the world, on Twitter. If you’re looking for a suggestion on a city break, go check her out.

Rain

Grunge

Ferries

Space Needle

Canada-adjacent

Yuppies, probably

Guys throwing fish?

So here’s the thing, lovely readers. I just accepted a new job. It’s extremely cool, with a great, small group of people, doing work that I find incredibly meaningful. It’ll be hard and crazy, as start-ups tend to be, but I have a really, really good feeling about it.

What does this have to do with travel? Well, two things.

Number one: When I negotiated my compensation with them, because they’re a start-up, they have relatively little wiggle room on actual base salary. But my tip to you is not to forget the other pieces of the package–and for me, the important piece is vacation time. I was able to get them to bump up my paid time off, which is worth more than a little extra money in a paycheck to me.

Number two: Also during negotiations, I was able to get them to push my start date back a week. Which means I’ve got a week of free time at the beginning of June. I guess I could just sit around Chicago and be lazy and enjoy myself, which might be nice… or, obviously, I could go somewhere. With limited time and funds, it would need to be America-based. It would probably be solo, so city-centric vs. wilderness is probably preferable. I’m thinking a small city. I haven’t been to Seattle or DC, and I haven’t been to Boston since I was a kid or Austin outside of SXSW. Thoughts?

Editor-in-chief Claire recently wrote about a dodgy bridge to a great little restaurant in Morocco, and it got me thinking about bridges during my recent trip to Costa Rica. Tourism is on the rise in Costa Rica. In some areas, this is totally obvious. In other areas, it’s not at all. The country is evolving—unevenly—and the bridges around the country tell this story.

Where tourists venture, infrastructure grows, and where infrastructure grows, more tourists venture. The assurance of safe and easy passage draws the larger population of semi-adventurous visitors to these developing areas. Arenal is one such place.

Arenal became a major draw when the volcano erupted in 1968 and kept on erupting until 2010. Hotels sprung up around the volcano’s base, and nearby private rain-forested land was opened to the public as a nature reserve. The galvanized steel and concrete suspension bridges, designed by civil engineers, provide “maximum security and comfort” to visitors as they traverse high above ground through the rain-forest canopy. The emphasis safety on the website reveals a need to distinguish itself from less reliable bridges found elsewhere.

On the road to Manuel Antonio, Costa Rica’s prime destination for wildlife viewing and beach dwelling, cars speed across the two-lane Rio Tarcoles Bridge, under which giant white crocodiles bathe in the muddy waters. Souvenir shops and sodas have sprouted at the bridge’s northern entrance, where you should probably go ahead and pay the guy in a neon yellow vest a few hundred colones to “watch your car.” Walk single file down the two-lane bridge where cars fly by at 100 kilometers per hour and peer over the edge at the massive beasts below. A local selling wooden crocodiles for $6 told us he’s seen these crocs attack and devour entire cows that wander over to the river’s shore in the early evening for a drink.

Off the path well beaten by the parade of tourists between Arenal and Manuel Antonio, a 4×4 will get you to the incomparably beautiful Rio Celeste. Two hours north of La Fortuna, an hour of which you’ll spend on a roughly graded gravel road, is Tenorio National Park, home of Rio Celeste, a river with a waterfall tinted a surprising shade of blue. The color of the water is a result of minerals that combine at the confluence of two water sources.

Despite its beautiful setting and the fantastic trail leading to it, Rio Celeste is relatively unvisited. A look at the bridges along the trail will tell you as much. It’s a serious pain to get to this point. It’s rugged, it’s remote, and if you’ve got a limited number of days in the country you might decide this isn’t worth the time. Good.

In ten years’ time, I’d bet good money the road to Rio Celeste is paved. Evidence of infrastructure is already apparent—leaving the area, you’ll find a new bridge that makes exiting to the west possible by car. Before last September, approaching from the west was possible only on foot. Visitors from that direction had to ditch their cars, cross a pedestrian bridge and walk the dusty road to the park entrance, or drive an additional two hours to come around from the east side.

I’ll be the first to say that I appreciate a good piece of infrastructure and the ease it creates. But this sketchy little bridge was my favorite, because it made me feel like we were in a secret place, and that we was rewarded with this secret because we put in the effort required to get there.

There are two tours you can do: the guided interior tour of the Home and Studio, and a self-guided audio walking tour of the private homes that Wright designed in the area. We did the combo. The guided interior tour isn’t to be missed, because this is your chance to see Wright’s real genius–his “total architecture,” which encompasses both the bones of the building and every detail of the interior design. Plus you get the background on his architectural philosophy and innovations from well-educated guides who are happy to answer your questions (although they don’t let you dilly-dally–these are small groups in a small space, and we’ve got to stay on schedule).

I’d say you can give the audio tour a pass, though. Just google some information about where Wright’s other nearby buildings are (there are more than a dozen in easy strolling distance, including the Unity Temple) and you’ll probably get almost as much out of it. There was nothing wrong with the audio guide, but it probably wasn’t worth an extra ten dollars.

I’m a fan of Wright’s aesthetic generally, but what was most fascinating to me on this tour was noticing similarities between what he created in his Prairie style and what I’ve seen in the Islamic architecture of Turkey, Spain, and Morocco. There are overlaps in the geometrical patterns, the careful use of light, and the incorporation of natural elements. It struck me that there must be something inherently human about these things, something very soothing, for people in such different times and places to keep returning to those themes. Next time you’re in Oak Park, I’d recommend experiencing it for yourself.