The Feeling of Travel

What I love most about travel is the feeling of it, a visceral experience that goes beyond and magnifies the five senses. It is the flutter in my stomach as the plane roars up into the clouds, the exhilaration of waking up in a foreign city, not yet knowing what the day has in store, the sense of adventure that takes hold when I’m in unfamiliar surroundings.

There is also the heightened awareness that a change of scenery brings. The kinds of details that barely register back home grab my attention and inspire my imagination. Even the more mundane aspects of life, like grocery store check-out lines and the rush of morning commuters, somehow hold more allure in a foreign place. Travel makes everything more vivid.

Being in a new place is rejuvenating, filling me with new ideas and new perspectives. But at the same time, travel clarifies my beliefs and what is most important in life. It is one of the best ways that I know to reset, reflect and reconnect with myself.

This passion that I have for travel has lead me, like so many others, to this conclusion: must write travel blog.

Yet with a husband, two daughters, a cat, hamster, volunteer responsibilities, and two houses to take care of, global nomad I am not. Although I’m more frequent a traveler than many, I spend most of my days within the borders of San Francisco, and usually, truth be told, inside the same two-mile radius of my house. It is an incredibly beautiful bubble that I am thrilled to call home, but too often I move through my routines without fully noticing and connecting with it in the way that a first-time visitor would.

So, I ask myself this question: is it possible to bring that wide-eyed, fully-alive feeling of travel to day-to-day life? To find out, I am challenging myself to be a traveler in my own city, to be more curious, to notice the details, and to discover newness in the place where I live.

But first, a trip to Cape Town, for which I depart tomorrow.

Stay tuned as I chronicle my explorations at home and further afield, in search of the feeling of travel . . .