When I don’t travel for an extended period of time (two weeks), I get this weird feeling like I’m standing still. It feels like the whole world is moving around me but I’m not keeping up with it. “But slowing down can be a good thing.” Well, stopping to smell the roses has never been my forte.

I have a thing for skylines. (Well, that and rooftop bars, but that’s a story for another day.) In each city I visit, my favorite thing to do is find a park, bridge or pier just on the city’s edge and take in its silhouette. It seems to be something that every sizable city has in common. Tall, grayish buildings reaching for (and sometimes in) the clouds, with thousands of offices and households, and thousands of individuals going about their lives. A snapshot of architectural precision manifesting visual disarray as one elaborate structure appears to encroach on another. Yet each one distinctly represents an architect’s proudly crafted legacy, a mark of his or her own expression on this concrete jungle. To me, that’s beauty.

I fell in love with the antique cars driving down Malecón and the view of the port from Park Güell. I have spent hours sitting in Main Street Park watching the ferries go by on East River. I could take the I-195 from South Beach at sunset a million times and still miss it everyday. But on those days (or weeks) when a foreign escape seems light years away, I frequent one of Toronto’s countless lakefront parks or tucked-away patios to admire the skyline that I have grown to take for granted with each morning commute to the center of the downtown core. You can say this is my version of “smelling the roses.” The entire city appears to have stopped to take a break with me. These tend to be solo excursions yielding a fruitful exercise in self-reflection and goal-setting (I say at the risk of getting too philosophical). It’s my place to think. So with each new city comes a new perspective and the opportunity to  reflect on how far I’ve come as a person as I start another day and look forward to another skyline.

Which cityscape is your escape?

(Toronto, Chicago, New York, Miami, Havana, Los Angeles)