This year, you want to do things differently. You would like to believe you’re still young and reckless so you decide to go to an exotic country. You’re prepared for unbridled adventure. You're going to live it up, do it right. Get feral. Who knows, you may even go skinny dipping if the opportunity presents itself. You’re going to be totally carefree...except for, well, a couple of considerations.
You have a budget to stick to, time constraints to follow, safety precautions to think of, vaccinations to plan for, medications to remember, water quality to take into account, and your travel partner’s interests to cater to. On top of all that, you have the pressure to actually have a good time. In the end, if the trip turns crap, you’re a grand poorer at the very least and your only vacation time this year was spent being sick, miserable or both. Despite the logistics, you're determined to make it happen.
Ready, here comes the villain in disguise. You only have two weeks; how much can you fit in? You probably won’t choose Western Europe next year, so you've just got to see as much as possible. This is a problem we’ve all come across. Raise your hand if you've ever found yourself thinking something like, “It would be a shame to go to Italy and not hit Venice on the way out.” Or maybe, “Couldn’t we stop by Paris, just for the weekend?” But wait, London-Amsterdam-Paris-Rome-Madrid and then home in two weeks? How many times have you heard someone say he'd done Europe, when he actually spent less than a month traveling there? Do you suppose he remembers any one city from another?
Don’t get mad at me now, you promised! But what is the point? Did you do it just to say you did? And how shallow is that? Come on, wake up and smell the spotted dick-gouda-baguette-spaghetti-paella, how could you possibly swallow all that in just a couple weeks and come home to say you’ve officially done Europe? Instead you're more likely to say something like, “What was that sad singing they did again, Fazo...Fabo...? Where did we see that?” You can’t remember. For shame! As tempted as you were to stop at that restaurant where you heard the lady singing, you didn't. Instead, you were running to hop back on the Eurail to Seville to catch a glimpse of flamenco dress before jumping on a plane to the next place....
One metropolitan city is the same as the next when you only have a day or two to see it, not to mention the sheer stress of high-velocity travel in a country where you speak little or none of the native language. The anxiety is enough to force you to drink Starbucks, eat at McDonalds, and get your souvenir T-shirt at Zara just because you know it’s safe. In the end, you’ve missed out on what’s unique about the food, and when you think back, you realize you met more tourists than locals.
To be continued...
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