Travel

So now that I am back home I am of course reflecting on my travels - a reflection I had started about half-way through my trip. People ask how the trip was with the expectation that it was amazing, fantastic, incredible, etc. I feel like I have to say 'oh yes, it was wonderful' or they think i am a complete ingrate when they were at their desks working the whole time. Maybe I am completely spoiled, or maybe I just am getting to know the kind of travel I really like, but I wouldn't say this vacation was any of the aforementioned descriptors. It was definitely fun, somewhat relaxing, but also a little bit one-toned. In the past, I have visited friends in numerous locations, most of which I formerly lived in (Boston, NY, Chicago) - i didn't consider that travel, that was visiting. I have also traveled to new places where I didn't know anyone - predominantly by myself at least for the last five or six years. this is the first time I have traveled to new places I have wanted to visit AND had friends there as well. A melding of friend visiting and travel. I didn't have much time to contemplate this at all before I left because I was so horridly overworked. I didn't even buy guide books or do any research in part because I knew I would be staying with friends. In hindsight, this was a mistake. I should definitely have done my own research anyway and gone with some sort of agenda of what I wanted to see and do. There's no way my friends could know that! They certainly did a wonderful job of taking me places and showing me terrific sites with little to no guidance on my part.

I did learn a great deal though about what I am looking for when I travel - which is ultimately going to make my future time off that much better. I like difficulty. I like challenges. I like to be somewhat nervous in that excited anticipatory way the first time you try to speak a new language or navigate a new public transportation system or even just try to get yourself from point a to point b with no guidance. It's a puzzle - and i love a good puzzle. I like to wander aimlessly and I like to go on adventures. Even if they are only adventures to me! I never know when I am traveling what the experiences that leave lasting impressions will be, but my most memorable time in Portugal in 2007 was renting that piece of crap, 2-stroke engine toy car and driving across the northern part of Portugal for a day with a really old map and no actual destination. It was so beautiful and wonderful and difficult to read the map and signs simultaneously in Portuguese (which I do not come close to understanding) while navigating round-abouts and being utterly lost and yet somehow knowing where I was anyway. Being passed by old men on the highway and nearly blown off the road. Discovering windmill farms in the middle of nowhere and stormy tumultuous skies. Okay, that and getting drunk in Villa Nova De Gaia on Port wine. This trip was not like that. I hung out with my friends, visited a couple of museums and saw a few performances, drank wine at every possible opportunity, drank some more, ate food I would never eat here, suffered some ailments, slept, forgot about work for at least a day at times, played guitar hero, got drenched in the rain, got a real flavor for the cities, shopped, drank some more and got to know my friends better. Overall a success, for sure. However, not the type of experience I would choose again for my one 3 week vacation of the year. I guess I always assumed that traveling alone was something I was doing by default but now I think it is something i will do with intention. Sure, it gets a little lonely sometimes especially when I don't speak the language well, and for someone who lives alone, works from home and has a lot of solitary time to begin with my incessant chatter to myself can get to be a bit much. but overall i think the freedom and challenge really do invigorate and excite me. Next stop: South America.