Travel Love/Hate

Currently I am not traveling. I am living my everyday life doing day-to-day things: work, laundry, grocery, email, feed the dog, run kids to activities, visit family. As I reflect on my latest blogs, which are about a trip now many months in the past, I am pondering how to transition back to blogging about daily life again about that same family that traveled with me, or books, travel, or my writing.

So, I thought, one of the things I don’t enjoy is coming home from a trip and unpacking everything. This led me to some quick loves and hates about traveling.

So here are two things I love and two I hate about traveling.

To be clear, I love many, many, many things about travel and hate way fewer. These are just two quick love/hate things that popped into my mind. What are yours?

Love

Packing. I do so love the anticipation. Wondering where I will wear these clothes and how they will look in the pictures. Tucking the carefully purchased gifts into the suitcase. Checking and rechecking the packing list.

Eating. A thrill comes with eating something you have never tried before. Or enjoying something you know you’ll love but don’t eat at home. Trying something new is always part of a travel adventure for me.

Hate

When you try to speak the language—whether learned through a phrase book, taking classes, or putting a language you used to master back into play—and the local ignores your efforts and replies to you in English instead. (My solution to this: find somewhere off the beaten path where they don’t speak English if you really want to use your language skills.)

Unpacking. This is the thing I hate most. A good part of disliking unpacking is because the trip is OVER. The glittery delight of the carefully packed suitcase is in the past. The suitcase now holds a jumble of dirty clothes plus a bunch of stuff that has to be put away in twenty different places: the bedroom, bathroom, basement, kitchen, this drawer, the other room, and some new stuff that doesn’t go anywhere yet. If my husband hadn’t dumped the suitcase on our bed and taken the empty suitcases downstairs, said suitcase would still be sitting in my room, filled with stuff I didn’t want to unpack.

What are your top loves and hates about travel?