Tag Archives: awareness during travel

Advice for Grads (don’t worry, not from me)

by Wendy
Graduation season is wrapping up, with the last of the crowds of students in caps and gowns with proud families blocking downtown sidewalks and slowing traffic. I wish them all well!

While I can understand the importance of marking the occasion, I thought my high school graduation was so boring, I skipped both the college and graduate school ceremonies. After I finished college, my Dad wrote a letter to me that I reread recently. I realize how lucky I am to have such constantly supportive parents, though I have taken it for granted at times. Both he and Mom taught my sisters and me the importance of hard work and education, a commitment to family and faith, and that being a good person matters so much more than being pretty.

I’d like to share some of Dad’s words of wisdom here – they still inspire me today and no commencement speech could ever have meant as much. I think both recent and not so recent grads can appreciate this – especially devoted travelers and aspiring writers. Continue reading →

Nostalgia Across an Ocean

by Wendy
Follow me on twitter @wendylooksleaps

One of the rewards of visiting another country is the opportunity to observe and appreciate what is different – as well as noticing what is the same. These flashes of familiarity can make you feel very connected to a place in ways you did not expect. Dad talks about this a little in his Travel Epistle post, how senses are often heightened during travel, and how the basic human need of eating and drinking can help visitors get to know a new place.

The other week my eye doctor told me about a recent trip to Portugal with his sister. I’m a longtime patient of his, sometimes obliged to visit twice a year because I’m blind as a bat with unusually high pressure readings for glaucoma. Luckily this bat can see well with contact lenses and doesn’t get quite as nervous about these appointments as she did as a bat teen. It’s pretty routine, we shoot the breeze and I ask what cool trips he’s taken lately. Continue reading →

St. Jean de Luz: Princess or Surfer Girl

by Wendy
During our road trip this past September, we drove across the Spanish border to spend a few days in St. Jean de Luz. We were looking forward to seeing this small coastal town in the French Basque Region. We listened to Euskadi radio as we drove through mountain tunnels and watched the scenery turn greener. I’d say expectations were high. Continue reading →

Travel Epistle #1

by Joe
Travel when I was young was much different from travel as I got older. Certainly most people would say the experience of travel changes for us as we mature. In addition to that, and more importantly for me, the feelings, reflections, and the thoughts that are provoked have changed immensely. I suspect this may be somewhat common to us all but I’m not sure if it’s the same for each one of us.  I still enjoy travel on all the basic levels such as the excitement, joy, curiosity, and happiness felt at seeing new places and people for the first time. Even returning to places and events that I go to more than once, but only once in awhile, does the same thing.  But I started to notice in my early adult life, (late teens, and early twenties) that travel also awakened in me a new access to ideas, contemplation, and awareness of self and how I fit into this great universe and perhaps even reality.  I found myself doing some of my best introspective thinking, reflection, and planning while I was traveling.  

Continue reading →