When I first started travelling I was excited about all the people I was meeting, until I discovered that these few hours or these few days would be the first and last I ever see of them again.
Plans to meet up again have very rarely become a reality. Even when my ex travel hang out partner is in the same country they are generally over 100KM away, which is still too far to meet up for a drink.
Reply to this I will have to agree. The amount of people I have met is insane, yet attempting to keep in contact is tough and tougher still is trying to find the time to see them. I have noticed even if I am in the same area as them, there are far too many of them to meet up with all at once.
Something that really has disappointed me, travel wise, is the fact that once you leave to travel once you come back "home" (or where you were before) everything is different. People are getting married, having children etc. Therefore is no longer feels like home but a foreign place.
I feel like I am losing out, even though I enjoy my experiences so much and I wont stop. My current issue is that nothing feels like home. Everywhere I go, I feel I get farther from finding home. They say, Home is where the heart is, although via traveling I have left my heart in so many places.
Sorry I'm ranting.
Reply to this I feel like I am losing out,...
I used to feel like that for years, when I got home from my travels. Everybody at home was getting married, having babies, getting university degrees, earning lots of money and I wondered if I was sacrificing all this, to have the travel experiences I wanted. But, maybe the friends and family at home felt they were missing out too, when I came back from yet another adventure, when they were at home all along doing what they were doing.
I didnt miss out though. I just did the job, relationship, mortgage , baby thing a bit later my friends and siblings did.
Reply to this I used to get really bummed out about this, and I guess I still do to an extent. But I've forced myself to understand from the start that most of these travel friends are only temporary. There are some people I've had amazing times with but have been comfortable thinking at the same time that it would be the last time I would ever see them. I am lucky to live close to NYC though, so I probably get to catch up with more travel friends than most people.
Reply to this One of my biggest travel disappointments is the well-known tourist trap. When a beautiful location is surrounded by money-grabbers, I tend to head for the hills. Niagara Falls, ON, is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but you turn around and see store after souvenir after cheesy restaurant. You have to go to beautiful places like this, but unfortunately, businesses know this. Other examples (in the US) are Pier 37 in San Francisco; Gatlinburg, TN; Eureka Springs, AR; etc., etc., etc.
I can sympathize with the disappointments above re: meeting people and then having a hard time meeting up with them again, but my personality is totally different. I prefer traveling alone and traveling frequently at the expense of having a family and roots in a particular community. A wise friend once told me, "A traveler's home is the world." And that's exactly how I feel.
Reply to this When a beautiful location is surrounded by money-grabbers, I tend to head for the hills. Niagara Falls, ON, is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but you turn around and see store after souvenir after cheesy restaurant. You have to go to beautiful places like this, but unfortunately, businesses know this.
Yeah, when a place becomes a popular tourist attraction, it loses most of/ all of its romance. This is the reason why I visit so few tourist attractions.
A wise friend once told me, "A traveler's home is the world."
Thank goodness for the internet, so we can easily connect with friends around the world, in some way at least.
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