Travel Like A Human Being: You Can't See Everything
Image: iandolphin24.
Since Kelly is running around Italy right now, I thought this might be a good reminder to her. - Austin
After looking through guidebooks, reading about cool places to visit, and enduring a long plane ride it's natural to get excited about all the unique people, places, and things you can see on your trip. However, it's also just as easy to start to feel desperation, like you absolutely need to see all the sights. Don't run yourself ragged and turn into a sightseeing robot. Instead, take it a little slower and enjoy where you are.
"But what if I never come back? I'll never forgive forgive myself if I don't see that statue..."
It's this thought that starts a spiral of sightseeing madness. If you give in to these thoughts for your entire trip, you might check lots of places off your list, but will you have really experienced anything?
I've fallen prey to this sickness before, most easily in Rome. La Città Eterna is absolutely huge and filled with an overwhelming number of things to eat, see and do. You could easily fill your time shuttling between the Coliseum, the Trevi Fountain, and the Pyramid of Cestius. I've done it and it absolutely wore me out. However, when I took my time and planned for some breaks, I was able to to soak up Rome on my own terms and see things tourists don't normally see. From stumbling onto a military parade at the president's house to people watching at the Villa Borghese, letting myself relax and enjoy unplanned pleasures was one of the best choices I've made while traveling. So the next time you're far away from home, silence that little voice that tells you that you just HAVE to see that next thing, open your eyes wide, and find your own treasures.
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I hear you. Because of my disabilities, I need to travel slowly. Before, though, I'd be tearing a place up trying to see everything. I much prefer now, although it isn't easier accommodating disabilities. GREAT post!
Perfectly said, and I absolutely agree. When my wife and I first came home from our trip to San Francisco, almost 8 years ago, we were kicking ourselves and saying we had to go back because we did not take the ferry to Alcatraz, or walk across the Golden Gate Bridge, or take photographs of the veterans cemetery at the Presidio, and because we walked around Haight-Ashbury without knowing which of the homes was the Grateful Dead house. But despite not doing those things you "have to do," we both remember that trip as one of the highlights of our life, and we know it was more fun precisely because we took it as it came instead of rushing through an itinerary.