In less than two months, I will be leaving for a three week trip around the world.
As I think about my upcoming trip, I bought Frances Mayes' book, “A Year in the World: Journeys of a Passionate Traveller”. I admire Frances Mayes’ writing. She wrote “Under the Tuscan Sun”.
I read the Travel Section in the Sunday New York Times before delving into the rest of the news. I was hoping that Frances would provide some insight as to why travel lovers love to travel. She did not disappoint me. She served some juicy morsels to chew on, putting to words the love of travel.
1. “The urge to travel feels magnetic. Two of my favorite words are linked: departure time”.
2. “Travel pushes my boundaries. Seemingly self-indulgent, travel paradoxically obliterates the me-me-me….you are insignificant to the life of the new place”.
3. Frances wrote about her “walking notebook” where she described what she saw. “… tile rooftops, a handmade ladder propped in a fig tree, olive trees beside a stone wall…a little dirt-colored donkey stands against a whitewashed wall, a stony path winds into a smoky aura of light….” [Note to Frances: I take pictures instead. I love to try to capture those images].
4. Frances quoted Martin Buber who said, “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware”.
5. “I prefer to think of the end of exploring as an invitation to return to my origins and transform them”.
6. Frances described the force of her "travel magnet" … “sending me to check my airline mileage account, propelling me to the computer to scout ticket prices, into the garage to see which suitcase has wheels ready to roll”.
On my “Blind Date with the World” trip, I hope to learn tons of things I never knew and never knew that I wanted to know, see places on my list of what I want to see, and see places I didn’t know I wanted to see.