A Sleepy Girl's Thoughts on Life

I Want More

Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.
-- Miriam Beard

I always heard that once you started travelling, you couldn't get enough. But I never believed it until now.

I never believed it until I sat lazily at the top of the Eiffel Tower with the wind whipping through my hair and cameras flashing around me. I never believed it until I dragged my heavy suitcase all over two cities, across streets, up and down countless sets of stairs, and in and out of sweaty subway cars. I never believed it until I was sad to take that plane ride home.

My trip to Europe was special on many different levels. Perhaps the most important of these is that I was able to share it with my sister, who happens to be my best friend in the whole world. She was my partner in crime as we navigated our way from place to place, metro to metro, hotel to hotel.

She was always there to listen to me complain, or to tell me I got the directions wrong--or when I got them right, though it didn't happen too often. And she was there to make me laugh, and to plan out a schedule of the day's events, and to let me know when I was being a brat.

Little sister and I spent about two weeks together 24/7--probably the most time we've ever spent consecutively--and we had a wonderful time. Sure, we had a skirmish about halfway through the trip (at the very top of the Eiffel Tower, no less), but it only reinforced the fact that we have such an iron-clad, strong relationship. I couldn't imagine taking such a trip with anyone else.

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
-- George Moore

Now, this trip was also special because it was my first foray abroad without my parents or some other force leading me around. As I detailed in an earlier post, this prospect terrified me to no end. But what I found when I got there surprised me even more: I was completely capable of travelling.

Little sister and I read the signs. We consulted the maps. We asked people. And when all else failed, we simply guessed. And about 97 percent of the time, we guessed right. We took everything in stride, and it worked like clockwork.

I'd like to describe every site we saw, but there are just too many. From the gold and marble sumptuousness of Versailles to the stoic and majestic turrets of the Tower of London, I took everything in with excited reverie.

Each museum beheld countless masterpieces: the Mona Lisa, Monet's impressionist paintings, the Rosetta Stone, Rodin's Le Penseur, the Parthenon sculptures, artifacts and armour and blinding jewels galore. Each church boasted beautiful stained glass and vaulted ceilings stretching up to the sky, with the bodies of great men and women, royals and heros alike, buried beneath the cold stone floors.

Each restaurant and piazza or square had a different, unique feel. Each place, right down to the outdoor bird market in Paris or London's Tower Bridge, was utterly beautiful. And not just beautiful in the conventional sense, but beautiful in the sense that these were all part of a different culture, perhaps even a different time. Everything was so steeped in history and heritage that it was simply impossible to see anything as short of magnificent.

And the people were magnificent, too, Londoners and Parisians both. The waiters in France went the extra mile to help us understand menus, and the tube attendants in London always went out of their way to come over when we looked lost. The boys in the pubs with their cute British accents were sweet despite their drunkenness. The Parisians drinking wine in the evenings on the Eiffel Tower lawn didn't hesitate to treat us as their own by asking for a cigarette.

The night shift man at our hotel in Paris always chortled out a happy "Bonsoir" when we came back from dinner. And our tour guide for Stonehenge gave up his umbrella so some of us wouldn't get soaked. The people were just as refreshing as the sites themselves.

Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers, that the mind can never break off from the journey.
-- Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides

About halfway through the trip, as we rode on a crowded car in the Paris metro, I remember thinking to myself, I can do this. Not just this right now, but I could do this interminably. For once in my life, I felt perfectly capable of finding my way in the world, both figuratively and literally. And even more than that, I wanted to keep going, to see as much of the world as possible.

Travelling had become the hunger I'd always read about. I wanted more. I want more. I want to see Greece, Thailand, the rest of the UK, Australia, and countless other places.

I want to experience other cultures.

I want to meet new people.

And I want to be surprised by my own capabilities over and over again.

It's all just too good of a feeling. And I don't want it to end.

(pictures to be added in later when Blogger cooperates with me!)

posted by Sleepy Girl @ 12:14 PM