the right shoes for travelling the world.

so today i have some exciting news and a champagne headache.

i'm going to be a contributor for travelettes.

that's the exciting news and you just don’t see me shrieking because of the headache. however i  am shrieking  and jumping up and down on the inside.

travelettes is a travel blog with a group of awesome girls who go out into the world and prove that backpacking in heels is not a contradiction. i like that premise and so i sent them an application and some stories. katja, the founder of the travelettes apparently liked my application letter so much that she already posted it on the blog and put my already fragile head into a slight overdrive.

reading important mail on my phone while still in bed with one eye closed is tricky business. i still gathered though that she really seemed to like my writing and since she is neither my mother nor am i paying her to say that, i was genuinely touched and happy and proud.

we may call a blog an online diary, but in the end we write to get read, don't we? a story told needs an audience. it's a bit like that thought experiment "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" if we write and nobody reads it, does it matter that we write? we think that our words matter in one way or another and if someone else reads them it affirms this notion. 

at least that it is one of the main reasons why i write. i like writing, but i do write to be read. having someone tell me that they like what i write makes me happy, makes me want to write more, makes me want to write better, makes me even write in bed on sunday with a headache and it makes me grin silly.

now here is a little problem i have with this whole excitement though. i think i may have lied by omission in my application.

i don't wear heels and i certainly don't travel in them.

ups.

i dare say, i get shoes.  my taste in shoes is impeccable. i may not have many for women’s standards, but the ones i have are really, really good.  i have prada, dries van noten, vintage charles jourdan, pierre hardy, and repetto. however none of them have more than 2-inch heels. i hate to admit it, but i cannot walk in heels. it's not the pain, the pain usually one can drink away, but i simply cannot walk without looking odd and stumbling, sometimes i even add a full-on fall and/or ankle sprain. i don’t do it to myself when i go to work so why would i do it to myself when i go on vacation?

but now you probably wonder if i don't i want to be fancy sometimes and need shoes to go with it? the truth is, i don't think i am a very fancy person at heart. yes, i am sitting here with a champagne hangover but i also spilled a lot of said champagne very un-fancily all over my dress last night. truthfully as a girl it's usually enough to be fancy on top, most people don't care about the fanciness of your shoes. which i guess is a bit sad for the shoes, but also a reality of the world outside of fashion. years ago an ex visited me in new york before christmas. the visit didn't go very well so i was already in an unpleasant mood when our last evening finally came along. we had reservations at the rivercafe, the one truly fancy old school place where they still make men wear ties and stuff. i had already packed most of my wardrobe as i was leaving the next day and left with a choice of wearing strappy summer sandals or sneakers. they were light blue pumas and awesome as far as sneakers go, but obviously an odd choice for the rivercafe. since we were having a snow storm i didn't care and chose them over summer sandals. the ex wouldn't stop moaning and complaining about how they wouldn't let us in due to my shoe choice. he was right in that we didn't get in. however it was due to his lack of tie. because unlike they make it seem in the movies, restaurants like that don't keep a collection of spare clip-ons, they just give your table to some other dude who came without a reservation but wearing a tie.

so i’d say i am more cool (can i say that about myself without sounding like a complete ass?) than fancy and therefore my preferred choice of travel shoes have been my old vintage motorcycle boots. what can i say, unlike heels, they were actually made for walking. i have walked in them to fashion weeks in paris and new york, they have been to the vatican and the dome in milan, they have slept in five star resort in st. barth’s, park city and miami, and have ridden with me on a basotho pony in the lesotho highlands. they have lived by far a more exciting life than any heel that i ever bought, failed to walk in and which subsequently died alone and unworn in my closet.

having explained all of that, dear travelettes, i hope you won’t mind that i will therefore adhere to the credo of backpacking* suitcase-wheeling in vintage motorcycle boots.

*i did admit that i don’t even own a backpack and they didn’t seem to think that was a problem.