Lisa Niver's Blog: We Said Go Travel, page 97

https://t.co/xDGHlqJYOl— Emily Giffin (@emilygiffin) M...

Thank you so much! So happy you enjoyed The Price of Par...

Thank you so much! So happy you enjoyed The Price of Paradise

Superman saved my Girl Scout Troop!

[image error]Behind the scenes filming for Superman! Thank you to Stephanie Antin and her mom for taking, saving and sharing these photos! I love the size of the camera! I am in the far left corner of this photo from 1978.

In 1978, my girl scout troop was invited to be part of Superman The Movie! We met in the early morning one Wednesday in February at Roscomare Road School and went in two vans to the location for filming. We had two studio teachers because we had to have three hours of school. I mainly remember that we screamed a lot! Our scene was that we were hiking and there was an earthquake by the Hollywood Sign and Superman came to save us! We filmed by three big letters “OLL!”

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Warner Brothers’ Superman film was the first blockbuster superhero movie.  It is really the grandfather of all the comic book superhero movies that have appeared over the last forty years.

[image error]Director Richard Donner on set with Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen, Jackie Cooper as Perry White, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, and Christopher Reeve as Clark Kent.
Photo from WarnerBros

“At the time of its release in December 1978, it was the most expensive movie ever made, but the high cost was rewarded, as the movie proved to be a massive hit with both critics and audiences. The following year, Superman received three Academy Award nominations, and won a Special Achievement Oscar for visual effects. 40 years later, it still stands as one of the most successful films in Warner Bros. history. “

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Who was on the Caped Wonder Superman podcast?
Jim Bowers, Jay Towers and nine from our Girl Scout Troop including: Barbara Carmack, Debbie Newman, Leslie Howard, Lisa Niver, Lisa Klein, Renee Onderwyzer, Sharon Gamer, Stephanie Antin and Stephanie Massman

Watch our scene which is now available in this YouTube clip below and was on the extended version on TV and Blu-ray. When we went to see the movie, we expected to be in the original film but were told we ended up on the cutting room floor. BUT NOW! We are back in the film! Jim Bowers told us we are part of POP CULTURE HISTORY!

See our troop at 1:50!

[image error]Lisa Niver on the podcast with her girl scout self in the upper left corner!



Listen to the PODCAST: on iHeart Radio or Apple Podcast

Earthquake’n Hollywood Hike April 19, 2020 • 32 minIn Episode 24, Jay Towers and Jim Bowers reunite 9 Girl Scouts from Superman: The Movie. These are the girls scouts who should have never been hiking during an earthquake. Cut from the 1978 theatrical cut, these ladies had the shock of their lives, when they showed up on the ABC-TV two night event in 1982. Now widely available in the Superman The Movie: Extended Cut, these Girl Scouts can be seen once again, and are all grown up with a SUPER story to tell.

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Every one of the Girl Scouts wrote a report about our day on set with SUPERMAN! You can read mine below. Thank you so much to Sharon Gamer Lawson for saving these and sharing them with us!

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See more photos on the CapedWonder Website!



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In 1978 THESE real @girlscouts became part of Pop Culture History. We reunite with 9 of them at 8pm and hear their incredible story. Join us for a Caped Wonder Superman Podcast Special streaming event. @CapedWonderJim https://t.co/spCuBh6jFY pic.twitter.com/dQpB1qeCYn

— Jay Towers (@JayTowers) April 19, 2020

What is "OLL"? Find out on the upcoming episode of the Caped Wonder Superman Podcast! #superpodcast #supermanpodcast #christopherreeve #superman #supermanthemovie #supermanthesequel #supermansequel pic.twitter.com/qJPiU2Vk0N

— CapedWonder Superman Imagery (@CapedWonderJim) April 17, 2020

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Are You Dreaming of Your Next Vacation?

Now that we have been #SafeAtHome, #AloneTogether, #TogetherAtHome since mid-March to flatten the curve on COVID-19, some of us are wondering when we can roam again.

[image error]Sunrise from my suite, The Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya

I have been sharing about my past adventures in my new series, Tell Me More About. I personally cannot wait to go back to Israel. I have traveled there many times and went to college for a semester in Jerusalem.

In 2015, I had the most incredible stay at The Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya. The views were magnificent, my room and the food was fantastic but the best part was the incredible team led by General Manager, Ned Capeleris. I look forward to seeing him again when I visit Hotel Maria Cristina, A Luxury Collection Hotel, San Sebastián, in Spain as soon as we are allowed to wander the world.

[image error]The view from The Ritz-Carlton, Herzliya

Are you worried about booking with all of this uncertainty? Marriott has a special for the next seven days! You can purchase Marriott Bonvoy Gift Cards at a 20% discount until May 20, 2020. The gift cards are good for future travel globally this summer and beyond.

Many people keep asking me about cancellation policies as well as the new cleanliness plans by hotel chains. Learn about both at this Marriott COVID-19 policy page.

[image error]Lisa Niver in Israel 2015

More stories from Israel: Seeing the Startup Nation Firsthand in Wharton Magazine, Traveling to Israel: The Real Deal with Lisa Niver on Pink Pangea, Falafels and foodie culture: Dining out in Jerusalem, Baklava by the beach: Israel’s seaside, Explore Tel Aviv with me! and Art meets Culture.

Watch this playlist to see my adventures at Marriott Hotels around the world!

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I know how hard the #Classof2020 has worked to make it t...

I know how hard the #Classof2020 has worked to make it to graduation, so @BarackObama and I want to give you the celebration you deserve. That's why @ReachHigher and I are teaming up with @Youtube to host a virtual graduation on June 6! RSVP at https://t.co/TPcaSy43B8. pic.twitter.com/glLadzlZux

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) May 5, 2020

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Inspiration for the 2020 Graduates: Life is What We Make It

 Life is what we make it. Class of 2020

Publisher’s note: I met Enock Makasi on March 24, 2016 when he was flying from Los Angeles, California to Salt Lake City on his way to his new home in Idaho and he was 15 years old. He had already flown from Uganda to Amsterdam and then California. He “was born in a country called Democratic Republic of Congo, 

Brave Means Living From the Inside Out: Untamed!

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Thank you to Roxanne Szal and Ms. Magazine for publishing my article about Glennon Doyle’s memoir, Untamed!



“Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn.” In her new memoir, “Untamed,” Glennon Doyle breaks down the true meaning of bravery.

Reading Glennon Doyle’s memoir, Untamed, is diving into an adventure of what we can become. We collectively grow stronger as we are more willing to ask hard questions.

Doyle wants to know, “Where did my spark go at ten? How had I lost myself?” She ponders and worries about her own daughters and how to help them never lose themselves.

Untamed .

The book begins at the zoo thinking about being restless and frustrated like a caged animal. Have we as women forgotten our wildness? She wants to yell, “You are not crazy. You are a goddamn cheetah,” to Tabitha, the cheetah at the zoo—but also at everyone else.

Many of us feel locked into our roles and say to ourselves, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It’s crazy to long for what doesn’t even exist.” 

But, the “fenceless, wide-open savannas” do exist, Doyle tells readers, and maybe we can learn to reject our taming and “sleep under an ink-black, silent sky filled with stars” where we can create our own realties and break out of our cages.

Doyle knows about feeling caged, as her “childhood bulimia morphed into alcoholism and drug use, and [kept her] numb for sixteen years.”

In her first book, Carry On, Warrior: Thoughts on Life Unarmed, Doyle reminds us that people are messy. And in Love Warrior, after she discovered her husband’s infidelity and her marriage crumbled, she kept walking forward when she did not know what to do next.

Now in Untamed, she brings us into her new life and love with Abby Wambach.

When I chose to leave my marriage and the continent I was on, many people called me brave. I found it challenging because I did not feel courageous—and in fact looked both words up in the dictionary, often trying to understand what they were telling me.

Doyle asks us, “Will we be brave enough to unlock ourselves? Will we be brave enough to set ourselves free? Will we finally step out of our cages and say to ourselves, to our people, and to the world: Here I Am!”

As a travel reporter, this section particularly resonated with me:

“I understand now that no one else in the world knows what I should do. Because no one has ever lived or will ever live this life I am attempting to live, with my gifts and challenges and past and people. Every life is an unprecedented experiment. This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. There is no map. We are all pioneers.”

On assignment, I am often in new places, constantly consulting a map and guidebook to make sure I wring as much as possible out of every moment on the road. I take that persistence into my personal life, and I want that same intensity all the time. I believed in the past that someone else knew better than me what my next steps were. But this strategy did not work out for me—and I am not sure if it does for anyone else.

In order to live a different life, Doyle asks, “How can we begin to live from our imagination instead of our indoctrination?”

She tells us that “imagination is how personal and worldwide revolutions begin.”

“I have a dream,” said Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning,” said Gloria Steinem.”

What do you dream? 

Doyle explains that she abandoned the should‘s, the rules and the memos from the world about what life was supposed to look like. She asked herself, “What kind of life/relationship/family/world might I have created if I’d been braver?”

Glennon Doyle. (Amy Paulson)

I loved when she wrote,

“I quit buying the idea that a successful marriage is one that lasts till death, even if one or both spouses are dying inside it. I’d take this vow to myself: I’ll not abandon myself. Not ever again. Me and myself: We are till death do us part.”

I found for myself in my marriage that both my spouse and I were completely on his side, with neither of us on mine. I could no longer tolerate living that way abandoning myself again and again.

One of the most powerful lines in Doyle’s book was:

“Being human is not hard because you’re doing it wrong, it’s hard because you’re doing it right. You will never change the fact that being human is hard, so you must change your idea that it was ever supposed to be easy.” 

If we are looking for the easy way, we may miss our best lives. It might be terrifying to go after our dreams—but worth it.

Doyle also outlines the issues with how we train children to be brave—and how this must change.

“We tell our children that brave means feeling afraid and doing it anyway, but is this the definition we want them to carry as they grow older? That is not the understanding of brave I want my children to have. I do not want my children to become people who abandon themselves to please the crowd.

“Brave does not mean feeling afraid and doing it anyway. Brave means living from the inside out. Brave means, in every uncertain moment, turning inward, feeling for the Knowing, and speaking it out loud. Since the Knowing is specific, personal, and ever changing, so is brave. Whether you are brave or not cannot be judged by people on the outside. Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you’re a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself.”

When I chose to leave medical school and become a preschool teacher, many people told me I was making the wrong choice. However, I listened to my inner voice, and it turned out to be the right path for me.

As Doyle says, “Brave is not asking the crowd what is brave. Brave is deciding for oneself.”

I did not take a poll or follow along. I knew I had to make a change and I was scared but I believed it was going to work out.

Often we are told as little girls, “that our loud voices, bold opinions, and strong feelings are ‘too much’ and unladylike, so we learn to not trust our personalities. Childhood stories promise us that girls who dare to leave the path or explore get attacked by big bad wolves and pricked by deadly spindles, so we learn to not trust our curiosity. We were taught to believe that who we are in our natural state is bad and dangerous. They convinced us to be afraid of ourselves. The only thing that was ever wrong with me was my belief that there was something wrong with me. Do with your Self whatever it is you want to do. You can trust your Self.”

I hope that we can change the story telling for ourselves and other little girls. It is okay to be who we are. I can trust my personality and my curiosity and follow my dreams.

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Doyle now tells her children, “I see your fear, and it’s big. I also see your courage, and it’s bigger. We can do hard things, baby. We are fireproof.”

What would our lives look like if we listened to Doyle?

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She wonders, “Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn.”

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Feeling Our Way with Cantor Emma Lutz

Shabbat Shalom. As we have all been #SafeAtHome during COVID-19, the clergy of Stephen Wise Temple have been sharing a daily dose of wisdom. I found these teachings from Cantor Emma Lutz this week deeply moving and she allowed me to share them again here. Happy Mother’s Day Weekend!

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The patient person shows much good sense, but the quick-tempered one displays folly at its height.

                                                                                              — Proverbs 14:29

Patience is a character trait that does not come easily to me. As a little sister, I always wanted to do everything my brother, Lee, was doing and never wanted to wait until I was old enough to age into his activities, classes, or outings. Lee was generous of spirit and let me tag along, but there were still times when I had to stay behind, and I struggled. Funny how things can change — I learned to practice patience over time, and my brother ended up marrying one of my best friends, so he’s the one tagging along with us now!

The Hebrew word for patience is savlanut from the root sevel, meaning suffering. Our tradition understands that waiting can be very painful. It is hard to tell a child that everything has a time and a place, and it is difficult for any of us to bear the weight of our emotions when we feel stuck in a situation. 

Practicing patience can be so very hard, but Proverbs reminds us that when we demonstrate patience for a meaningful purpose, we exhibit our best sense and can even improve our world. May we find the strength to push through this difficult time, knowing that our patience during this flattening of the curve is a demonstration of our best judgment and a commitment to making our world a healthier, safer place.


— Cantor Emma Lutz

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I have always found prayer difficult. So often it seems like a fruitless game of hide-and-seek where we seek and God hides…yet I cannot leave prayer alone for long. My need drives me to God. And I have a feeling that God has God’s own reasons for hiding, and that finally all my seeking will prove infinitely worthwhile. And I am not sure what I mean by “finding.” Some days my very seeking seems a kind of “finding.” And of course, if “finding” means the end of seeking, it were better to go on seeking.
— Anonymous

I fell in love with the words above decades ago when I read them week after week in the opening reflections of my childhood prayerbook, Gates of Prayer. I found great comfort and wisdom in the Jewish idea that our searching can be just as important as our final destination, that our questions are often just as valuable–if not more so–as our answers. 
Even with everything we are managing during these days at home, may we allow ourselves to make space for prayer, for self-care, for reflection, and of course, for seeking. 

— Cantor Emma Lutz

Grant me the ability to be alone; may it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grass, among all growing things. There may I be alone and enter into prayer to talk with the One to whom I belong. May I express there everything in my heart, and may all the foliage of the field – all grasses, trees, and plants – awake at my coming, to send the powers of their life into the words of my prayer so that my prayer and speech are made whole through the life and spirit of all growing things, which are made as one by their transcendent Source. May I then pour out the words of my heart before Your Presence like water, God, and lift up my hands to You in worship, on my behalf, and that of my children.

— Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, late 18th century Hasidic rabbi

Rabbi Nachman beautifully expresses the connection between God, nature, and self. Sitting outside in our yard and enjoying the blooming of the spring roses (and seeing my baby daughter enjoy all of the vibrant colors and light for the first time) has brought me the most peace during these weeks at home. Safely enjoying the outdoors provides us an opportunity to breathe more deeply, to take a break from the bustle of our busy homes, and to enjoy God’s creation and our place in it.

Jewish composer Debbie Friedman beautifully captures Rabbi Nachman’s words and sets them to music in this composition —I hope it will bring you a few minutes of peace, comfort and reflection.

Listen to “You Are the One” from Debbie Friedman’s Renewal of Spirit

— Cantor Emma Lutz

What is it to be a human being — so vulnerable, so fragile, and at the same time only slightly less than gods, strong and powerful, crowned with splendor? (Psalm 8:5-6)

As we stay safer at home, we are daily reminded of the frailties of our human bodies. And at the same time, we also witness the enormous capacity of human beings for great love, selflessness, and the power to create a better world. With another week at home ahead of us, how might we honor both our vulnerabilities and our vitalities as individuals, and how might we find strength in our connections to our community and to humanity as a whole?
There is a great teaching from Rabbi Simcha Bunum, a 19th century Hasidic rabbi: you must carry two notes in our pockets at all times. In one pocket, a note that reminds us that–like Abraham said–I am just a human being, made of dust and ashes. The other note, however, should say that the world was created just for me. We each are made of only dust and ashes, and yet, an individual life is as important as the existence of an entire universe. We have a small role to play in the history of humanity, and yet, we all have the power to influence the world for the better. 

— Cantor Emma Lutz

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TELL ME MORE ABOUT: Rocky Mountaineer Train

Welcome to my new series: TELL ME MORE ABOUT: where I will be sharing resources from my favorite past adventures around our planet during this time when we cannot travel due to COVID-19. In the next weeks, I will share about all 10 trips in my recent article on Ms Magazine and I wanted you to have access to the photos, articles and videos that I produced from these experiences. For now, I hope you find inspiration until we can all begin to wander around the world again.

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I loved talking train travel on television with KTLA TV to share my marvelous Rocky Mountaineer experience!



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Spring Into Summer Train Travel with Lisa Niver

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For  USA Today 10best , I shared a photo slideshow about my trips including Mongolia, Canada and Africa called: “Clear Your Mind in These Open Spaces Meant for Exploring.”



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Ms. Magazine published my article: “10 Global Travel Adventures To Inspire Global Eco-Activism” which included my train trip across Canada with Rocky Mountaineer!



[image error]Rocky Mountaineer Train on bridge by Rocky Mountaineer



Enjoy my Rocky Mountaineer photos in this Facebook album. These photos also appeared across my social media on Instagram and Twitter.



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Wondering about my VIDEOS? My video, “All Aboard the Train! Rocky Mountaineer is leaving Vancouver” is now over 56,000 views!



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CLICK HERE for the entire playlist!

All the Things You Wanted to Ask About Rocky Mountaineer

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More Rocky Mountaineer please! Lisa is in Virtuoso Life Magazine

Secret Spring Skiing In The Canadian Rockies

June 2018 Jumping for Joy: We Said Go Travel News

This summer is the 30th anniversary for Rocky Mountaineer Train! Congratulations and enjoy their summer of stories.

.@wesaidgotravel shares highlights from her recent rail vacation to @BanffNP – don't they make you want to visit? @Banff_Squirrel #banff_nationalpark pic.twitter.com/JIXRAtDXpB

— Rocky Mountaineer (@rmountaineer) July 20, 2019

"The mountains are calling and I must go." John Muir
Thx Nicole for spending the day with me! #Banff #CanadianRockies #gondola #explorealberta #travelalberta #explorerockies #RockyMountaineer more #Photos: https://t.co/UdiNU02Fb0 #travel #canada #explore #mountains #summer pic.twitter.com/obZ7U3S7aZ

— Lisa Niver (@wesaidgotravel) May 24, 2018

Good Morning #RockyMountaineer!
As @Bourdain said: "What nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?"Thx @rmountaineer for a great start to our day on the #train with made to order #breakfast! #luxury #ExploreCanada More info: https://t.co/B0GOYyNsvt #canada pic.twitter.com/X32N6nkTD0

— Lisa Niver (@wesaidgotravel) May 19, 2018

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Want to know more about Canada? I wrote several articles for USA Today 10best for Canada’s 150th birthday: Explore the history of Canada at these 10 fascinating sites, 10 of the best places to have an outdoor adventure in Canada, Now for something completely different: 10 unique places to see in Canada and the entire list of 150 places!

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