What can you do while traveling so that once you return – once you’re back in the thick of work routines and responsibilities – you can still remember the piquant flavors and the thousand other little details not found in a guidebook?
As grateful as I am for experiences like walking the Camino across Spain, there have been other trips I’m not quite so proud of – trips on which I didn’t work hard enough to engage with where I was.
Words and photos only tell so much – I love that this video captures sounds, too: the crunch of our boots on the path, the ever-present din of cowbells, and the cheers and claps that often erupt in front of the cathedral in Santiago.
If you travel alone, you’ve got no one else to bounce ideas off of, to debate having an early dinner versus a late one, or to perhaps even tell you it’s okay to take an afternoon nap. Here are a few tips on what to do when you travel solo.
When people find out that I usually travel alone, so often the first question they ask is, “Don’t you ever get lonely?” What surprises me is the terribly concerned look on their face, as though loneliness is something to be afraid of.
The fireworks prove tricky to photograph – especially getting certain things like exposure and focus right. That’s when I decide to turn off my camera’s auto-focus, twist the lens and blur the suckers to a point beyond recognition.
Every now and then you meet someone whose friendship not only proves the test of time, but of distance, too. Today I want you to meet Micaela, one such friend whose questions before her first solo trip inspired this new blog series.
I had no idea what to expect on Vieques Island, but what awaited me were vivid hibiscus flowers. Verdant hills covered in palm and mango trees. Garlands of shell ginger blossoms, their buds white and each tip a light shade of flamingo pink.
As Aziz leads me farther through the dyers market, I feel a familiar tension coming back. During my time earlier with the blacksmiths, as interested as I was in their work, I couldn’t help asking myself: Are they doing this for me?
Flamenco wasn’t on my list of things to see in Spain. But when a performance unexpectedly started at lunch one day in Madrid, I suddenly couldn’t imagine having left the country without seeing this.