Last night when I had arrived home from Peru, my mom mentioned to me that I had done quite a bit of travelling for someone of my age. I somewhat disagreed with her because I know of people who had done much more travelling than myself. I went to school with a guy who had been to pretty much every single continent, with the exception of Antarctica! On the other hand, I also know people who have barely been anywhere. For some, it had nothing to do with finances, but rather not even having the desire to travel.
Take my bf for example. He can definitely afford to travel internationally, but doesn’t have much of a desire to. He prefers road trips. Before we met, he had never been outside of North America. We have been on several trips together thus far, but the majority of them have been within Canada and the US, with the exception of our trip to Costa Rica. A couple of years back, we had a long discussion about our views on travelling. We are very similar in personalities, values, and sense of humour. But where we differ on a wider scale is travelling. I LOVE to travel. He prefers to stay local. I asked him if seeing waterfalls and mountains up close and personal took his breath away and unfortunately he disagreed. He said he could see them on tv, in a book. Strangely enough, my dad isn’t much a of a traveller either. He has only been to the US and his homeland. Whereas, my mom is more of a traveller. She just got back from her Europe trip a few days before I got back from Peru. We were exchanging travel stories and looking at each other’s pictures. I definitely didn’t inherit any adventure genes from either side of the family, but I feel like I could have inherited my mom’s love for travelling.
There are different types of travel and everyone has a different perception of what travelling is. To me, its going someplace far and someplace different. Experiencing the scenery, the food, the history, the culture, learning the language if it is different from English. Its the meeting different people and exchanging travel stories.
I have been to a couple of all-inclusives and if it weren’t for the day trips going out of the resort, I would be going insane. Some people are perfectly happy laying on the beach for a week. That’s fine, but it’s not my style. Personally, I almost consider it a waste of money if you’re not going to do anything. I love sightseeing and exploring, so I like the idea of alternating with a day of relaxation and a day of exploration to not burn myself out completely during the trip. I have never been on a cruise and don’t have the desire to do so anytime soon. I know you get to visit lots of different countries and there are a lot of activities on the boat, but the idea of being stuck on a boat for a long period of time doesn’t really interest me.
Aside from the things I have mentioned in the previous paragraph about what travelling is, it’s the little side things as well. Every time I see a plane in the sky, I often wonder where is it going or where is it coming from. I get excited with all the hustle and bustle in the airport. I get excited when I get a new stamp on my passport. I kept my expired passport because of all the stamps I got from my Europe trip. I love the take off part of the plane ride. Rushing down the runway and when we soar into the air, going higher and higher until we are at cruising altitude and there is nothing but clouds.
My secret fantasy is to be a contestant on the Amazing Race, but I think it is only open to Americans. I honestly felt like that during the Peru trip, but I’ll go more into detail about that in the next post.
I collect postcards from every country I visit and display them on my fridge or underneath the glass top of my coffee table. I have patches from all the countries I’ve been to on my 60L backpack which I proudly show off every time I go travelling with it.
So, what type of traveller are you? What is it about travelling that you enjoy?
Taken in the village of Whistler during my 2008 trip to BC
I enjoy all different types of traveling. Exploring, adventures, laying on the beach, etc. I wish I could travel as my job!
I hear ya. I get to do a little bit of travelling for my job when I’m on training, but its all local. lol.
I enjoy both going out on adventures and seeing things, but also laying on the beach all day. In all honesty, by the time I get to vacation I’m completely burnt out from work and everything I do outside of work that all I want to do is relax and recover…but in an ideal world I’d have a week to do that and a week RIGHT after to go somewhere and really DO things when I travel.
The one week of relaxation and one week of doing things does sound ideal. One week of vacation is definitely not enough. I find everything is always rushed, but sometimes that’s all the time I can take off because we’re often short staffed at work. As well, it can be tricky coordinating vacation with your significant other, depending on their work and work situation.
Mr PoP and I love being immersed in travel. We really aim to travel for long periods of time – but live like locals where we go, which is one of the reasons we’re so concentrated on securing financial independence while we’re still young enough to enjoy all the travel!
That is awesome Mr. PoP enjoys travelling! I’m hoping eventually my bf will enjoy it more. Sometimes I think he only goes on vacation because I like to. He says it doesn’t matter where we go, as long as we’re together. 🙂
I enjoy pretty much any type of travelling, just laying on the beach or going somewhere remote and taking an adventure. I love visiting different parts of the world and learning their history and meeting other peoples. I too would love to go on The Amazing Race. I am terribly afraid of heights though, so I think I’ll have to take a pass as they always seem to have a few of those challenges.
This will sound weird but although I am afraid of heights, I have climbed the stairs up the CN tower, have gone tree top trekking and hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu in Peru. After having done all those things, I still am afraid of heights, but I think it’s less than I used to be.
I completely agree with you. I love to travel, every opportunity that is given I try and take. Yes it can be draining, expensive, and push me outside of my comfort zone. But THAT is truly living in my book. When I am 75 years old I want to say I how I lived in London, climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris, went on an a African Safari, walked the Great Wall of China and met some amazing people along the way. I try to remind myself of this as much as possible. At 75, I will not care how nice my car was or how large my apartment. I feel blessed that I have had the opportunity to travel a good amount thus far in my life and thankful my boyfriend feels the same way. I can’t wait to hear about Peru!
There are so many places in the world that I would love to see, but I also love comforts on vacation, so I’m a bit of an oxymoron. I’ve been to Europe only once and would love to go back as a family trip when our daughter is older. I think you’d need to take a month to do it right. Hopefully, we can have enough passive income through rentals or another source to do this down the road.
I spent a month in Europe and I felt it wasn’t enough. However, we went to Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic, only spending a few days in each country. I felt I needed at least a week for each country to see the highlights of it.
I love it all. I do kind of get the line of thinking that at the heart of it, many big cities or many small towns are the same. And maybe once you’ve seen a pretty mountain, you’ve seen them all. But travel makes my heart skip with joy. There’s really no other way to put it…
We Kiwis are definitely a nation of travellers and I’ve seen basically nothing compared to most!
I think travel is a state of mind – not so much a destination as what you bring with you. Some people travel with a list, a checkbox of things to tick off. Some go to sites, snap a few pictures and head off to the next thing. Others travel slowly, immersing themselves in a country’s pysche, learning the language, meeting the locals.
I am a bit of both – if I’m in Paris, I am going to want to go see the Eiffel Tower. But I am also going to want to eat breakfast at the local cafe instead of at the hotel, take the Metro instead of a tour bus and spend hours just wandering the Marais. I find the latter approach far more rewarding.
Like many things in life, you get out of travel what you put in.
Love this post! I really need to travel more.