The Best American Travel Writing 2013

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  We’re already 10 minutes behind schedule when we unexpectedly pass several food carts on the High Line that have started the process of calling it a night. The hipster pedant running the Northern Spy Food Co. cart tells me that it wouldn’t be “food safe” to give me the items he’s in the process of throwing away because they contain dairy. “You have nothing without dairy?” I ask. Begrudgingly he hands me two large hot biscuits. “They’ve been in the oven awhile,” he says. “They might not be great.” But oh, they are! The seven of us tear at the biscuits like a pack of wolves pulling apart a rabbit. One of my group simply asked the guys from another truck if we could sample their cooking before they shut off their grill. The two chefs make three types of miniature tacos for us, which we all agree are exquisite.

  We have to eat our tacos on the hoof lest the food and wine at the galleries be ransacked. At the hpgrp Gallery on 20th Street, I’m elated to see 10 bottles of red and white wine and three people ready to distribute it. “We ran out of cups,” one says apologetically. “We just sent out for more,” another says. These people are trying to give us wine but can’t and it’s maddening! We descend on what’s left of the crudités and potato chips, slipping some oily macadamia nuts into our ziplock bags, then cut our losses and head to Pace Gallery on 25th Street, where waiters offer us water. “No wine?” I ask. “All out,” says one. So I herd the gang to a couple of more galleries where our indifference to the art raises a few eyebrows but where the food tables are groaning with wine, champagne, pita triangles, feta-stuffed olives, and chocolate wafer straws. Both places are on upper floors, which confirms my theory that upstairs galleries are much less likely to have their food and wine offerings scoured by opportunists. You can take that tidbit to the bank.

  A few days later, I get back in touch with Edial Dekker to let him know that I am a writer and that I enjoyed being a guerrilla tour guide enough to reprise the role when he and his brother are in town. He tells me that Gidsy was born after he and his brother had trouble organizing a group to venture into the German countryside to pick mushrooms and then make a mushroom risotto. “So we thought there was a market opportunity and we started thinking about how to connect people with experiences with a social component,” he says. They started with a cooking class, followed by a seminar on how to create a startup. It was their pals at the popular app SoundCloud who mentioned them to Ashton Kutcher, who, says Dekker, “was just totally behind the idea. He immediately got that we were bringing people together.” Dekker hopes that eventually Gidsy will become a common tool for anyone looking for fun—or educational or silly or random—stuff to do and fun people to do it with. “You don’t have to be traveling,” he says. “Meeting people doing interesting things in the city you live in is like traveling on a whole other level.”

  DAVID SEDARIS

  Dentists Without Borders

  FROM The New Yorker

  ONE THING THAT puzzled me during the American health-care debate was all the talk about socialized medicine and how ineffective it’s supposed to be. The Canadian plan was likened to genocide, but even worse were the ones in Europe, where patients languished on filthy cots, waiting for aspirin to be invented. I don’t know where these people get their ideas, but my experiences in France, where I’ve lived off and on for the past 13 years, have all been good. A house call in Paris will run you around $50. I was tempted to arrange one the last time I had a kidney stone, but waiting even 10 minutes seemed out of the question, so instead I took the subway to the nearest hospital. In the center of town, where we’re lucky enough to have an apartment, most of my needs are within arm’s reach. There’s a pharmacy right around the corner, and two blocks further is the office of my physician, Dr. Médioni. Twice I’ve called on a Saturday morning, and, after answering the phone himself, he has told me to come on over. These visits, too, cost around $50. The last time I went, I had a red thunderbolt bisecting my left eyeball.

  The doctor looked at it for a moment, and then took a seat behind his desk. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” he said. “A thing like that, it should be gone in a day or two.”

  “Well, where did it come from?” I asked. “How did I get it?”

  “How do we get most things?” he answered.

  “We buy them?”

  The time before that, I was lying in bed and found a lump on my right side, just below my rib cage. It was like a deviled egg tucked beneath my skin. Cancer, I thought. A phone call and 20 minutes later, I was stretched out on the examining table with my shirt raised.

  “Oh, that’s nothing,” the doctor said. “A little fatty tumor. Dogs get them all the time.”

  I thought of other things dogs have that I don’t want: Dewclaws, for example. Hookworms. “Can I have it removed?”

  “I guess you could, but why would you want to?”

  He made me feel vain and frivolous for even thinking about it. “You’re right,” I told him. “I’ll just pull my bathing suit up a little higher.”

  When I asked if the tumor would get any bigger, the doctor gave it a gentle squeeze. “Bigger? Sure, probably.”

  “Will it get a lot bigger?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  And he said, sounding suddenly weary, “I don’t know. Why don’t trees touch the sky?”

  Médioni works from an apartment on the third floor of a handsome 19th-century building, and, on leaving, I always think, Wait a minute. Did I see a diploma on his wall? Could Doctor possibly be the man’s first name? He’s not indifferent. It’s just that I expect a little something more than “It’ll go away.” The thunderbolt cleared up, just as he said it would, and I’ve since met dozens of people who have fatty tumors and get along just fine. Maybe, being American, I want bigger names for things. I also expect a bit more gravity. “I’ve run some tests,” I’d like to hear, “and discovered that what you have is called a bilateral ganglial abasement, or, in layman’s terms, a cartoidal rupture of the venal septrumus. Dogs get these things all the time, and most often they die. That’s why I’d like us to proceed with the utmost caution.”

  For my $50, I want to leave the doctor’s office in tears, but instead I walk out feeling like a hypochondriac, which is one of the few things I’m actually not. If my French physician is a little disappointing, my French periodontist more than makes up for it. I have nothing but good things to say about Dr. Guig, who, gumwise, has really brought me back from the abyss. Twice in the course of our decade-long relationship he’s performed surgical interventions. Then, last year, he removed four of my lower incisors, drilled down into my jawbone, and cemented in place two posts. First, though, he sat me down and explained the procedure, using lots of big words that allowed me to feel tragic and important. “I’m going to perform the surgery at nine o’clock on Tuesday morning, and it should take, at most, three hours,” he said—all of this, as usual, in French. “At six that evening, you’ll go to the dentist for your temporary implants, but still I’d like you to block out that entire day.”

  When I got home, I asked my boyfriend, Hugh, “Where did he think I was going to go with four missing teeth?”

  I see Dr. Guig for surgery and consultations, but the regular, twice-a-year deep cleanings are performed by his associate, a woman named Dr. Barras. What she does in my mouth is unspeakable, and, because it causes me to sweat, I’ve taken to bringing a second set of clothes, and changing in the bathroom before I leave for home. “Oh, Monsieur Sedaris,” she chuckles. “You are such a child.”

  A year ago, I arrived and announced that, since my previous visit, I’d been flossing every night. I thought this might elicit some praise—“How dedicated you are, how disciplined!”—but instead she said, “Oh, there’s no need.”

  It was the same when I complained about all the gaps between my teeth. “I had braces when I was young, but maybe I need them again,” I told her. An American dentist would have referred me to an orthodontist, but, to Dr. Barras, I was being hysterical. �
�You have what we in France call ‘good-time teeth,’” she said. “Why on earth would you want to change them?”

  “Um, because I can floss with the sash to my bathrobe?”

  “Hey,” she said. “Enough with the flossing. You have better ways to spend your evenings.”

  I guess that’s where the good times come in.

  Dr. Barras has a sick mother and a long-haired cat named Andy. As I lie there sweating with my trap wide open, she runs her electric hook under my gum line, and catches me up on her life since my last visit. I always leave with a mouthful of blood, yet I always look forward to my next appointment. She and Dr. Guig are my people, completely independent of Hugh, and though it’s a stretch to label them friends, I think they’d miss me if I died of a fatty tumor.

  Something similar is happening with my dentist, Dr. Granat. He didn’t fabricate my implants—that was the work of a prosthodontist—but he took the molds and made certain that the teeth fit. This was done during five visits in the winter of 2011. Once a week, I’d show up at the office and climb into his reclining chair. Then I’d sink back with my mouth open. “Ça va?” he’d ask every five minutes or so, meaning “All right?” And I’d release a little tone. Like a doorbell. “E-um.”

  Implants come in two stages. The first teeth that get screwed in, the temporaries, are blocky, and the color is off. The second ones are more refined, and are somehow dyed or painted to match their neighbors. My four false incisors are connected to form a single unit, and were secured in place with an actual screwdriver. Because the teeth affect one’s bite, the positioning has to be exact, so my dentist would put them in and then remove them to make minor adjustments. Put them in, take them out. Over and over. All the pain was behind me by this point, and so I just lay there, trying to be a good patient.

  Dr. Granat keeps a small, muted television mounted near the ceiling, and each time I come it is tuned to the French travel channel. Voyage, it’s called. Once, I watched a group of mountain people decorate a yak. They didn’t string lights on it, but everything else seemed fair game: ribbons, bells, silver sheaths for the tips of its horns.

  “Ça va?”

  “E-um.”

  Another week, we were somewhere in Africa, where a family of five dug into the ground and unearthed what looked to be a burrow full of mice. Dr. Granat’s assistant came into the room to ask a question, and when I looked back at the screen the mice had been skinned and placed, kebab-like, on sharp sticks. Then came another distraction, and when I looked up again the family in Africa were grilling the mice over a campfire, and eating them with their fingers.

  “Ça va?” Dr. Granat asked, and I raised my hand, international dental sign language for “There is something vital I need to communicate.” He removed his screwdriver from my mouth, and I pointed to the screen. “Ils ont mangé des souris en brochette,” I told him, meaning “They have eaten some mice on skewers.”

  He looked up at the little TV. “Ah, oui?”

  A regular viewer of the travel channel, Dr. Granat is surprised by nothing. He’s seen it all, and is quite the traveler himself. As is Dr. Guig. Dr. Barras hasn’t gone anywhere exciting lately, but, what with her mother, how can she? With all these dental professionals in my life, you’d think I’d look less like a jack-o’-lantern. You’d think I could bite into an ear of corn, or at least tear meat from a chicken bone, but that won’t happen for another few years, not until we tackle my two front teeth and the wobbly second incisors that flank them. “But after that’s done I’ll still need to come regularly, won’t I?” I said to Dr. Guig, almost panicked. “My gum disease isn’t cured, is it?”

  I’ve gone from avoiding dentists and periodontists to practically stalking them, not in some quest for a Hollywood smile but because I enjoy their company. I’m happy in their waiting rooms, the coffee tables heaped with Gala and Madame Figaro. I like their mumbled French, spoken from behind Tyvek masks. None of them ever call me David, no matter how often I invite them to. Rather, I’m Monsieur Sedaris, not my father but the smaller, Continental model. Monsieur Sedaris with the four lower implants. Monsieur Sedaris with the good-time teeth, sweating so fiercely he leaves the office two kilos lighter. That’s me, pointing to the bathroom and asking the receptionist if I may use the sandbox, me traipsing down the stairs in a fresh set of clothes, my smile bittersweet and drearied with blood, counting the days until I can come back, and return myself to this curious, socialized care.

  LYNN YAEGER

  Confessions of a Packing Maximalist

  FROM Travel + Leisure

  WHEN MRS. CHARLOTTE Drake Martinez Cardeza of Philadelphia settled into Suite B51–55 on the Titanic, she had with her 14 trunks, 4 suitcases, and 3 crates of baggage containing, among other items, 70 dresses, 38 feather boas, 10 fur coats, and 91 pairs of gloves. We know this because Mrs. Cardeza, who survived on Lifeboat 3, filed a staggering 18-page, single-spaced insurance claim against the White Star Line, seeking recompense for that lost ermine-trimmed coat and those vanished veils and parasols.

  There’s a reason Mrs. Cardeza needed all that stuff: fashionable women of her day were forever changing outfits—putting on and taking off different ensembles for dining, dancing, and shopping, even donning elaborate tea gowns, which never actually saw sunlight but were worn just for sitting around the parlor.

  As fate would have it, I, too, have complicated wardrobe requirements when I hit the road. And it’s not only because I frequently travel to Europe to cover the biannual fashion shows, where my colleagues appear to switch garments as often as an Edwardian matron (How do they manage it? Do they FedEx Goyard steamer trunks to the Hôtel de Crillon? Sneak off to Le Bon Marché to replenish hotel armoires daily?) but also because my personal style could hardly be called minimalist—and, in fact, depends heavily on puffy frocks and layered petticoats. My taste is fiercely nonconformist (well, as fierce as you can be when you are prancing around in a pink sequined dirndl and a scarlet velvet cloak).

  I am sure that Mrs. Cardeza had a packing system, and I also have a carefully plotted routine, honed over decades of trial and error. First, rest assured that I do not have anything in common with those braggarts who spend 6 months in 12 capitals with two pairs of black pants and one T-shirt, insisting that they can do magic tricks with scarves. In fact, my situation is quite the opposite: I frequently don’t have the right things with me no matter how much I bring, whether I’m going to the flea market in Tangiers or a nightclub in Moscow.

  My predicament is exacerbated by the fact that whenever I check a bag, I am convinced it will not appear unmolested on the other side of the world, so am reluctant to fill it with anything more valuable than shampoo and skivvies. Let me be clear: I consider my wardrobe more a collection of irreplaceable artworks than a bunch of things to wear. That my luggage has never failed to arrive in no way allays this fear—in fact, it only reinforces my conviction that the odds are against me, that the next trip will be the one with the baggage disaster.

  Since my carry-on must do the heavy lifting, I have been forced to employ strategies that can be more than a little embarrassing. Summer or winter, you will see me in my heaviest clothes, waddling up to the security gate in something like, say, a Dries Van Noten smock over two skirts and a vintage petticoat, in an attempt to smuggle a few more garments onto the plane. This explosion of fabric inevitably results in my being forced to submit to a series of humiliating and invasive security-related procedures, since, let’s face it, there could be an entire arsenal stashed under my ensemble.

  Can there be a less elegant way to begin a journey than planting your Fogal-clad feet on two filthy yellow rubber footprints, waiting for a total stranger to stick her hands up your dress and dust you down with a powdery substance? No matter! I just smile when the words “Female alert!” ring out from the TSA agent at the x-ray machine as I approach. To forestall this body search, I have been known to visit the ladies’ room, peel off a few layers of clothing, stuff them into the largest conveya
nce that could possibly pass as a piece of “hand luggage,” and hope that this now-diminished costume will get me waved through. Alas, this only works half the time. “Thank you for keeping us safe!” I cry when the guard realizes there is nothing under my dress—except maybe another dress.

  At least now I am rushing to the ladies’ pain-free. For years I insisted on toting a battered Louis Vuitton duffel, convinced that this bag made me look like Sara Murphy circa 1920, heading off to the Riviera, even when I nearly dislocated my shoulder carrying it. So I moved on to what seems in retrospect to be an insane solution, though it made perfect sense to me at the time—I bought the duffel its own collapsible metal cart, secured it under a crosshatch of bungee cords, and dragged the whole monstrosity through the airport. Of course, I had to collapse the contraption at the door of the plane and tug both it and the 100-pound duffel down the aisle, rolling over people’s toes as I fought my way to the depths of coach.

  “Get wheels!” my mom pleaded for years. “Look how cute the flight attendants look with their little rolling suitcases!” But every time I considered this solution, I heard the words of a stylish photographer friend echoing in my brain. “You can’t have wheels,” he said in a low, disgusted whisper. “It’s a terrible gesture when you are pulling it!” Terrible gesture or not, I did eventually concede, and the result has been life-changing. I am now the poster child for the rabid cult of Rimowa, an ingenious brand that relies on some kind of advanced technology (or maybe just four wheels?) that enables me to glide through the airport as if I am walking a shiny, cherry-red greyhound. And it’s not just the ease of motion—these things also have flat tops where you can stack expandable Longchamp totes (another remarkable baggage innovation) that allow you to transport all those fashion items you found so irresistible when you tried them on in foreign fitting rooms and now will never wear again. But that’s another story.