Cheryl Strayed wants to show me the "dog bus" – but first we have to find it.

We walk along her quiet residential streets in Northeast Portland trying to track down the intriguing vehicle, my imagination running wild. Are we about to free a group of shackled dogs from animal control? Does Portland send its furry friends to school with their owners?

Eventually we locate our target on NE Halsey and 26^th Street. The converted school bus is painted bright blue and splattered with paw prints and pup faces. The license plate says WAG. Strayed explains that Meg, a local woman, runs the quirky pet sitting service. It's the kind of whimsical spectacle that you'd expect in a city that uses the slogan Keep Portland Weird – and it's just enough off the beaten path that it feels like a bona fide glimpse into this tight-knit community where Strayed has landed.

She arrived here off the beaten path, too. Few folks today can claim that they literally walked their way to a new life, but Strayed is one of them. While hiking the Pacific Crest Trail at age 26, the subject of her bestselling-soon-to-be-Reese-Witherspoon-starring-book Wild, Strayed traversed the state of Oregon before winding up in Portland. It was 1995 and her finances were shockingly grim. Her life savings hovered around twenty cents.

Elisabeth Eaves lives on Pineapple Street. Along with neighbors Cranberry and Orange, it's one of only three fruit streets in Brooklyn. Eaves, a writer who has published on topics ranging from travel to politics to stripping, knows the accompanying local lore to explain its origin.

"Back when a lot of people were just moving to this neighborhood, it was dominated by old Dutch families," she says. "The gentlemen of the neighborhood would affix their names to the streets. And there was a woman, a botanist and a horticulturalist, and she was annoyed that the men would just stick their names up on the street corners. She would take them down in the night and put up the names of plants. This went back and forth as kind of a cat and mouse battle for a while. And when the street names were finally grandfathered in by the city, she won, because she was the last person to stick up her names."

This anonymous horticulturalist would no doubt be pleased that, more than a century later, Ms. Eaves and I are meeting for lunch at Iris Café. As if in deference to that earlier era, you're not allowed to use computers or iPads at this restaurant that opened in 2009. Surrounded instead by folks engaged in the old-fashioned perusal of books and newspapers, we feast on delicious avocado sandwiches and talk about how Eaves, who was nomadic for years, finally settled in New York. She's been here for four years and owns a small studio apartment. I ask if she's found the geographic commitment difficult.

"It's not as hard as I would have expected," she says. "It's partly because I love this city. As a traveler, I think many of us have a need for hyper-stimulation. I love big cities. Big, serious cities." She doesn't always find New York thrilling, the way she did when she first arrived. "But I still have days, and moments, where I'm like: wow."

Eaves is, of course, one of many writers who've wound up in the area and she's well aware of the borough's literary legacy.

"I wanted you to meet me here because when I think about this neighborhood - the story of how it is now – it begins here," Steve Inskeep says. "In 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated and a lot of cities and neighborhoods burned, including this one. One of my neighbors was around at that time and he told me that the riot began here, that there was an office of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference right along here. A huge crowd gathered outside and someone threw an object through a drugstore window and the riots started."

We're standing on a loud corner at the intersection of 14^th and U Street in front of the glass and brick Frank D. Reeves Municipal Center, where Inskeep is occasionally interrupted by horns and conversations and one very polite panhandler. He tells me how, after the destruction, a lot of the buildings were empty for decades. Then this government center opened and brought jobs with it.

"Restaurants started to re-open," he says. "People started to renovate houses." He gestures towards the construction cranes punctuating the cloudy day as he notes how rapidly the neighborhood continues to change.

I'm listening to his words, soaking up the fascinating history lesson, but it's also impossible not to be just a little distracted by his voice. Inskeep's well-known tenor has been seeping out of my radio every morning for over a decade. I cannot help but be briefly disoriented by the physical reality of this surprisingly tall man in khaki pants who accompanies the typically disembodied voice.

In a recent fit of travel nostalgia, I pulled out the diary I kept while living in Ireland when I was 20. I expected it to be filled with precocious ramblings about the people and culture, a la Steinbeck's "A Russian Journal" or at the very least to offer up some "Eat, Pray, Love"-style insights about myself. Instead I found pages of minutely plotted grocery lists (I was so broke I had to shop meal to meal) and endless entries about... boys. Numerous paragraphs, for example, are devoted to flirtations with a witty Irish bartender. There is also much speculation over whether or not the long-lashed Spanish neighbor has a girlfriend. And a cute, scruffy lawyer who frequented the pub where I worked earned a full four pages before I even learned his name.

Ah, youth. Ah, travel. Ah, romance. As mortifyingly boy crazy as my young Ireland journal is, re-reading it did remind me of the excitement of being with someone new somewhere new. A small portion of these international romances endure but many are as short-term as our visitor visas. Still, you want to make the most of your foreign fling. Here's how.

Tony Perrottet won't talk to me. When I call him from the lobby he picks up his phone but doesn't utter a word. Rules dictate that he can't speak in the Writers Room, the shared workspace where he churns out articles and books, and the first stop on our walking tour of Perrottet's favorite neighborhood spots. Five silent seconds pass, then ten.

"Oh heeeeyyy, Rachel," he says finally, his Australian accent infused with a Bob Dylan-esque twang. "I'll be right down."

Silver-haired and wearing dark blue jeans and collared shirt under a soft green sweater, a college-professor-on-sabbatical look, Perrottet ushers me into the elevator. When we reach the Room, I can see why he's a stickler for cellphone protocol. The large loft is quiet as a coffin except for the rhythmic tapping of keyboards – and the twenty or so writers present seem cognizant of doing even that as softly as their productive fingers can manage. Back to back desks are occupied by whoever has shown up for the day, faces obscured by dividing screens. There's a kitchen for lunch breaks and a nap room in case you need to rest up before returning to the Muses. You can come here any day of the week, any time of the day, and stay as long as you like.

At this 30-year-old institution, Perrottet has rubbed elbows with literary celebrities like Jay McInerney, as well as the famous aspiring to the literary, like Molly Ringwald and Brooke Shields. But despite the many well-known authors who work here, Perrottet says it's actually very democratic. "They'll let anyone in as long as you're serious about your writing."

And membership isn't too hard on a writer's often-measly budget. "It's around $100 a month and they give you free coffee so you could actually make a profit if you had a cup every day," he says. It's a pretty good sales pitch, especially in a place like New York, where we cram ourselves into apartments people in other parts of the country would assign to kitchens or particularly roomy bathrooms.

Our options for ending romances are plentiful, ranging from face to face meetings to changing a Facebook status knowing your soon-to-be-ex will stumble across the unhappy message you are sharing with him and 500 other "friends." Depending on your perspective, we live either in a golden age of communications or a social media hell of our own making.

Travel breakups are a bit trickier. Maybe you've planned a trip with a mate then realized a week in that your idea of bliss is a day at the spa while hers is climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Or you're losing sanity because the jackhammer snoring your buddy characterized as "light wheezing" is keeping you up nights. Whatever the reasons, sometimes we need to part ways with a travel companion. Here's how.

Honesty
You can plan your itinerary, your route and your meals. But as far as I know there is no fool-proof way to calculate how you and your friends will interact after, say, getting lost for the 300th time or when forced to make nice with the frat boy, who always smells like cheese, your friend has fallen for. Be honest about needing some space. Here's a script to help you practice.

"Hey, Dave."
"What's up bro?"
"Well, I've got some things on my mind, Dave."
"Cool, cool."
"I'd like to strike out on my own for a bit, maybe meet up with you in a few weeks in Uzbekistan. How's that sound?"
"Right on."
"Awesome. Great talk, Dave."

Okay, it might not be as painless a conversation as it is with surfer Dave but the premise still holds. Be direct. Be kind. Be strong, grasshopper.

Pros: This strategy is your best bet for remaining friends after your trip and, let's be real, the healthiest suggestion on this list.
Cons: Honesty is tough. Just ask any politician, anywhere.

Some people are accident-prone. Others attract bad relationships. Me, I get into travel trouble. I once broke a piece off a plane mid flight – luckily not one crucial for flying. I've been robbed and swindled – in Bolivia, both in the same morning. There are friends of mine who joke that the only sure thing when traveling with me is that our flight will be canceled. I confess to you that I have even been deported.

Amazingly, I've never actually lost my passport. (Just a moment, please, while I race around knocking on every available wood surface in my apartment.) However, being embarrassingly prone to travel troubles, I've gone ahead and prepared for the highly likely possibility that this will one day occur. Here's what to do when you lose that prized official ID, according to various subjective (me) and objective (the government) sources.

Panic
What? You're not panicking? You've lost your PASSPORT. You might be stuck in a place that is not America FOREVER. I'm kidding. Do not panic. Definitely don't. Do you know what happens when you panic? Well, it has something to do with the shift of blood flow and "fight or flight" and sweating and, see, it's all very scientific so let me simplify things by saying that it's the reason all those big-breasted, short-skirted girls run up the stairs in horror movies. In your case, it's the reason you are currently braced against the nearest wall, starting to breath funny, and wondering if 25-year-olds ever have heart attacks. This will keep you from taking the necessary steps to remedy this unfortunate situation. So stay calm, guy. Everything is going to okay.

We fall in love with places, just like we do with people. Maybe you worship Chicago or Bangkok or Buenos Aires – or all three. Regardless of the locale, certain corners of the world feel like they belong to us, so profound is our sense of attachment to them.

Some of these spots we adore because of their aesthetics, while others are tied to memorable experiences – where you had a romantic first kiss, or swallowed that disgusting bug to prove your backpacker mettle.

And then there are those places beloved because they are settings for what I call the "traveler epiphany." It's that moment (or moments) when you realize travel is not merely a take-it-or-leave-it hobby but rather that you must travel. It is an Urge with a capital U that cannot be ignored. Wherever you realized this, whether on an elephant in Thailand or at a barbeque in New Jersey, you no doubt remember the revelation as a powerful one – and fondly – and this is probably how you remember the place where you first experienced it, too.

But recently I returned to Australia, one of the countries that helped solidify my identity as a traveler, and was surprised by how unfamiliar it had become in my absence. I hadn't visited in eight years, when I briefly lived there. I was biding my time back then, a new college grad, when an Aussie friend invited me to stay. We had met the summer before in Ireland, where I had started entertaining the notion that I might like not just to travel but to settle in somewhere foreign – and digging my heels into the Sydney sand for a stretch felt like an excellent plan.

Every August I head to Long Beach Island for a week with girlfriends. (Yes, this is part of the Jersey Shore. No, I have never met Snooki.) This is our fourth year going and it's taken about that long to figure out how best to vacation together. One of my friends, for instance, likes to have breakfast at the exact same time each morning while reading the New York Times. Mess with this routine at your own peril and travel gods help you if she hasn't had her coffee yet.

Another mate is perpetually training for a marathon that requires a vigorous dedication to 6 a.m. exercise. And I am constantly experimenting with weird food choices (heads up, guys, I'm not eating gluten this year!) and strongly believe that if we are not all drinking cheap white wine by 4 p.m. then we are not really on vacation.

The point is, we all settle into different cycles while we're traveling, and if you're not careful then it's easy to disrupt the carefully crafted vacation balance. So if you, like me, want to maintain your at-home friendships post group excursion, follow these five simple rules.

Choose Wisely
I'm sure you've heard this delightful expression: you can pick your friends and you can pick your nose but you can't pick your friend's nose. There should be a travel version of this disgustingly conveyed wisdom, something like: you can pick your friends and you can pick your route but you can't pick your friend's route. (I'm still working on the phrasing. Suggestions are welcome.) We don't all have the same ideas about travel. Some are determined to spend their entire South Dakota vacation at Mount Rushmore while others think the state is all about the Corn Palace (I hear it's a-maize-ing). Agree where you're going and what you want to see once you get there – before you start the trip.

Perpetually delayed flights, bad food and even worse movies, the depressing spectacle of young and old shuffling around shoeless and beltless after enduring security checks ranging from the mildly inconvenient (though possibly infertility-inducing) to the humiliatingly invasive. Long gone are the travel glory days when dapper pilots strode through the airport – three sexy stewardesses on each arm. For many, plane travel has lost its glamour – if it ever actually had any to begin with.

Even though I deeply resent checked baggage fees and rapidly shrinking legroom, there is still a part of the flying experience I do love – or rather a place: the airport. Here's why you should, too.

You Can Feel it All
At the airport you encounter the happiness of reunions and sadness of goodbyes, the anxiety of nervous travelers and excitement of those off on great and small adventures. Every imaginable emotion is soaring around like aircraft on an overpopulated flight route and it's all happening in this very special place where feelings are trapped with no way out – just like you are. Instead of texting every person you've ever met in order to pass the time, board this emotional rollercoaster and let it take you for a heartwarming (or heartbreaking) spin. Or just watch the movie "Love, Actually." Don't worry. I won't tell anyone you cried.