During my first trip to Chicago last week, I was astounded by all the public art. Maybe that sounds silly if you don’t live in a big city, but I’m saying this after having lived in the New York City metro area for almost the past decade being surrounded by all kinds of art, from street graffiti to Monet. While in Chicago, I experienced public art in the expected places like at Grant Park and Millennium Park where the beloved “Bean” known officially as “Cloud Gate” designed by Anish Kapoor stands. Beyond the Bean, I kept bumping into art, like the “Flying Dragon” sculpture (which I thought was a fish) near a tulip garden, or the water fall over a monolith-like computerized screen showing a woman’s face. Sometimes I didn’t even know where I was walking. I just wandered and took photos. I’m sure there’s a guide out there with explanations about what I saw, but instead of planning, mapping and reading, I roamed the Grant Park-Millennium Park-South Michigan Avenue area before I had to catch a bus to a company dinner. Apparently several parks and public buildings throughout Chicago are like this…art is everywhere. Whether this is Bilandic’s legacy or he just got the ball rolling, I don’t know, but art thrives in Chicago.

This piece right along Lake Michigan is called “Flamenco Revisited.”

Another leading lady reaching toward the sky in Chicago is “Magdalene,” a piece I was eager to see and thrilled to come across without trying. Designed by sculptor Dessa Kirk, the piece becomes entwined with its surrounding blooms as flowers crawl up her skirt. Chicago’s harsh, long winters, typical for Great Lakes communities, make for short, but hot, summers, so blooms will blossom soon.

The “Flying Fish…um Dragon.”

Installed in 2007, “The Bean” is popular among locals, tourists, and school groups, and attracted all three during a sunny, bright afternoon in downtown Chicago.

The renowned Art Institute of Chicago is the largest art museum in the Midwest and among the most prestigious museums in the United States. Located on South Michigan Avenue by Millennium Park, the museum offers free admission every Thursday from 5:00 – 8:00 pm. The gift shop had this quietly moving piece that made me think of Mother’s Day. I really wanted to buy it but then recalled I was doing Chicago on a budget.

Purplish lilies sprout from the ground not too far from the famous Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain. The fountain has been a beloved gathering spot since its dedication in 1927 and was inspired by the opulence at Versailles.

Kids splash in the water while images of a smiling woman are projected from behind a waterfall. Nearby, tulips sunbathed.

A hallway in the historic Hilton Chicago hotel features a painting called “Faces of Chicago.”

Can’t tell you what this is but I can tell you it involves pipes.

Walk between Terminals 1 and 2 at Chicago O’Hare Airport and there’s a corridor gallery featuring works by student artists who participate in the Chicago program After School Matters. People whizzed back and forth thumbing iphones while I pointed my iphone at windows, benches and glass dangling things so I could take pictures. One woman walked up and said “Isn’t this beautiful?” as if we were the only two people in the airport noticing and perhaps at that moment, we were. The kids art works made me giddy, so giddy that I donated $100 and tweeted their praises because, well, I’m a marshmallow. These two benches below were painted by kids.

Near the student art work corridor is a mural that’s more like a mirror of Chicago. These guys need no introduction.

CondeNast Traveler just published more about Chicago’s public art scene, which you can read about here. I’ll save these parks and pieces for the next visit.

New York City offers a smorgasbord of foods, languages and experiences, with dozens of food trucks circling uptown, midtown and downtown, dishing up almost every ethnic flavor out there. You can try several trucks at once at the monthly Food Truck Rally held in Prospect Park, Brooklyn. As the weather warms up, more trucks will be out and about, including Big Gay Ice Cream Truck, which returns for the summer season at Union Square Park later this month.

Many thanks to the folks at the New York City Food Truck Association who helped with this story and who always lend a hand to New Yorkers, whether it’s Hurricane Sandy relief or simply keeping this city a fun, funky place to live. To learn more about New York City’s food trucks, especially how to cook what they cook, check out the newly released cookbook/love letter “New York a la Cart: Recipes and Stories from the Big Apple’s Best Food Trucks” which features how some of these foodies got their starts on the streets. Come visit and have a food truck picnic with eight million of your best friends.

My husband Mike enjoying meat strewn over fried carbohydrates while I…

…sip a ‘Walk the Plank’ smoothie from Green Pirate Juice made with kale, cucumber and pineapple.

We stayed at the Park Hyatt Tokyo hotel near Shinjuku Station not because a decade earlier that’s where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson filmed Lost in Translation, but because the hotel has one of the best pool views in the world, according to Travel and Leisure. I’m a hotel pool junkie and base hotel choices not just on price or location, but on the quality of its pool. The 20-meter “sky” pool at Park Hyatt Tokyo was amazing, although you can’t see Mount Fuji while swimming in the water. You need to get out of the pool and, bam! there’s Mount Fuji staring you down from about 60 miles away. I couldn’t stop taking pictures of this magnificent mountain. The only other people I saw at the pool were middle-aged Western male executives getting in a workout while I did a half hour worth of strokes in my bikini. Total bliss.

While enjoying five-star amenities (we get what the fifth star stands for–unparalleled awesomeness), we sought free family-friendly fun around Tokyo. Five words: public parks and window shopping. Neither costs much except the squeaky-clean subway ride to get around, and both yield plenty of cultural stimulation. Our hotel and a nearby playground provided a lot to see and do without going very far, plus even our room had a view of the great mountain, which made the hotel even more worthwhile. After poking around the hotel area, we ventured farther afield to a number of parks and shops.

Tokyo Tower and the aquarium in its “basement” below the foundation aren’t free, but adjacent Shiba Park costs nothing. Statues of “Jizbosatusu,” said to protect the souls of stillborn children, line the grounds. It’s spooky, yet peaceful and pretty, like many cemeteries even though no one is buried here (that we know of). The statues are decorated with knitted caps and baby clothes, and many hold pinwheels that spin in the breeze. Zojo-ji temple, a Buddhist temple, stands near the rows of statues and gardens. Walk in, make a donation, light incense and say a prayer. We did.

Ueno Park is Tokyo’s oldest public park, created in 1873. It is near Ueno Station and home to temples, ponds, water fountains, nearly 9,000 different types of trees, hundreds of plants and flowers, and several cultural institutions including art, science and natural history museums. Ueno Park embodied Japanese austerity and botanical whimsy, with cherry blossom boughs waving to people from everywhere. You could easily spend a day there, but since we only had three days in Tokyo, we breezed through Ueno Park and Tokyo National Museum in about two hours, plus our feet were sore. We perked up with ice cream for about $3 USD that came in cool Japanese flavors, like sweet potato, cherry blossom, and green tea, in addition to traditional chocolate and vanilla.

Around downtown Tokyo…not sure how dreamy this shop is for ladies since it was closed.

Everyone’s favorite mutant lizard can be found in another hygienic city park near a Starbucks and a bridal shop selling white Western-style gowns.

There’s plenty to look at around Tokyo, especially the people watching and fashion. Shopping opportunities are boundless. When it comes to priorities, it’s “shopping for clothes, food, and then paying for housing,” says a friend of Mike’s, who has been living the ex-pat life in Tokyo for the past decade. You can wander all over Tokyo, not spend any yen, and return feeling visually overwhelmed, from the colorful, never dull Tsukiji Fish Market…

…to posh department stores that are equally colorful.

You will find tons of color as well as funky mushrooms at KiddyLand toy store, a strange, hypnotic, noisy place.

And, of course, Hello Kitty, hawks everything from doughnuts to attitude, because next to Godzilla, she rules.

Mount Everest epitomizes the dichotomy and complexity of travel; people explore the world, they litter, they move on, garbage piles up, soon marring the very beauty of what was there to explore in the first place. Yet travel can inspire thoughtful leadership and visionary stewardship when it comes to our planet, a belief espoused by The International Ecotourism Society. The very act of travel or tourism can be a vehicle for conservation. We’re all capable of traveling responsibly and minimizing our impact, from simple acts like reusing our towels at hotels to tossing our plastic water bottles into recycling receptacles instead of into trash bins to bringing a portable coffee mug around the world (as my husband actually does because he consumes coffee constantly) instead of filling styrofoam cups everywhere.

Next spring, we’re vacationing at the HQ of global conservation, Costa Rica, a model for green living. Costa Rica understands that green (also my favorite color) makes people happy. When animals and plants thrive, people thrive. America’s National Park Service upholds this concept every day. Think about some of the favorite places you have visited or camped at or hiked. Would you want a pile of trash blocking your view of Longs Peak Mountain in Colorado? Want to stroll along the Santa Monica beach kicking empty bottles and cans? What about snorkeling in Key West and having a tire float toward your face?

Below are some of my favorite places on the planet featuring animals and landscapes from the four continents we have had the privilege to see. I push my family to live green both at home and on the road (or in the sky) for somewhat selfish reasons; yes, it’s the right thing to do, but we want to keep traveling. We want to enjoy the land and the sea and all that Earth has to offer and keep it free of man-made junk interfering with our fun and our time on Earth. Mother Nature is the landlady here; we’re just tenants.

A pelican by our boat in Key West, Florida, USA

Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado, USA

Cherry blossom trees along the Philosopher’s Walk in Kyoto, Japan

Santa Monica beach, California, USA

Big Sur, California, USA

An iguana says hello in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

Sheep graze at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in Catskill Mountains, New York, USA

Birds chase each other along a canal in Brugges, Belgium

Mayan ruins along the Caribbean coast, Tulum, Mexico

McDonald’s and Starbucks can be found in Japan, but thankfully they don’t dominate a street corner. In Japan, I ate fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I ate seaweed and pickled vegetables with my fish. I ate a few things I couldn’t identify. Instead of a basket of bread while you wait for the main course, we received a bowl of cabbage leaves coated in a light, tangy vinaigrette, which was delicious, and, as Mike noted, a more nutritious alternative than nachos. Many of my meals had a slice of roasted acorn squash, and I got to the point where I so looked forward to this fleshy crescent chunk of food that I was disappointed when my entree didn’t feature acorn squash. Thanks to Japan, I have an acorn squash sitting on my kitchen counter at home, waiting to be roasted, sliced, and added to just about everything except breakfast cereal.

I’d like to say we were among the throngs that waited for breakfast at the famous Daiwa Sushi at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, but we weren’t. Perhaps next time. Tsukiji Fish Market has a ton of cheap eateries, so we opted for one without a line and enjoyed some of the freshest sushi, specifically the chu toro, a tasty cut of tuna, and I don’t even think we spent $20 USD. Walking around Tsukiji Fish Market, there’s so much on the chopping block every single day, you wonder if there’s anything left in the sea. Japan accounts for 30 percent of the world’s tuna consumption. After having fish three meals a day, several days in a row, I now think that nothing at the Tsukiji Fish Market goes to waste.

And then there’s that lunch in Kyoto’s Gion District that my daughter refers to as “the lunch with too many eyeballs.” Whole shrimp had been tossed into all of our entrees, and a shrimp antennae was eerily waving from Anna’s bowl of broth. I tried to fish out the rest of the shrimp body before Anna noticed what was floating beneath her noodles, but, failed.

Eyeballs aside, our meals always featured vegetables, even at breakfast where little salads were often served alongside a “Western” buffet of eggs and bacon. Japanese serving sizes were small and always filling. Everything was lightly flavored and not buried in sauces. No one felt gassy, bloated, and bursting at the belt buckle with regret. The Japanese are known for their love of perfection and presentation, and every entree we received, from takeout sushi at Tokyo’s “Family Mart” convenience chain to the Bento boxes on the bullet train to Park Hyatt Tokyo’s bountiful breakfast buffet to the Mexican Bento boxes in Kyoto were thoughtfully arranged. Nothing ever, ever looked thrown together by a cook who had lost his appetite for the job. Even “the lunch with too many eyeballs” was attractive and deceptively appealing (I’m not a shrimp lover, whether it’s just the tail or a tail attached to eyeballs).

I’ve said this on Twitter and I’ll repeat it here: why hasn’t the Azuki bean taken off in America? Ok, maybe Americans don’t associate the word “bean” with dessert. My first introduction to Azuki bean sweets took place fifteen years ago at a Chinese restaurant in Vancouver, British Columbia, and after that I was hooked. Why can’t sweet Azuki bean paste be added to the Pop-tart? Americans don’t know what they’re missing. I’m not saying ditch chocolate, but rice cakes with sweet Azuki bean paste are delicious, they go great with green tea, and are the perfect way to cap a meal of fresh fish, rice and vegetables. For folks craving more Western style desserts, Kyoto offered beautifully crafted “Nature Doughnuts,” as they were called, that were too cute to eat, and did not contain Azuki beans. Japanese sweets are always beautifully wrapped and the sweets themselves sometimes looked like dried flowers in glass.

After a week of fish and rice, we all started to crave some familiarity. While strolling Kyoto near Ponto-cho, part of the Hanamachi district there, we walked by a gleaming avocado which turned out to be a sign for Cafe Dining Avocado Mexican. I’m a guacamole junkie so lunch was Mexican Bento boxes, an avocado cappuccino, a broccoli-kiwi smoothie (yes, my favorite color is green), delicious cactus ice cream served with slices of fresh avocado and “Day of the Dead” spongecake with fruit. The place appeared popular among locals; few waiters spoke English though they offered an English menu, as was common around Kyoto, and the restaurant was filled with trendy-looking Japanese ladies who lunch. It was interesting to experience a Japanese interpretation of Mexican food; again, the servings were small, but appropriate, and absolutely delicious and spicy. Anna was relieved to eat something she recognized, and everyone enjoyed the break from the seafood and rice. Our other “Western” caving was a quick evening bite at Mos Burger, which isn’t yummy, but is certainly visually entertaining. I kept a menu as a souvenir.

Back to portion control in America and eating my bowl full of kale. The bowl overflowed with kale and ended up providing three meals over the weekend. Three meals for $11 may feel like a bargain, but I would’ve much preferred half that bowl of kale, which would have filled me up, for half the price. Mike’s chicken entree took up more than half his plate and was swimming in sauce. I know complaints about US food portions tend to focus on fast food chains, but the kale came from a chic noodle bar and the chicken came from a fancy schmancy restaurant. Why do we dish up so much for a single meal? Are these large portions rooted in our frontier origins…are we really that worried about finding our next meal? I longed for Japanese balance on my plate.

Back to Japan, where portions were appropriate and opportunities for walking off breakfast, lunch and dinner were boundless. After filling up on small servings of healthy foods, we strolled Japan’s cherry blossomed streets because everything was in full bloom while we were there. This was the view outside Cafe Dining Avocado Mexican in Kyoto near the canal. This Mexican joint is in a beautiful neighborhood known for geisha houses, traditional tea houses and the preservation of classic Japanese architecture. There are cobblestone streets and small lovely private homes, restaurants, and shops along the way. This area is what you think of when you imagine “Kyoto” for a few blocks away, you encounter more of the urban artery with department stores lining block after block. What you do learn from walking around Japan’s streets is whether it’s a historical neighborhood or a busy thoroughfare, the Japanese take a lot of pride in their cuisine, and just about anywhere you go (except maybe Mos Burger), you’ll find something delectable and thoughtfully, artfully crafted.

Japan was sensory overload, and I’m still processing everything I saw, smelled, heard, touched and tasted. I have only been back in the United States for less than 48 hours and already I miss Japanese hospitality, its toilet technology, chu toro bowls, and the obsessive cleanliness that dovetails with the country’s endearing relationship with water (not surprising for a nation of islands). Tokyo felt like a Western city with Eastern touches whereas Kyoto felt like an Eastern city with Western touches. Tokyo’s cherry blossoms were just starting to fall while we were there, whereas Ma Nature flipped the “on” switch during our time in Kyoto, and the city was glorified in bouncy pink spring beauty. Kyoto’s undulating blue mountains, pink petals, stoic temples, and geishas and monks crisscrossing uneven, ancient streets, made it impossible to take a bad picture. Kyoto was the purpose of our trip and did not disappoint. Kyoto and Tokyo offered plenty for the senses, but this quick list doesn’t do it justice.

Sounds
Mike is right; Japan sounds like a 1980s video game. Auditory cues for train stations, public service announcements, commercials, everything except what the Buddha is up to, cut through the air constantly. To my foreign ears, everything, even useful information coming through a loudspeaker over the train platforms, sounded like a pachinko parlor. Not understanding the language took a backseat to the constant cutesy sounds that I never heard in other major world cities.

Sights
Where to begin? If you’ve seen Sofia Coppola’s wonderful Lost in Translation, then you have a sense of Tokyo’s seductive neon glow. Tokyo IS the cleanest, safest city I have ever walked. I would let Anna eat off the sidewalks there before allowing her to pick up a dropped item on a New York City street. The dedication to cleanliness there is beyond exemplary. Where else can you walk around a city with a population exceeding 13 million and feel completely safe, free from panhandlers and from worries about stepping on someone else’s gum, spilled Starbucks green tea matcha latte or dog poop? Tokyo is a metropolis remarkably liberated from its inhabitants’ detritus. I could wax poetic about Tokyo Tower, the immaculate city parks, the Godzilla statue, puffy cherry blossom trees, and the Zen Buddhist temples (and I will), but the blinding cleanliness of such a busy place stands out. The other sight that stands out is Mount Fuji. I lived near Mount Rainier in Seattle and was always awestruck by it. Mount Fuji is more than 12,000 feet and coyly hid behind the clouds during our first two days in Tokyo. But when the skies cleared…wow.

Smells
Three simple words. Spring. Fish. Ginger. That’s what I smelled, and I loved it.

Tastes
Azuki beans…can’t get enough of them and don’t understand why you can’t buy Azuki bean or red bean sweets here in the United States, unless you go to a Japanese specialty shop, which are few and far between. Americans don’t think of beans “that” way, though I think if you start them out by putting that delicious reddish-purple sweet Azuki bean paste in a Pop-Tart, the Azuki bean would have a fighting chance among Middle Americans. I will confess right now after a week of rice, fish, and pickled things that could sometimes not be identified, I craved cornflakes (Michael Pollan is right, there is way too much corn in the US diet!). I could drink green tea and eat seaweed salads every day, but then again, green has always been my favorite color.

Touch
Gelatinous, if I can to sum things up. Gelatinous green tea ice cream or cherry blossom-flavored ice cream balanced on a tiny cone. Or gelatinous fresh fish flesh, which gets sprayed on to you as you walk through Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market; gelatinous items in Bento boxes; gelatinous globs of sticky rice sticking to everything, including your kid’s hair; mushy mounds of smoked salmon for breakfast, lunch and dinner; sushi that you squished between your chopsticks yet would bounce back and regain its shape when you accidentally dropped your sushi roll on to your plate, thankfully missing the dollop of wasabi.

My five senses are still digesting the experiences of the past nine days, but I did want to reflect on those first few impressions, which often color a trip. It’s those first few impressions that push us to get off the couch, spend money we probably shouldn’t spend and go somewhere that feels entirely strange and new. Daily routines dull our five senses; walking around New York City I can forget to see, smell, and listen to what’s going on around me because I am too focused on just getting there. Travel invites us to pause and look around, to absorb our surroundings the way children do, with trust and curiosity.

I turned my Cheeveresque pool quest into an assignment for The Los Angeles Times (Nora Ephron’s mother is right–everything is copy!). The article appears in today’s LA Times travel section, focusing on Southern California pools with a few pools nearby in the desert, as well as some surprisingly alluring pools in cold places like Seattle and Montreal.

(Photo credit: Splashtopia at Rancho Las Palmas Resort & Spa)

I wish the Northeast had California’s pool season. I live here, the swankier pools are there, so we travel out west once a year for about a week or two every summer and, yes, we sample the pools (and the beaches) the way you sample Napa wines. You can read about my family escapades to California here. Our annual California vacation involves a week in LA so Mike can visit the Mother Ship (his employer) while Anna and I soak up quality pool time. We make time to explore other parts of California, too. One year it was a day trip to San Diego. Another year we did Disneyland. Last year, we did Big Sur and San Francisco. This year, we’re doing four days in Monterey and a day trip to San Juan Capistrano Mission. Ironically, the day my pool article debuted is the day I paid the bill for our family’s summer town pool membership, though pool season doesn’t start until Memorial Day weekend, so we have a two-month wait ahead of us. Meanwhile, SoCal families may be reading my story now and could spend Easter poolside if they chose to. It’s a sweet life out there in SoCal. New York City’s bagels are better, but SoCal has a lot going for it. It’s always a beautiful sight when our flight descends towards LA airport and I can see all the backyard pools glistening sky blue.

Maple syrup is indigenous to North America, so for visitors coming to United States for the very first time, perhaps skip burgers and hot dogs and treat yourself to a true taste of the land. We’ve got plenty. My favorite state in the union, Vermont, is the biggest producer of maple syrup with 75,000 acres of Vermont forests churning out more than $32 million worth of maple syrup. Not surprisingly, it shares a border with Canada’s biggest maple syrup producer, Quebec province, which pumps from its trees between 70 and 80 percent of the world’s maple syrup. Thus, the maple leaf on the nation’s flag.

Peak maple syrup season is happening now, when days get warmer but nights are still cold–that’s when the sap starts to rise inside the trees. Taps start tapping when maple trees reach a certain level of maturity, around 30 to 40 years. This is a great time to savor nature’s bounty, an act usually reserved for fall. Tour the sugar shacks or “cabane a sucre” in Quebec or book a weekend at a cozy inn in Vermont and enjoy homemade pancakes with fresh syrup or maple syrup fondue with fruit (one of my favorites). Anyone who reads this blog knows I could go on and on about Vermont and Quebec. I also gush about Vermont and Quebec for CheapOAir. That’s because both regions are beautiful and the food is sublime. One of my favorite places for maple fondue is Le Petit Chateau, a small restaurant next to the giant hotel Le Chateau Frontenac, an extremely classy place worth putting on the credit card. Here I am in downtown Quebec enjoying Le Petit Chateau’s maple fondue paired with a flute of hard apple cider. Both went down easily.

Talking about maple syrup has me thinking it’s time to book a weekend at a favorite Vermont hotel, TopNotch Resort and Spa or maybe we’ll return to Basin Harbor Club where we got married. I’ll let you know where we land.

If you seek blooms, the New York Botanical Garden is a much welcome reprieve in the concrete jungle. The popular Orchid Show is on until April 22 (aka Earth Day) and will soon be followed beginning May 18 by another fantastic exhibit featuring Philip Haas sculptures titled “The Four Seasons.” The installation exhibits as well as last year’s Monet’s Garden made fantastic day trips, and are perfect for visitors looking to do something outside of the usual Times Square-Broadway-Rockefeller Center lineup. I particularly enjoy returning to the Orchid Show especially when I don’t have a tropical vacation on the horizon.

Switching gears from garden delights to other types of delights–food! New Yorkers love to talk about food as much as they love to eat food. Pizza might as well be the city’s signature culinary delight, and there’s a guide on who’s pizza is best. (Many of them are good. I like thin-crust pizza with lots of cheese, and, yes, I fold my slice.) You could spend your spring fling just sampling the different slices and deciding which pizzeria got the sauce or the crust or the cheese just right.

The Food Truck Rally at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park returns for the spring/summer season beginning April 7. This is a great way to experience New York cuisine without breaking the bank. Walk around the circle of trucks and enjoy pizza, dumplings, waffles, classic American burgers, organic fruit smoothies, cupcakes, ice cream and tacos. If you’re craving it, chances are the food trucks are cooking it. Two New Yorkers decided they craved food truck food so much they wanted to learn how to cook it at home. So they wrote New York a la Cart: Recipes and Stories from the Big Apple’s Best Food Trucks which will be published April 2. These two foodies, Siobhan Wallace and Alexandra Penfold, hail New York’s burgeoning food truck scene while highlighting success stories and favorite recipes.

Food trucks are a fun way to fuel up for the rest of your sightseeing, whether that takes you uptown, midtown, downtown and all around. I also recommend Pies -n- Thighs which enjoyed some recent publicity from the Food Network’s Guy Fieri, so now lines are even longer to get into this tiny joint in Williamsburg. Get there when the doors open, before the previous night’s party goers wake up and realize they’re hungry. The chicken and waffles are phenomenal and the donuts, I can’t say enough. I loved the donuts there so much I included them in a recent CheapOAir blog post about donut hopping in New York City.

We covered the outdoors, food, so now shopping. Yes, there’s Fifth Avenue shopping where you will find stores that can be found in most malls and big cities. There’s junky souvenir shopping in Times Square. There’s stolen goods shopping along Canal Street, as well as scarf shopping in Chinatown (two thumbs up). And then there’s New York City street shopping, like flea markets and farmers markets and unusual little places where you can find unusual things. My favorite is Union Square Greenmarket open on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays where later this spring, you’ll find the Big Gay Ice Cream truck scooping up Bea Arthurs and Salty Pimps parked near 17th Street and Broadway. I’ll be in the line waiting for my Salty Pimp. For those of you who can’t wait two more months, Big Gay Ice Cream has shops in both the East and West Village where the Salty Pimp Cupcake is available.

To get a more complete list of everything that is going on in this whacky metropolis of ours, including street market shopping opportunities, NYCgo offers fantastic roundups of everything across New York, and they are far more in the know than I am. I’m just a tax-paying resident who likes to eat and shop here.

“This is my penance for being such a carnivore,” he said smiling and wiping his brow.

We were volunteering that morning at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary in Willow, New York, a pastoral village outside of Hippie Central, Woodstock, New York, home to the infamous 1969 concert, for those of you who weren’t born yet (I wasn’t either, for the record.) Six months before shoveling goat and duck poop, I read The New York Times travel section review of the farm sanctuary right about when my daughter was asking if we could hang out on a farm because, you know, the suburban animals that make our community feel like a scene from Snow White, all the deer, squirrels, wild parakeets and Sheila the raccoon, had lost their novelty. I figured we would go upstate, have a nice weekend, and drive home feeling awesome about ourselves for volunteering on a farm. Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary exceeded our expectations. We found ourselves humbled by its mission, its dedication, and its beauty. Whatever your personal politics on food, agriculture, and the right to willfully consume pink sludge, the farm’s message and the farm itself are worth a stop-and-think, or a stop-and-visit. A visit may result in questions or changes about your own consumption habits because this farm and its owner, cancer survivor and animal rights activist Jenny Brown, inspire.

Our December visit proved to be so much fun and so rewarding that we went back again in February (more snow, more shoveling of poop) and signed up again for another visit in April to celebrate our daughter’s birthday and enjoy the farm and spring’s gentle touch, when tulips and daffodils add some color to land. For the non-outdoorsy type, explaining why shoveling poop and helping animals can be rewarding may seem difficult, but what Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary does very, very effectively is get you out of your head. What do I mean by that? You’re outside, doing a very linear task with tangible outcomes (sometimes unheard of in the office realm) and you have pigs, turkeys, mules, goats, chickens, ducks, cows, dogs, cats and sheep all very curious in who you are and what you’re doing. You’re not fretting or stressing or on an iPhone or Blackberry or wondering what you should be working on, avoiding, wearing, saying or not saying, or where you should be going or not-going. You just are. The farm is a Zen meditation in its way. Meanwhile, you’re the center of attention to the dozens of rescued animals that cross your path while you’re busy getting all Zen-like. They have no clue whether you crave steak or Daiya (vegan) cheese, whether you were ever mean to an animal when you were a kid or whether you dress your cat up in baby clothes (we’re guilty of putting funny hats on our cat). Many of these animals were abused or scheduled for slaughter, and yet they willfully approach you because it is an innate reaction to want to connect with other living things. I held Beatrice the Turkey and cuddled with a rooster whose name I didn’t catch. Anna bonded with goats and painted a portrait of Bertha the Pig. We were filthy and happy…all of us.

At the farm, cats enjoy the right of way as does anyone pushing a wheelbarrow full of clean or dirty hay…

For New Yorkers looking for an easy weekend getaway, the farm is less than two hours by car. You can opt for rooms with a shared bathroom (with an awesome clawfoot bathtub) or get the two-bedroom suite with a private bathroom, which we do because I feel too old to share toilets with anyone anymore. Sorry, call me selfish. A vegan breakfast, usually consisting of granola, fruit and toast, is served for all guests. Those staying overnight have access to a full kitchen, so bring your own groceries and whip up some pasta and curl up with a bottle of wine on a cold night. Also bring some bananas–the goats love them!

The farm has a vegan-only food policy so cooking on the premises means no animal products or byproducts allowed. When we arrived in February, we were greeted with a plate of vegan chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the oven (I should’ve asked for the recipe). New York City comedian Jamie Kilstein recently visited Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary and stayed at the guest house. He dons the farm’s signature souvenir T-shirt in a recent United magazine profile if you’re looking for motivation to eat more kale or buy a souvenir.

After shoveling poop (and showering), head into downtown Woodstock for art, books, shopping, great restaurants, and earthy-hippie-coolness, like the painted electric guitars along the main road, reminiscent of the historical concert. Not to burst bubbles, but the actual concert took place 40 miles away from Woodstock in a farming community called Bethel because turnout was so huge, concert organizers needed more open space to accommodate. Nevertheless, Woodstock keeps the spirit of the 1960s alive. After connecting with farm animals, enjoy a vegetarian lunch at Garden Cafe on the Green or shop for Tibetan goods or buy some locally painted art or eat a cupcake called the Janis Joplin. Because in Woodstock, it’s all good.

Art is appreciated everywhere. There are sculptures, mosaics, and paintings (including one by my daughter) on the farm. Art abounds in downtown Woodstock too.

A wall inside a restaurant bathroom…

Handpainted electric guitars line the streets, ready for any air-guitar solo.

Once you finish your chores, head into town. There’s great window shopping if you’re on a budget, as we always are.