Hi fellow travellers in this theatre called life. For WEP's SHARING I'm comparing love and travel. I fly north to experience another Northern Hemisphere holiday season in just a few days. Naturally, travel is where my mind is.
This trip...Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Spain, Portugal and Morocco - 5 exciting weeks!
Here's what I've learned so far re travel and love...
PHASE ONE:
ANTICIPATION
When it comes to travel, thinking about it, planning it, is half the fun.
ANTICIPATION is a crucial phase of any journey. It's the promise that life will be more exciting than your everyday routine. Watching a sunset over the Sahara Desert, choosing which outdoor cafe to indulge your love of freshly-caught mussels in garlic cream sauce in the French Quarter in Paris, seeing the fairytale city of Prague for the first time, is probably going to be more fun than getting out of bed, running in the park, walking to work, working...isn't it just?
We want the same thing from travel that we want from love - a life-changing encounter with destiny. Plus fantastic scenery and food.
'Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.' (Mark Twain (1835-1910)
PHASE TWO:
PACKING
Getting there won't be half the fun if you are lugging too much luggage! If it won't fit into your carry-on luggage, leave it at home.
LIVING OUT OF A SUITCASE is not fun, but it's even less fun when it's the old cram, sit, zip scenario.
Here are some of my tips for light travel:
This trip...Amsterdam, Paris, Prague, Spain, Portugal and Morocco - 5 exciting weeks!
Here's what I've learned so far re travel and love...
PHASE ONE:
ANTICIPATION
When it comes to travel, thinking about it, planning it, is half the fun.
ANTICIPATION is a crucial phase of any journey. It's the promise that life will be more exciting than your everyday routine. Watching a sunset over the Sahara Desert, choosing which outdoor cafe to indulge your love of freshly-caught mussels in garlic cream sauce in the French Quarter in Paris, seeing the fairytale city of Prague for the first time, is probably going to be more fun than getting out of bed, running in the park, walking to work, working...isn't it just?
We want the same thing from travel that we want from love - a life-changing encounter with destiny. Plus fantastic scenery and food.
'Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.' (Mark Twain (1835-1910)
 |
| The streets of Marrakesh just made for exploring. |
PHASE TWO:
PACKING
Getting there won't be half the fun if you are lugging too much luggage! If it won't fit into your carry-on luggage, leave it at home.
LIVING OUT OF A SUITCASE is not fun, but it's even less fun when it's the old cram, sit, zip scenario.
Here are some of my tips for light travel:
- plan to dress as if you're heading out to the store on Saturday morning. That's the kind of comfort you need when travelling.
- plan to wear every article of clothing multiple times. There's no room in your luggage for superfluous clothes. (They do have laundries overseas.)
- discover how little you really need in order to have the time of your life. Travel is not a fashion show - the people you meet will usually only see you in your outfit once! Let them screw up their nose at your fashion sense in that's all they've got to do!
A Lady's List
A small flask of brandy
Smelling salts
Light literature
Cushions covered in chintz or satin for putting under the feet
Suede gloves in Summer
Woolen muffatees in Winter
Fine yellowish brown paper to line the drawers of inns: There is something not particularly tempting in the idea of placing one's possessions in a place where one does not know what preceded them.
Lillias Campbell Davidson - 'Hints to Lady Travellers at Home and Abroad'. (1889)
I can delete everything on that list except 'light literature' in the form of my Kindle, lol!
PHASE THREE:
ARRIVAL!
ARRIVING in a new place is a lot like love at first sight. The way a traveller feels on the first day of a journey, the first day in a new country, a new city. You feel giddy, gullible, stupid.
Travel author Vivian Swift recounts arriving in Paris in 2005 - "There is no smoking allowed in the airport terminal," she said in perfect French to the woman who'd lit up a Marlboro.
The woman looked at her sharply - "Zeez deestarib you?" In other words who could object to a little cigarette smoke, for God's sake? She drops the butt to the floor and crushes it with the leather toe of her tiny Roger Vivier ballerina flat.
I could kiss her, Vivian recounts, for now I know that I have really and truly arrived in Paris!
Oh yes! Bring it on!
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| Another view from the Eiffel Tower |
Sorry, it gives me vertigo too!
Love and travel both begin with a secret wish for a life with more adventure, more passion. But things can go wrong, as they do. Be prepared. But there's nothing bad about getting lost, you just discover more! Getting lost in Venice is a highlight of my life!
MOST ROMANTIC TRAVEL QUOTE EVER:
Much have I travell'd in realms of gold, and many goodly states and kingdoms seen, round many western islands have I been...felt I like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken: or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he star'd at the Pacific - and all his men look'd at each other with wild surmise - silent, upon a peak in Darien.
John Keats (1795-1821)
John Keats (1795-1821)
LEAST ROMANTIC TRAVEL QUOTE EVER:
I came. I saw, I conquered. Julius Caesar (100BCE-44BCE)
With many thanks to:
Vivian Swift's Le Road Trip - A Traveler's Journal of Love and France.
And here is a photo taken in Broome, Western Australia, if any of you should aspire to visit our shores Down Under. Rather amazing, right?
And here is a photo taken in Broome, Western Australia, if any of you should aspire to visit our shores Down Under. Rather amazing, right?
What are your philosophies on travel? Share...
Click on the links in my right-hand sidebar for entries after the 22nd.
Click on the links in my right-hand sidebar for entries after the 22nd.
