In 2009, I spent months planning for my big summer studying abroad in India. I also took time to plan big trips elsewhere in the US including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and New York City. But, sometimes, in spite of all of the planning and logistics, the most memorable trips are the ones that happen at the spur of the moment.
Such was the case this past weekend as friends and I decided to take a roadtrip to Princeton, New Jersey from Washington, DC. At about 9 PM on Saturday I got a call from a college friend from the area telling me that my Alma Mater UCLA’s water polo team had advanced to the NCAA championship game to be held up in New Jersey the next day. “Wanna go?” he asked. “Let’s do it!” I quickly responded. And, within a minute or two our trip had been planned.
We left early in the morning from a still snow-covered Washington D.C., heading north on the freeways stopping only for the seemingly endless toll booths. At the beginning of the trip I sent a few bucks to the front of the car figuring that should cover the tolls, but in the end I kept reaching into my wallet for every tollbooth after tollbooth we passed.
After about three hours in the car, we arrived in Princeton, New Jersey, and, as one would expect in an Ivy League town, immediately found an a cappella group singing on the streets. We grabbed lunch at a pleasant-smelling, but otherwise quite strange restaurant, whose decor begged quite a few questions:
1) Why is there a picture of 10 children all of whom are around the same age, and dressed identically on the wall? Are they all the owner’s children? If that’s the case, did they have back-to-back quintuplets? If not, what are they doing putting up a photo of some random children prominently on the wall?
2) The photo shared the wall with not one, not two, but five television screens, all of which were less than 10” in diameter. Also, they were all on the exact same channel. This of course got us asking: umm why not just buy one big TV instead?
Filled with questions, but few answers, we continued on to explore Princeton’s beautiful campus and head over to the swim stadium. Unfortunately for us, UCLA lost by one goal, sending us back out into the cold autumn weather to explore campus further.
Continuing the theme of spontaneity on the roadtrip back down highway 95, I mentioned I had never been to Philadelphia before, so we detoured slightly to go through the “City of Brotherly Love.” Our time there included dinner at a quirky and delicious restaurant in Silk City Diner. From the self-deprecating “water-guy” to the garlic-bread-crumb-topped macaroni and cheese, it was a great first (and only) meal in the city. Before leaving town, though, we did the quickest tour of US history ever. With the weather now downright cold — and my general aversion to any temperature below 60 — we jumped out of the car, ran to Independence Hall, turned the corner and headed to see the Liberty Bell (and took a quick photo with it for proof!), and then power-walked back to our much warmer car. Not a bad tour for 15 minutes on a freezing night in Philadelphia!
Sometimes great trips take months of planning; other times, as this trip proved, a minute or two of talking logistics the night before is all you need!
Alex Budak is a recent graduate of UCLA and is currently enrolled as a graduate student at Georgetown University where he studies Public Policy and Social Entrepreneurship. You can see more of his travels on Sosauce, his blog, or follow him on Twitter, @TheBudak.
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