Based on that definition, Susanne & I most certainly fall into the latter group. We visit fewer places and stay longer. I then pondered...how did I get to that philosophy?
I did not start traveling internationally until I was 30, doing international sales and marketing with Motorola Semiconductors. The format for that travel (and much to come after) was to be met at the airport by local associates and taken to business meetings during the day and wonderful dinners in the evenings. On the weekends, sightseeing tours were set up.
For my entire working life, I never really got out of that mode. I was only able to take about 8-10 days a year of international vacations, in the Spring. They tended more towards the tourist mode. Susanne & I did Amsterdam, then trained our way to Paris in the late '80's. We did New Zealand in 1991, but in that short time, we visited four cities on both islands. All those trips were in a blur.
Now we like to settle down in a place and explore. That's usually Paris & western Montana. Last year we did a cruise to Barcelona & stayed for three weeks. Lovely city, but not Paris. Originally I considered two weeks in Barcelona & a week in Madrid, they're only a couple of hours apart by train, but decided against it. My choice was validated when purely by coincidence, Susanne's step-father and his bride took their honeymoon four days in Madrid & four in Barcelona where we got to spend time with them. I asked which Spanish city they preferred...it was Barcelona.
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I believe every tourist/traveler has three priorities when visiting a place:
See the sights
Enjoy the food
Meet the people
And each person orders them differently. Ours are: food first, then people & sights. What about you?
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I also believe that no matter how often we visit a place, the first time or the 10th time, it simply prepares us for the next visit, even if we choose not to return.
It turns out what you see & do invariably falls into three categories:
There are those activities with a "been there, done that" vibe...nice to see, no need to return. One trip up the Eiffel Tower is sufficient lifetime-wise. Hopefully tourists get many of these.
Then there are those experiences that you just didn't get enough of and you'd want to do more if/when you return. It could be almost anything...a major museum, a neighborhood, a restaurant/cuisine, a person you met that you'd like to get to know better.
And lastly, there are those things you didn't get to at all; you may have just run out of time. You'll to get to them on the next pass, if there is one.
Another reason...as you visit a place more often, you get better at using the available public transportation. We were in Montreal for eight days struggling with a Metro system designed for commuters, not visitors. It was on day five I discovered their wonderful bus system. So while we are better prepared for returning to Montreal and Barcelona, there is no compelling reason to go back to either place.
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Those who want to visit many cities during a single trip overlook that each time they change locations, they lose a day. (Cruises mitigate this somewhat but that's a whole 'nother thing.) My suggestion...limit your trip to two cities max, fly into one & out of the other, "training" between them. Airlines understand "open jaw" flights. An added bonus, going by train means you move from city center to city center. We added a few days in Munich onto the end of one Paris trip, taking a sleeper/overnight train, an adventure all unto itself.
A couple once told me they were spending three days in Paris. I asked them how many nights. The answer was "two". That actually means they're spending only one full day there. The other days are taken up with arriving & leaving.
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Late this summer, we're returning to Paris with friends who want to explore the traveler mode. Good for them! Susanne & I consider the city of Paris as one big museum with what most call "museums" being simply rooms in the museum/city. So we love walking the streets where the museum walls so-to-speak are always changing as well as the people wherever you look. In fact, sitting at a sidewalk cafe and letting the museum pass by us is a favorite activity. And if we chat up the next table, so much the better.
And we've made friends there. Hopefully Father McCarthy, the American vicar of the Madeleine church, is still in Paris. Laurie, my former Phoenix airport volunteer buddy, now living in Paris full time is still there. We follow her on Facebook.
For us, returning to the familiar is more fun (and certainly more relaxing) than exploring the new.
I've got to throw in a few Paris shots. These are mostly from trips way back 5-10 years ago.
I don't remember where these two pics were taken from but on a very gloomy day. The main subject is easy to identify:
From the Hunting Museum (hunting art, hunting weapons & taxidermy), the title of this shot still sticks...Gorilla My Dreams:
Our absolute favorite restaurant, found in a guide book in the '90's. That's Celine who with her husband Bertrand own the place. The name means "A doe in the woods"; game is their specialty.
Taken from the top of the Pompidou Museum on another gloomy day, then photo-processed into an lithographic-like piece.
This year our apartment is right off Place de la Republic, so this lady will be a familiar sight, just as the Bastille Column was in the past.
The Madeleine Church taken from a favorite sidewalk cafe. We hope to do a lunch meet-up with Father McCarthy at the very nice little cafe in the Madeleine basement, not known to many visitors but a favorite lunch place for the locals working nearby.
Lastly, an urban picnic some years ago. We were staying in a hotel, the weather was turning bad so we grabbed some bread, wine, cheese & a couple of patés and plunked down in the lobby.
Trying to live as a Parisian while there means appreciating Paris as the locals do. Here is a recent blog post by an American living in Paris. It's the first four paragraphs that count.
Click HERE.
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And then there's Montana. Last year we stayed in Bozeman for three weeks but popped over to Missoula for two days to return to our two favorite restaurants & catch a milonga. This year we're doing one week in Missoula, making a new CASA contact there (along with revisiting those restaurants & finding new ones). Then on to Bozeman for two weeks rejoining our yoga studio, tango community, and synagogue congregation. Also a stop in to see CASA.
This year we're there over 4th of July and will zip over to Ennis, an hour's drive, a small town hosting a fireman's pancake breakfast, a car show, 4th of July parade and a Lions Club picnic. If we want to stick around until 6pm, there's a rodeo and fireworks after sunset. But by that time we'll probably be back in Bozeman.
Thanks to absurdly high pricing from Delta Airlines (more than 2½ times what we paid last year), we're taking an extra week and driving.
Here are a few shots from our first trip in 2008 taken in Glacier National Park with our then state-of-the-art 5Mp camera.
A patch of snow in July. Higher up, even more.
There is nothing more beautiful than being up close to a high mountain lake. Montana has lots of them.
That's it for now. Next post in June.
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