Vacation

Vacation is an anomaly. A sandwich of new experiences, slapped between dry slices of preparation and re-entry. As they say about London, however, when you are tired of it, you are tired of living.  I am not that tired yet, though some aspects of travel are becoming more of an effort. I can no longer sling a stuffed-to-the-point-of-explosion roll-aboard into the upper reaches of an airplane storage shelf without serious effort. I cannot step off the plane and put in a full day of sightseeing before crashing at our hotel. My feet and back no longer fall for that "You can do it; it's only a block more.." routine. I need more rests, more taxis, more sleep, and--dare I say it?--maybe I should check my bag.

All of this, however, is a small price to pay for the renewal of our stock of stories. That's what travel is all about, anyway: storytelling. We travel to hear new tales from different places and different people. We talk to taxi-drivers and visit museums and trade observations with everyone we meet. We eavesdrop on other people's lives, watch other people's television,  and eat different food on different schedules. For a short time, we are somebody else, doing many of the things we normally do, but in abnormal ways.

And then we come back and look at our lives in a slightly off-kilter way, seeing how strange we are when seen through other eyes. This leads to questions, both silly and serious: why is it so hard to find Coca Cola with any carbonation in the UK? Why do we have a zillion brands of candy bars when they have basically 3 or 4? Why do they eat baked beans on toast? Why are their trains so well-run and ours so poorly-managed? How did haggis get such a bad rep? The list goes on and on.

Every question from this trip has a story. I won't even attempt to answer all of them, but I will be reeling off some of the stories we managed to fit in our over-stuffed bags...stay tuned.