Soaking it all in

Obviously it takes a great deal of planning and saving to voyage to the opposite side of the world. And a person who's gone to the trouble of doing that would be pretty silly not to take advantage of the opportunity to see and do on their travels all the things they can't see and do at home.

BUT.

There is a limit. And at certain points on a crazy ramble through four countries over six weeks some travellers just might hit it. Several times.

This means that, mystifying though it might seem to those at home who are expecting the distant traveller to pack their days with ancient buildings and various increasingly esoteric historical sites, sometimes they'll just want to veg. To soak up the scenery, to recharge the batteries. They may, not unreasonably, consider their trip also their holiday for the year (or longer).

And they're not evil for wanting to enjoy it. Even if that means they miss out on some stuff they could conceivably have seen if they had raced around the place. Europe, for example, is a big continent, containing big countries, with big cities, full of sights and sites with at least some interest and point to them. But you can't possibly see everything. And the more you see, the less special and unique each individual sight becomes. You can see a few things and ponder them slowly, or you can try to cram everything in and be left with a meaningless blur. Sure, you'd be able to tick all the boxes on the Things You Must See In Europe checklist and impress your more shallow friends (ah yes, I was there! Here's a photograph of me pointing at it!) but so what? Is that really why you spent 22 hours on a plane two weeks at sea?



As for me, I get a lot more pleasure out of wandering random streets in France brutally mangling the language to the horreur of passing French people than I do out of visiting another over-touristy monument.

Some may have a different approach, and that's fine - different strokes for different generations within the same family.* They're not wrong just because they have a different perspective to me. Different people have differing priorities at different stages in their lives; and they have different overall interests as well. The key concept to grasp here is that people are DIFFERENT. And travelling is about having an experience that results from the decisions the individual traveller chooses to make - not one based on simply adopting the approach of other people who've had wonderful experiences and therefore think everyone else should do exactly as they did (or, if they've had bad experiences, exactly the opposite). Far from helping, being constantly prompted to justify an alternative approach would in all likelihood instead have the effect of being a taint on the trip, and is thus a manner of communication many travellers would be wise to avoid.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to assault some innocent patissiers with what I choose to believe is a well-phrased request in French for a strawberry tart but is in reality probably an unbearable affront to the victim's entire culture.

I can't do THAT at home.

*The French don't have a word for "subtle".

I think Rome is showing off

I know I shocked a few Genuine Travellers when I revealed the other day that I'd made a point of having a very good look at where everything was on Google Earth before leaving Australia. The sentiment from Genuine Travellers seemed to be that this would spoil the trip, that it would take away from the surprise and excitement of seeing one of these Great Sites for the first time.

Well, it doesn't.

Obvious though the rest of this post might seem, there really is, no matter what preparation you've done, something absolutely incredible and unmatched about standing next to - or in - something truly ancient, or something that has otherwise greatly impacted history. When something you've seen hundreds of times in photographs is suddenly RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU.



Something amazing about actually touching it, or walking through it, rather than just looking at it in a photograph.



Something almost religious about being able to walk around it, or look at it from both sides, or appreciate its actual scale in a way you never could a mere picture.



Something humbling about realising that ancient people have stood in that very spot and left no trace, and that future generations will do likewise and there will be no trace of you.



Something chilling about imagining what events would have been occurring decades, or centuries, or millenia ago in the very spot on which you're standing. And that anyone looking at a photograph of you in that spot would immediately know exactly where on the planet you were.



It is, in fact, awesome.



PS I'm sorry, Colosseo, for taking liberties touching up your columns.