It’s been over a week since my last post and I have a really, really good excuse. I spent the past week attending the 2012 Book Passage Travel Writers and Travel Photographers Conference in Corte Madera, California. The event is a gathering of the “crème de la crème” in the world of travel writing and photography – all under one roof to teach some 80+ participants who are ready to soak up the knowledge through four days of networking, morning sessions, luncheons, intensive afternoon workshops, and evening “conversations” with travel personalities and authors of note. All of the faculty – from Pauline Frommer to NatGeo photographer Robert Holmes – available and ready for endless questions from us budding travel writers, authors, photographers and creative souls.

I’ll share more about Book Passage soon, as my brain is still absorbing it all (and the title may well be “I Heart Book Passage”) but I want to start by saying: I left my heart in North Beach, San Francisco.

I had signed up for a pre-conference Travel Writing Intensive field class with Don George, who happens to be National Geographic Traveler’s Editor at Large, not to mention an amazing author and established travel journalist, co-founder of the conference and super nice human being all around. Led by Don, we experienced “a day in the life of a travel writer” and the chosen area was North Beach, an Italian neighborhood in San Francisco, filled with sidewalk cafés, pastry shops, amazing bookstores and all sorts of ethnic restaurants. So eclectic and so me!

Between sips of macchiato and bites of cannoli, I found it hard to concentrate after lunch and write those few paragraphs for class, to be critiqued at the end of the day. The breeze of hilly North Beach, the chatter of people walking by, the glorious 80-degree sun shining on colorful murals and even the handsome Italianesque man who followed me around and asked me to sit with him while I was “on assignment” scoping out a local bar, all conspired against me… I just didn’t want to head back to the ferry and end this fabulous day. And I dreaded returning to the oppressively humid, concrete jungle of Washington DC.

As the Grand Dame of travel writing Georgia Hesse said at the opening of the conference, gushing with advice from her decades as a travel writer and editor: “Sitting at a sidewalk café is never a waste of time.”

Now I just need to move to a place that has them.

Lebawit Lily Girma

Lily Girma is a published Travel writer, Photographer and Guidebook author who has lived and studied in Africa, Europe and the Americas. In 2008, she left behind a prestigious law career to follow her passion. Her work has appeared in various outlets, including CNN Travel and BBC Travel, and her photography commissioned by tourism boards. Her first edition of "MOON BELIZE" travel guidebook is due for publication this Fall 2013 (10th edition, Moon Handbooks by Avalon Travel/Perseus Books). Lily's work reflects a deep love for culture and adventure in all its forms.

More Posts - Website

Follow Me: