I had three back-to-back babies in my 20s while also being a stay-at-home mom & I remember watching my peers constant travel adventures play out on instagram... and not being jealous one bit! I loved our weekly rituals including sharing a frozen pizza and bottle of wine with my husband on Friday nights after the kids were in bed. It always seemed odd to me to base your happiness around something so fleeting as the next vacation or visit to a Michelin star restaurant (or other thing I could not do financially or physically with a bunch of little kids). We spent most of our disposable income improving our fixer upper house (which we were able to sell at a profit a couple years ago) and that always seemed like the better investment of time and money. Something we could enjoy as a family every single day rather than the trip that’s over and gone!
Yep. It's not that those things aren't fun and enjoyable, but for them to hold such a sway over your life or your sense of yourself, I frankly have to think your everyday life is probably a little thin. Look, I don't mean tons of kids is for everyone, but we don't even have kids yet and we genuinely like the routine of running a home and living in a particular place we like.
I think this is the best, most useful thing you've written. Probably that just means it speaks to my particular, weird little interests in a deep way. Thanks so much for writing it!
I love travel and I am not a travel writer. I do write about my travels, though, as I did on my last visit to Italy in 2017 (https://barbaradidrichsen.substack.com/p/in-italy). I'm glad I had a better experience with food than you and your wife did!
I've found through all my travels that what works best for me is to have a general idea of what I want to do and then leave lots of room for serendipity. This is easiest to do when we plant ourselves in one place for an extended stay. It's those moments of unexpected surprise that make up my best memories of my travels -- driving through a herd of cattle on a remote road in rural Idaho; tramping along public walking paths through sheep pastures on the bluffs of the Isle of Wight; that incredible dinner we had on our first night in Italy in 2017.
Ha! It’s not just travel. It’s a style of writing that is also now standard in certain circles when talking about people which confused and upset me for a while because it felt like everyone else had these relationships that I didn’t... until I realized people just hype it and make it up pretty often or have super low standards I don’t know. I think some people just speak in superrelatives and some people don’t. I can definitely say though that I’ve never in my life missed my car and the public transit is one of my favorite parts of Europe for sure.
"Is it so bad to vacation somewhere within six or eight hours by car? Is it so bad to visit an American city you’ve never been to? To eat at nice restaurants that aren’t serving some exotic cuisine? Is it so bad to rest your heart close to home?"
"Really, this trip made me realize how much I love the work I do, and how much travel is fun but less appealing, relatively speaking, when your everyday life is so nice. The idea of choosing travel over a rich home and family life seemed even more distant and absurd to me. It’s just food. It’s just buildings. This mystique around travel just recedes away when you’re happy every day."
So intriguing. As a personal observation, I've noticed from afar that the people who go the hardest on overseas or otherwise expensive trips are people who have ungodly work lifestyles and seem to make good money but have little home and/or family lives to speak of. Checks out. (This is a biiiiig generalization, but it's a trend I've noticed in who prioritizes these "incredible experiences".)
The Washington Post travel section is usually the first part of the Sunday paper I turn to. I love learning about other places. But I've often thought, when I read these travel articles, that either the writer is 1) gushing over the place because he/she just paid a ton of money to go there, so he/she feels (maybe subconsciously) it has to be built up; or 2) there is a financial incentive (hard to get published saying a place is just okay?) to making a place sound totally amazing.
As I said, I love reading about exotic places, but am less enthused with going to them, mostly because of the time and expense. I don't know about other parts of the U.S., but in the D.C. area there definitely seems to be a "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of feel to vacations too. Like, did you go to that place because everyone else is or because you've really wanted to go? It's like a vacation arms race.
That said, there are a few places, abroad, that I really want to go to. But I'm happy with domestic road trips. There are so many interesting places within 5-6 hours driving time that make for great long weekends. So Sicily is fine. So is Pittsburgh, right? It has some great Italian food too. I like traveling and seeing new places, but I love my home.
I could write a huge reply to this post, as it's something I've thought about a lot myself. As an American currently living abroad in Estonia, I've felt pressured to designate a portion of my budget to travel (because that's part of the reason I'm here, right?) I guess you could say I've traveled a fair amount, and I agree the romanticized idea of travel is wrong. I definitely find myself looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and getting back to my own routine after a trip, and it's actually being away from the routine that makes me appreciate it. I don't think all travel is great, and I don't think it's profoundly changed me, but I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see many great works of art and architecture in-person, especially art in situ. I also enjoy trips where I've rented a car and gotten to see some outstanding nature (Isle of Skye is unforgettable, and nothing in the US looks quite like it). If I move back to the US, I think I would be content just exploring it a bit more because at this point I've seen more of Europe than my own country. Is it indulgent to travel? I suppose, but I look at my friends in the US who have acquired tons of "stuff"--campers, boats, cars, houses with many bedrooms, etc. My husband and I live in a one bedroom apartment without a car, so I if traveling is our indulgence, so be it.
All good Italian food is American, but as with things like basketball or even baseball, that doesn’t mean that Americans are the best at it. I had the best Italian-American food of my life in Rome.
The hours thing is incredibly frustrating. I obviously had a similar experience in Rome and to a lesser but still significant extent in Florence. But it’s worth noting that it happens here too. I left on a cruise from Miami once, and everything was closed at 7:00 pm on Thursday? And even here in the SF east bay I’ve had difficulty with my favorite chain sandwich shop, which on the last two occasions I’ve been there has been closed when Google said it would be open; today, I learned about this early closure via a handwritten note on the door. It’s like three exits down from me, so I only get there like every other month. My point is not that this is a serious problem, but that it’s still a bummer even on a small scale.
I agree the ideology of travel is rancid. I hate traveling and especially sleeping in beds other than my own. But you don’t need to go far to discover new things and renew your connection with places you thought were boring.
Take me. I grew up in Santa Cruz, and also spent the first 30 years of my life playing video games. Now all I do is ride my mountain bike, and there is a huge maze of illegal as hell but extremely fun trails right at UCSC, my own alma mater. Discovering them with only vague hints gleaned from YouTube videos is some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
Now that I’ve read the whole thing, I was reminded that every vacation I’ve taken in the last five years, I’ve cut short. That’s the beauty of a driving distance trip.
I live in California, where there is more than enough to do and see to fill a hundred lifetimes, let alone to master riding on a bike. If I had it my way, I’d probably never get on a plane ever again (Whistler bike park might be the exception).
What you said about freedom, and which I alluded to above before having read that bit of the article, is absolutely true. You don’t need to travel to be free, and indeed tourism is often antithetical to freedom, in the ways you describe.
It is a great but also somewhat daunting feeling to know (or to realize) that your real freedom was waiting for you at home the whole time, you just never chose to use it. I’m trying to repair my own error in this regard.
I ride illegal trails. I ride right past ‘no bikes’ and ‘closed’ signs whenever I can. They just mean there’s fun to be had and challenges to overcome on the other side. I even drive through stop signs and stop lights at empty intersections.
There’s a YouTube channel called The Singletrack Sampler. It’s one of the best MTB channels on YouTube, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Alex, the titular sampler, signs off every video with “live free, ride hard, and get stoked.” I want to, and I’m trying to.
I'm a big travel fan, but I agree with you about the travel bloggers. Traveling doesn't make me a better more cultured person, and neither does avoiding the famous tourist spots for more "authentic" destinations, whatever that means. International vs domestic is, indeed, a category error and both have a lot to offer. Traveling for self-improvement or worse, to get away from yourself, is a bit of a fool's game - wherever you go, there you are.
I don't think I agree on the home life bit though. I work a job I care a lot about. I don't dread waking up in the morning and while I might grumble a bit about Mondays it's more about getting up early than anything else (I don't sleep in on vacation, generally). Despite that, I've never experienced anything like what you describe about being excited to return home. Even when I was a child I never experienced homesickness.
I can only speak for myself, but I think some of the difference is down to innate temperament. When I stay in the same place for too long, it starts to wear on me. I feel like I have to get out and go somewhere that feels different, even if it's just an hour or two away. Often, I feel like I might have missed out on something because of that. On some level, I always wanted to be a hometown guy who loves where he lives and misses it when away, but I never liked my actual hometown and have never managed to cultivate the feeling elsewhere despite living in multiple different cities that I do genuinely love.
All the above adds up to a bit of a challenge since my wife and I are expecting our first child this month. She's not as bad about it as I am but is sympathetic to the feeling of spending too long in one spot. Where a lot of people we know (whether or not they have children) feel like having children is the end of being able to go anywhere for a while, we are, perhaps naively, committed to making it work. The hope is that by adapting how we travel we won't have to give it up completely.
I had three back-to-back babies in my 20s while also being a stay-at-home mom & I remember watching my peers constant travel adventures play out on instagram... and not being jealous one bit! I loved our weekly rituals including sharing a frozen pizza and bottle of wine with my husband on Friday nights after the kids were in bed. It always seemed odd to me to base your happiness around something so fleeting as the next vacation or visit to a Michelin star restaurant (or other thing I could not do financially or physically with a bunch of little kids). We spent most of our disposable income improving our fixer upper house (which we were able to sell at a profit a couple years ago) and that always seemed like the better investment of time and money. Something we could enjoy as a family every single day rather than the trip that’s over and gone!
Yep. It's not that those things aren't fun and enjoyable, but for them to hold such a sway over your life or your sense of yourself, I frankly have to think your everyday life is probably a little thin. Look, I don't mean tons of kids is for everyone, but we don't even have kids yet and we genuinely like the routine of running a home and living in a particular place we like.
I think this is the best, most useful thing you've written. Probably that just means it speaks to my particular, weird little interests in a deep way. Thanks so much for writing it!
I love travel and I am not a travel writer. I do write about my travels, though, as I did on my last visit to Italy in 2017 (https://barbaradidrichsen.substack.com/p/in-italy). I'm glad I had a better experience with food than you and your wife did!
I've found through all my travels that what works best for me is to have a general idea of what I want to do and then leave lots of room for serendipity. This is easiest to do when we plant ourselves in one place for an extended stay. It's those moments of unexpected surprise that make up my best memories of my travels -- driving through a herd of cattle on a remote road in rural Idaho; tramping along public walking paths through sheep pastures on the bluffs of the Isle of Wight; that incredible dinner we had on our first night in Italy in 2017.
Ha! It’s not just travel. It’s a style of writing that is also now standard in certain circles when talking about people which confused and upset me for a while because it felt like everyone else had these relationships that I didn’t... until I realized people just hype it and make it up pretty often or have super low standards I don’t know. I think some people just speak in superrelatives and some people don’t. I can definitely say though that I’ve never in my life missed my car and the public transit is one of my favorite parts of Europe for sure.
"Is it so bad to vacation somewhere within six or eight hours by car? Is it so bad to visit an American city you’ve never been to? To eat at nice restaurants that aren’t serving some exotic cuisine? Is it so bad to rest your heart close to home?"
"Really, this trip made me realize how much I love the work I do, and how much travel is fun but less appealing, relatively speaking, when your everyday life is so nice. The idea of choosing travel over a rich home and family life seemed even more distant and absurd to me. It’s just food. It’s just buildings. This mystique around travel just recedes away when you’re happy every day."
So intriguing. As a personal observation, I've noticed from afar that the people who go the hardest on overseas or otherwise expensive trips are people who have ungodly work lifestyles and seem to make good money but have little home and/or family lives to speak of. Checks out. (This is a biiiiig generalization, but it's a trend I've noticed in who prioritizes these "incredible experiences".)
The Washington Post travel section is usually the first part of the Sunday paper I turn to. I love learning about other places. But I've often thought, when I read these travel articles, that either the writer is 1) gushing over the place because he/she just paid a ton of money to go there, so he/she feels (maybe subconsciously) it has to be built up; or 2) there is a financial incentive (hard to get published saying a place is just okay?) to making a place sound totally amazing.
As I said, I love reading about exotic places, but am less enthused with going to them, mostly because of the time and expense. I don't know about other parts of the U.S., but in the D.C. area there definitely seems to be a "keeping up with the Joneses" sort of feel to vacations too. Like, did you go to that place because everyone else is or because you've really wanted to go? It's like a vacation arms race.
That said, there are a few places, abroad, that I really want to go to. But I'm happy with domestic road trips. There are so many interesting places within 5-6 hours driving time that make for great long weekends. So Sicily is fine. So is Pittsburgh, right? It has some great Italian food too. I like traveling and seeing new places, but I love my home.
I could write a huge reply to this post, as it's something I've thought about a lot myself. As an American currently living abroad in Estonia, I've felt pressured to designate a portion of my budget to travel (because that's part of the reason I'm here, right?) I guess you could say I've traveled a fair amount, and I agree the romanticized idea of travel is wrong. I definitely find myself looking forward to sleeping in my own bed and getting back to my own routine after a trip, and it's actually being away from the routine that makes me appreciate it. I don't think all travel is great, and I don't think it's profoundly changed me, but I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to see many great works of art and architecture in-person, especially art in situ. I also enjoy trips where I've rented a car and gotten to see some outstanding nature (Isle of Skye is unforgettable, and nothing in the US looks quite like it). If I move back to the US, I think I would be content just exploring it a bit more because at this point I've seen more of Europe than my own country. Is it indulgent to travel? I suppose, but I look at my friends in the US who have acquired tons of "stuff"--campers, boats, cars, houses with many bedrooms, etc. My husband and I live in a one bedroom apartment without a car, so I if traveling is our indulgence, so be it.
All good Italian food is American, but as with things like basketball or even baseball, that doesn’t mean that Americans are the best at it. I had the best Italian-American food of my life in Rome.
The hours thing is incredibly frustrating. I obviously had a similar experience in Rome and to a lesser but still significant extent in Florence. But it’s worth noting that it happens here too. I left on a cruise from Miami once, and everything was closed at 7:00 pm on Thursday? And even here in the SF east bay I’ve had difficulty with my favorite chain sandwich shop, which on the last two occasions I’ve been there has been closed when Google said it would be open; today, I learned about this early closure via a handwritten note on the door. It’s like three exits down from me, so I only get there like every other month. My point is not that this is a serious problem, but that it’s still a bummer even on a small scale.
I agree the ideology of travel is rancid. I hate traveling and especially sleeping in beds other than my own. But you don’t need to go far to discover new things and renew your connection with places you thought were boring.
Take me. I grew up in Santa Cruz, and also spent the first 30 years of my life playing video games. Now all I do is ride my mountain bike, and there is a huge maze of illegal as hell but extremely fun trails right at UCSC, my own alma mater. Discovering them with only vague hints gleaned from YouTube videos is some of the most fun I’ve ever had.
Now that I’ve read the whole thing, I was reminded that every vacation I’ve taken in the last five years, I’ve cut short. That’s the beauty of a driving distance trip.
I live in California, where there is more than enough to do and see to fill a hundred lifetimes, let alone to master riding on a bike. If I had it my way, I’d probably never get on a plane ever again (Whistler bike park might be the exception).
What you said about freedom, and which I alluded to above before having read that bit of the article, is absolutely true. You don’t need to travel to be free, and indeed tourism is often antithetical to freedom, in the ways you describe.
It is a great but also somewhat daunting feeling to know (or to realize) that your real freedom was waiting for you at home the whole time, you just never chose to use it. I’m trying to repair my own error in this regard.
I ride illegal trails. I ride right past ‘no bikes’ and ‘closed’ signs whenever I can. They just mean there’s fun to be had and challenges to overcome on the other side. I even drive through stop signs and stop lights at empty intersections.
There’s a YouTube channel called The Singletrack Sampler. It’s one of the best MTB channels on YouTube, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Alex, the titular sampler, signs off every video with “live free, ride hard, and get stoked.” I want to, and I’m trying to.
I'm a big travel fan, but I agree with you about the travel bloggers. Traveling doesn't make me a better more cultured person, and neither does avoiding the famous tourist spots for more "authentic" destinations, whatever that means. International vs domestic is, indeed, a category error and both have a lot to offer. Traveling for self-improvement or worse, to get away from yourself, is a bit of a fool's game - wherever you go, there you are.
I don't think I agree on the home life bit though. I work a job I care a lot about. I don't dread waking up in the morning and while I might grumble a bit about Mondays it's more about getting up early than anything else (I don't sleep in on vacation, generally). Despite that, I've never experienced anything like what you describe about being excited to return home. Even when I was a child I never experienced homesickness.
I can only speak for myself, but I think some of the difference is down to innate temperament. When I stay in the same place for too long, it starts to wear on me. I feel like I have to get out and go somewhere that feels different, even if it's just an hour or two away. Often, I feel like I might have missed out on something because of that. On some level, I always wanted to be a hometown guy who loves where he lives and misses it when away, but I never liked my actual hometown and have never managed to cultivate the feeling elsewhere despite living in multiple different cities that I do genuinely love.
All the above adds up to a bit of a challenge since my wife and I are expecting our first child this month. She's not as bad about it as I am but is sympathetic to the feeling of spending too long in one spot. Where a lot of people we know (whether or not they have children) feel like having children is the end of being able to go anywhere for a while, we are, perhaps naively, committed to making it work. The hope is that by adapting how we travel we won't have to give it up completely.