Traveling is so exciting for me. I enjoy all the preparations, making sure I have everything I need and a little more, a good itinerary, staying busy but planning down time as well and seeing everything I can possibly see and do in just a few days.
I have a friend who is 73 and she still travels the world, and most of the time by herself. She amazes me but not only because she goes alone but she travels with a backpack! I just can't do it. I mean, I guess I could go alone, but it's the backpack. I have a hard time wearing clothes several times (that's a sensory issue) and I never know what I will need (will I be too cold or too hot). It will be that one time I don't take a second pair of shoes, I will have terrible blisters or my shoes will get wet (both have happened) and I am somewhere they don't make shoes in my size (has happened too).
I have read articles and blogs about how to travel for 10 days and take only 10 total pieces. I try so hard to pack light but I can't do ten pieces. It was funny as much as I lightened my load on my trip to England, that my husband was the one that had to do laundry and not me, so I suppose I have reached a degree of success.
A friend I travelled with told me once it was just wrong to have bad food when you are in a new city. So good food becomes a priority for us--looking for the good and unique. In Salisbury, we ate at the location where Churchill and Eisenhower planned the D-Day landings. Not only a great historical place but amazing food... and we had blood sausage for the first time. In New York City we ate at the very first pizza restaurant- Lombardi's. It's always great to find these awesome locations and most times we aren't disappointed.
Next thing we enjoy are the sites- whether it's historical sites, nature or the theatre, we always make sure we plan something unique and wonderful. We have been to the Moulin Rouge in Paris --definitely more on the unique side than "wonderful". I find the historical places so moving and authentic (for the most part) and isn't that part of why people travel?
Trip Advisor is our authority and once we visit somewhere, we give back by writing reviews as well. Sort of wish we earned reward points with them so we could travel more!
So as I plan our trip to China this month, I am starting to agonize on what to pack, what to remember to take that I can't get there (REALLY... they don't make shoes in my size!), where we can eat, what we will see and how we will embrace their culture. It will certainly be an adventure, as it always is and in my opinion, I am better for it.
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