The Great Adventure: Day 2 - Delphi

The Great Adventure: Day 1 - Athens

My Road to Rio: The Olympic Events

In Rio last month, I was fortunate enough to have scored tickets to the placing, semi-final, and final matches of the Rugby Sevens and the Round of 16 in beach volleyball. And once my brother and I arrived in Rio and decided we wanted to see another Olympic match, we ended up getting tickets to see Bandminton. The cheapest tickets for any event was roughly $22. This was about the same price as the tickets that I scored during the London Olympics as well. Really, if you can commit to going and find a decent flight deal and decently priced accommodations, attending the Olympic Games can be quite affordable! And I want to share my experience attending these events and exploring Rio here with you. So this is Part 2 of my Olympic post, my spectator experience in Rio.

Getting Around

Once my brother and I were in Rio, we  took the metro/train to Deodoro Stadium to watch Rubgy! We landed early in the morning, took a taxi to our hostel to check in and store our things in a locker, then hopped on the metro. It was a little over $1 each way to get there, but it did take quite a while to get there as well. They closed off the 2 closest metro stations to the stadium for safety reasons, so we had to walk for about 45 minutes and waited through multiple security lines. And I'm sure it didn't help that I accidentally got us on the local train line instead of the express train line that we needed to take when we transferred at the Central Station. Whoops!

For beach volleyball, our hostel was within a few blocks of the arena, so we didn't need to go far on our second day. On our third day in Rio, we needed to go west near the Olympic Village in Tijuca which was a journey. And we could not get there without purchasing these "Olympic travel cards" for R25, which was a total and complete ripoff when it's only R3-4 to get anywhere in the city via transit. This made me extremely frustrated, especially since in London, transit was free if you had tickets to an event for that day. Anyway, to get there, we took the Line 1 train to the end of the line, then transferred onto the brand new Line 4 which was only available to people with Olympic tickets. At the end of that line, we had to take BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) to get to the Olympic venues. And once we were let off, we had to walk about 20 minutes to get to the Riocentro pavilion. This was more of a chore than getting to the Deodoro stadiums. It took over 2 hours, and we were there early. When we were leaving, there was a loooong line to get through security and into the venue. We got lucky to get there when we did. We stayed for only an hour since we had reservations for the tram up to the Cristo Redentor statue in Corcovado, and left an hour before that since google said it was only 40 minutes away when I checked the day before; however, when we finally got a taxi (there was no time to call an Uber), the GPS noted a TON of traffic. We passed a motorcyclist who was hit in the dedicated Olympic fast lanes, sprawled across the two lanes of pavement, on top of just a lot of cars being on the road. It ended up taking an hour and 40 minutes to get to Corcovado, but it still saved us over an hour compared to how long it would have taken on public transit. Plus, it was R100 which amounted to under $30 for that long of a drive. There is nowhere in the Western world that a taxi ride like that would have been so relatively cheap. 

Rugby Sevens

Team USA vs. Spain in the 9th place match

Rugby was on the north side of Rio in the Deodoro Stadium. It was surprisingly empty in the endzone and since there was General Admission seating, we were able to move to the middle section quite easily. For our first ticket, we saw 6 placing matches, including the USA vs. Spain match. It was exciting! In the end we won, of course! And to top it off, we ended up randomly sitting next to the family of one of the US players. He showed up after the match to watch the remaining games with us. I sat next to his dad who was originally from England and got to chat with him through the event. It was a neat experience to be a part of that.

I have never seen a Rugby Sevens match before this. I didn't realize that each half would only be 7 minutes long, with a 2 minute halftime. Basically, rugby is a mix of American football and soccer. The biggest difference from football is that when the person with the ball is tackled, the clock doesn't stop and they have to pass the ball to another team member instead of starting the play over again.

Team GB vs. Fiji in the Gold medal match

I was fortunate enough to snag tickets to the finals in Rugby as well, and there was nothing like watching Fiji beat Great Britain in the Gold medal match. I was rooting for Team GB, but seriously no one was a match for the sheer brute strength behind the Fijian team. Holy cow! At one point, a GB player attempted to tackle a Fijian player but the dude kept running with the GB guy clinging to his leg! And after a few steps, he stopped to kind of kick the poor dude off before running a little further. It was amazing to watch! Plus it was the first Olympic medal for Fiji ever. So cool!

Beach Volleyball

Brazil vs. China

Being from Hawaii, of course we had to watch beach volleyball! What a spectacular venue! This pop-up stadium was built right on Copacabana Beach itself. There were berms along the outside to keep the water from eroding the beach under the stadium and getting into the arena area. I was fortunate to have also watched beach volleyball at the London Olympics in 2012 at the Horse Guards Parade smack dab in the middle of the city, and that was my favorite venue then as it was in Rio this time around. I mean, look at that view! From our seats, we could see the Atlantic Ocean on the left, the classic Copa skyline on the right, and then the game right there in the middle. We also got lucky enough to watch Brazil compete in this match. It's always super fun when you have a chance to watch the host country play. Each ticket allows you to watch one men's match and one women's match. We got to see Qatar vs. Russia in the men's match, which was exciting because there was a guy from Rio on the Qatar team. And for the women's match, we saw Brazil vs. China. The stadium remained relatively empty until halfway through the last set. All of a sudden, all these Brazilians showed up to root for their team. It was a blast! The music and cheers between rallies were mostly local and everyone would sing and cheer and dance along. It was quite an experience!

Badminton

At the last minute, my brother and I decided to stand in the long line at the ticket office just outside of the beach volleyball arena to see if we could see any other events on our third and final day in Rio. We ended up with cheap tickets to watch Badminton. What an interesting Olympic sport! I had never watched competitive badminton before, but it seemed like it could be fun! Our tickets were for matches between 8am and 2pm. We decided to go for a little over an hour in the morning so we could still fit in a visit to the Christ Redeemer statue as well. It was quite a trek to get to the Olympic park where the event was held, but I'm glad we went. It was not what I expected at all. Badminton was held in a convention center! They put up temporary bleacher seating in a convention hall and made 3 courts side by side in the middle. You wouldn't be able to tell from watching it on tv, but they always have 3 games going at the same time. When one match ends, they throw the next team on, regardless of whether it was singles, doubles, men's or women's or mixed. You can see in the picture above that there is a doubles match going on to the right, a singles match in the middle, and another doubles on the left. And the crowd was SO into it! I didn't know badminton could get so intense! We were lucky enough to watch the beginning of a Team USA vs. Germany doubles match as well. Good thing we were wearing our Team USA gear!

Inside the Riocentro convention center

Cristo Redentor


It wouldn't be a trip to Rio without a visit to either the Christ Redeemer statue (Cristo Redentor) or Sugarloaf Mountain. Both sites have great views of the city, but I opted to take my brother to the statue since it was a more recognizable icon of Rio and I wasn't sure if he'd ever make the trip to South America ever again. Of course there were crazy crowds at the top, but I was able to book our entry and tram tickets in advance. When we arrived an hour late for our reservation due to traffic even after taking a taxi ride there, the man in the ticket office just put us on the next tram up, which was nice. The tram ride up to the statue in Corcovado is really neat since it's so steep and you have such amazing views along the way. The wait was a bit longer trying to come down the mountain, but we got lucky again and ended up waiting in line with the entire USA Wrestling team. We chatted some with one of the coaches who noticed our Team USA attire, and we ended up getting free Team USA Olympic Wresting pins!

VIP Lounges and Houses

Another highlight of the Olympics is always the free lounges. Since I went to the London Olympics, I was on the lookout for any fun houses and free events to attend. In London, I went to the Chase Visa VIP Lounge and was able to score free pins, free food and drinks, and even dinner cooked for me by Iron Chef Morimoto. Twice! This time around, Chase did a condensed version of their lounge which only lasted through the first weekend and was only open to Chase MileagePlus card holders, not just Chase Visa card holders like the last time. Luckily our parents have the card and have added us as authorized users, so we got in! And again, there were free pins, free keychains, free hats, free food and drinks (I drank probably 2 liters worth of Schwepps Cirtus!), and free WiFi! We pretty much spent the entire night there that Saturday meeting some new people and watching the US compete in swimming and athletics (track & field) on the big screens they had throughout the lounge.

One of the main features of the lounge was the meet and greet with various Olympians, so I got to meet Summer Sanders who became famous for swimming in the Barcelona Olympics for Team USA. It turns out that she lives in Utah as well and we had a great conversation! Plus she really liked my name! :)

Another highlight was running into my friend, Nick, at the lounge! He flew down for the weekend like I did (see, I'm not the only crazy one!) to watch his cousin compete for Team USA in rowing. It was a pleasant surprise to see a familiar face at the Olympics! It's funny because I became friends with Nick and his friend, Sam, when they were both on my flight to and from Abu Dhabi last May. That trip was also a weekender, which not a lot of people would do. It's always fun to meet like-minded people in the travel world. 

Next Stop Tokyo!

When I got home from Rio, I thought that maybe I was done with the Olympics. I had seen most of what i wanted to see, and unless I could get tickets to watch swimming, I didn't think I was going to go to Toyko. But that all changed when I watched the amazing presentation for Tokyo 2020 at the closing ceremony. I was so excited to see the cute, fun, and high-tech elements in their presentation including watching PM Shinzo Abe as Mario! With Super Mario, Hello Kitty, Pokemon, and Totoro, I just cannot wait to see what Japan does in 2020, especially with their people and their government so on board! So now I can definitely say that I do intend to go to Tokyo in 2020. And I'll be sure to keep you updated on my journey to Tokyo here as well. Who knows...maybe I'll see you there!

My Road to Rio: Getting There

About three weeks before the Olympics began this year, I discovered that all remaining unsold Olympic event tickets had been opened to the public. When I could not obtain any Rugby Sevens tickets through CoSport, the only official authorized ticket reseller for Olympic tickets in the US (read: the only way to get tickets with a US address), I was *finally* able to score tickets to the men's rugby placing matches, including the semi-finals and finals through the Rio 2016 website. This was the main event I wanted to see, and years ago I told myself that if I could get tickets to see the first time Rugby (Sevens) was played in the Olympics, I would go to Rio. So then I had a choice to make. I hadn't been planning to attend the Olympics this time around. I already went to London in 2012, and I really just wanted to see rugby. And now, it was actually possible!

Flights

My brother in the GIG Rio Airport
right after we landed

So with the idea that maybe this could work, I went online to look at flights. There is absolutely no way I would ever have been able to afford a monetary ticket to Rio during the Olympics. Flights were pricing in the thousands! However, the mileage flights were not bad. Of course, this close to the event, there were no saver level redemptions available, but I was able to find an "anytime" economy fare for 55,000 miles each way. And thinking that I didn't want to go to Rio alone again, and not knowing many others who also collect miles like I do, I called my family in Hawaii to invite them to come with me since it was exactly the same price in miles to fly to Rio from Honolulu as it was for me to fly there from Salt Lake City. In the end, after a little convincing, my little brother decided to come with me. He had not been to South America before, and aside from visiting family in Thailand, he had not traveled outside of the US. It definitely depleted my mileage stores, but it was so worth it to use my miles on my family! This was the first time I would be traveling internationally (minus Thailand) with someone from my family, and it was so exciting!

Little bro and I at Copacabana Beach

Events

Once I had a few flights on hold, I was SO excited to pore over the remaining available tickets and see what other Olympic events I could take my brother to see. We ended up with tickets to two rugby events (which amounted to 10 matches!), one beach volleyball event (with one men's and one women's match), and one badminton event. I'll summarize the events in my next blog post since there was SO much to take in there! Aside from the Olympic events, we spent the rest of our time eating delicious Brazilian BBQ, walking around Copacabana Beach, and sitting in traffic getting to and from Corcovado to visit the Cristo Redentor statue (the Christ Redeemer statue) for some of the best views of the city. I was sad that we weren't able to hang glide over the city, something I have wanted to do for a while now, because they closed the air space over the city during the Olympics. Which is probably for the best.

Accommodation 
After putting the flights on hold and picking out which sporting events we wanted to see, the next obstacle was finding affordable accommodation. In London, there was an official Olympic "Camp in London" site, mostly for volunteers, where you could pay 10 pounds a night to set up a tent one Tube station away from the main Olympic park. There was nothing this affordable in Rio this time around, and unfortunately booking so close to the event made finding affordable housing difficult. Even my friends who live in and around Rio were not going to be there during the Olympics. So I turned to my favorite hostel booking website, Hostelworld, to find hostels in convenient locations knowing that prices were 3-4 times their normal price. We ended up booking a stay at the CabanaCopa Hostel located around the corner from the Cardeal Arcoverde Metro Station, the closest metro station to the Beach Volleyball Arena on Copacabana Beach. Normally, a night at this hostel will set you back around $10 per person. We paid over $40 per person for each night during the Olympics, but it was still much cheaper than any other hotel or airbnb I could find so last minute in the right locations with decent reviews. I believe everyone should stay in a hostel at least once, for better or for worse, before they're 30, just to have that experience. And it was my brother's first hostel experience, so I was excited for that. It ended up not being so great since the crowd it drew for the Olympics was much different than the typical hostel crowd in South America that I'm used to. But there we didn't spend much time there anyway, and there was a decent free breakfast! Plus, we got to see monkeys on the property!

Having the flights, accommodation, and events worked out, I pulled the trigger and decided to go to Rio for a weekend of fun Olympic shenanigans! Stay tuned to hear about my spectator experience in my next post!

The view as we left the Beach Volleyball Arena (to the right) with the Cristo Redentor
statue appearing (on the left) over the Copacabana Beach skyline.

My Heart is with Istanbul

I am extremely saddened by the news of yet another bombing in a place I have visited and loved. Istanbul is one of my favorite cities, even though I only had a few short hours to explore the city.

I have always been a history buff, and one of the first places I had ever put on my travel bucket list was the Hagia Sophia. Both the city and the mosque are significant as the crossroads of Christianity and Islam, of Asia and Europe, a pinnacle of architecture from the Byzantine era until today. I was so excited to finally see the mosaic of the emperor, Justinian, in person. I cannot explain how happy I was to wander the streets and see ancient roman ruins just sitting there, a part of the urban fabric, to see the beautiful mixture of past and present built into the city's form.

As a City Planner, I also absolutely loved the transit system of light rail and streetcars that was so easy to navigate throughout the city. Attaturk International Airport, the subject of today's attacks, actually has a rail line that takes you from the airport directly to the City Center, near the Grand Bazaar. I have raved about this feature to everyone who ever mentioned of Istanbul within my earshot. And now, within the past year alone, there have been attacks on rail lines, in the plaza between the Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque (where I am standing in the photo below), and the airport.

I wish things like this could stop. I wish evil people - or rather, people who wish to hurt others - didn't exist in this world. I wish we could live and let live in a world so diverse and so full of different beautiful cultures and religions and lifestyles. But this kind of danger is a risk we have to take if we want to see the world. And frankly, it's a risk we take each time we step outside our front door, even within the U.S. as the Orlando shootings have reminded us.

I am not sure that I would go to Istanbul if my trip were happening this year instead of in 2014, especially since I went alone. But the idea that this fear of terrorist activities is stunting national economies, preventing people from traveling, and leaving magnificent historic places destitute of people just breaks my heart. That is what terrorists want. They want to use that fear to further their agendas. I know we can't let them win, but I don't know how to balance resilience with the desire to stay safe. I just don't know how to do my part to make things better, as much as I wish I could. But for now, my heart is with Istanbul on this tragic day.

Changing the World

Travel has such a power to inspire and motivate you to be better and to do something bigger with your life. It's really difficult to explain since it's not a tangible feeling. When you travel, it becomes easier to see how big and diverse the world is. For me, it just makes me want to do something more with my life. And visiting places like Australia where there are tons of expatriates on working holiday visas for a year or two at a time really makes me want to live abroad.

I want to change the world. I'm not exactly sure how I can attempt to accomplish that just yet, but I do know that I am not going to do it by living in Utah and sitting in an office all week long. I think traveling as much as I possibly can has given me many ideas and taught me a lot about both myself and my place in this world, although I think I need to eventually take things a step further and take greater action one day soon.

There are many renditions of the quote, "Surround yourself with only people who are going to lift you higher" (Oprah). I believe a lot of people who are driven, the movers and shakers in the world, are travelers and live in bigger cities. I want to be where they are so I can be inspired. I have traveled to find adventure. I have traveled to attend conferences and further my learning and networking experiences. I have traveled to be where history has and will be happening. And because of these things, I have rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest people in the world from successful lawyers and doctors to world renown business owners like Miki Agrawal, founder of Thinx underwear. I am meeting and exchanging ideas and words with these amazing people, and I need to find a way to do something more about it.

It's easy enough to say that I have a wonderful job I enjoy that is enough to support my lifestyle and pay the bills and affords me the work schedule (Fridays off!) and time off to travel a good deal, so why would I want to leave? But I also don't want to get comfortable and complacent in this easy, simple life so that I forget to do more and to be better. Recently, I was able to travel to Phoenix for the National Planning Conference and ended up getting involved in the International Division of the American Planning Association. Being able to participate in the division in the small role of acting secretary has gotten me SO excited about international planning. I mean, the United Nations is hosting Habitat 3 in Quito, Ecuador this fall and is deciding on the New Urban Agenda. My experience and passion for travel has led to this opportunity and has gotten me so excited about things like Habitat 3, things that actually will change the world. And for me, travel is the key to finding people and opportunities to accomplish something more with my life.

Sunrises and Sunsets

Mather Point, Grand Canyon sunrise - April 1, 2016

The sun is indiscriminate. For every moment it is rising for some people, for some place in this world, and it is setting for some people, for some place in this world. It does not care if we see it or not. It does not care where we are or who we are. It does not care if clouds or mountains obstruct it's view. It continues on, consistent, exact, never changing in a lifetime or ten.

The sun does not change. It is indifferent to the lives (or lack thereof) of the people it sustains. The sun is always there, no matter what. If we want to change our relationship to the sun, we have to be the ones to change it. It is our duty to position ourselves, to travel to receive the light. And even then, mother nature is also indiscriminate. She might not cooperate. But the least we can do is decide where we we'll experience the sun. If I want to change my relationship to the sun, I can travel to India, I can visit to the Grand Canyon and be inspired by a new view of it.

A new experience of the same things we've known our entire lives have the most potential to inspire and spark something within us. And what is more consistent in our lives than the sun? Even the air we breathe changes from day to day. But not the sun. You could be fifty yards from a specific place in this world and your view of the sun, the experience you have with it can change in that fifty yards. Isn't that potential exiting? Potential for something constant, consistent, so much the same in our lives to appear different and to feel different to us. That's all it takes to make or break a life, at least for a moment.