Getting Antsy

A few years ago I finally acknowledged what my friends had been chuckling over for years: I've got a touch of hyperactivity in me.

When I get busy, I get over busy, with several projects running at once. I talk fast, think at hyper speed, and always have my eye on the next set of things I want to do.

For most of my life, I never gave it a second thought. Heck, aside from realizing that I talked way too fast for most people (being constantly asked to slow down made that hard not to catch!), I always figured I did things the same way as everyone else.

Deep inside of me, though, I always wondered how people settled down and stayed in the same community for decades. When we moved to New Jersey, I think I really tried to buy into that, and at one point I might have almost had myself convinced that I could take comfort in living in the same house for 30, 40, or 50 years until it was time for either a nursing home or a grave.

It was an incredibly pleasant surprise to find that my husband had been as antsy as I was about living in NJ. It wasn't until we had been living in Israel for a couple of years that I learned he had been thinking about making a change for quite some time.

Well, we've been in Israel for 10 years, in the same apartment for five, and I'm getting antsy again.

We've had a realtor in to appraise our place, and the day after she was here, I turned to my husband and said that we have a chance to make another huge change in our lives, and what did he think?

A couple of years ago I suggested that we sell our apartment, and backpack around the world for a few years. He sweetly demurred, but smiled and said it was fine with him if I did some traveling. I jumped at the chance, and since then have been either on the way to somewhere new or busy planning my next trip.

But I'm starting to get an itch for more than just a month or two of travel a couple of times a year. I want the challenge of living in a new place, getting adjusted to a new culture, learning a new language, experimenting with new foods.

I've suggested six months in London or Paris, thinking that a central, metropolitan area might be fun. I've got visions of hopping a train or bus or cheap flight for weekends exploring Europe.

Just as I start feeling comfortable in that idea, I get another vision: of a quiet life on an exotic island deep in the South Pacific. A couple of years ago, we spent a fun afternoon fantasizing about changes we could make in our lives, and I had another pleasant surprise when my husband started talking about moving to far flung places.

In my realistic moments, I acknowledge that for now, we'll probably just move to a smaller apartment in the same town, and I'll continue to travel, with, hopes that my husband will join me on a trip or two.

But we have agreed to get rid of as much of what we've accumulated over the years as we can. He'll be happy with just simplifying our lives, but I'm thinking that the less we have to pack and unpack, the easier it will be for us to pick up and go...

Faraway Dreams

If there's a wanderlust gene, then there's no doubt I inherited it from my mother. Mom was a teacher, and every summer she'd join a tour to just about anywhere- Europe..the Caribbean..Scandinavia..the Far East. She'd been to them all.

When my mother came to live with us, I started organizing her mess of photos into neat little albums, hoping they would be a good Alzheimer's tool. While I was sorting through the pictures from her travels, I realized that in every single picture, she had a huge smile on her face, and her body language was telegraphing signs of pure relaxation and happiness- things we never associated with Mom, who always seemed to view life as a series of bitter, harsh challenges.

Sometime during the week of shiva I observed after Mom passed away, I took out all those pictures, and as I was leafing through the travel album, I started to cry for that happy side of my mother that she had kept from us.

I knew then, that as soon as I could, I would start to travel. At the time, I found myself with an overriding desire to leave an album of happy photos for my grandchildren. Thankfully, in the two years since that week of mourning, I've realized that it's not a legacy of happy photos that I want to leave, but rather memories of a happy, loving grandmother who always had a smile on her face, a gleeful jump in her step, and an eagerness to see what was over the next hill.

So began my wanderlust.

For the past year or so, if I haven't been on the road, then I've been busy planning my next trip, and dreaming of the ones that will follow. Although I'll join them when convenient, I prefer to avoid the organized tours that were my Mom's standard method of travel. Instead, I strike out on my own, taking advantage of free or inexpensive walking tours to familiarize myself with a new city, and then spend the rest of my visit walking and wandering, chatting, and watching.

I've been to London and Paris, cruised on a very large ship, and also on a small refurbished ferry, have hiked in US national parks, and delighted in the decadence of Las Vegas.

I've found that I love waking up in a new place, enjoy fleeting encounters with new people, and equally prefer traveling solo or with a companion. But the most important thing I've learned about myself is that as much as I enjoy exploring new cities, it's nature that I crave. That lesson will be the one that steers my travel plans- I'll be balancing city touring with hiking, cruising, walking, and camping in the most glorious spots I can find.


Here are the places I've been to since I started traveling last spring:


First trip (after 2 weeks visiting my son and his family in Los Angeles): Las Vegas- Valley of Fire- the Grand Canyon- Bryce and Zion national parks- San Francisco- Yosemite- Big Sur- DC

This spring: Paris- New York- LA- a cruise to Mexico- hiking around San Francisco, and Point Reyes

In June, for my birthday, I took a 4 night cruise to Cyprus, Turkey, and Rhodes


I'm still planning my trip for this fall, but so far, this is how it looks:

LA- Sydney, Australia- South Island, New Zealand- Florida- NYC. And, I'll be adding a couple of short cruises in there somewhere (I'm starting to really like cruising- especially when I find a great deal!).

And, needless to say, I'm already looking ahead to next year, and beyond- for the next couple of years' travels, I'm eyeing: cruising the Caribbean and the Mediterranean, a Nile River cruise, Sedona, Arizona, Monument Valley, and return to the Grand Canyon, hiking in Petra, Jordan, and at least one trip somewhere in Europe. I have dreams of a South Pacific cruise, but that may have to wait another year or two.


There's an unexpected benefit that came with my travels: I had my yearly physical a couple of weeks ago, and my lab results were so good that my doctor actually giggled with delight when he reviewed them. He asked what had changed in my life, and when I told him I had started traveling, and felt stress-free, he suggested that I continue traveling, as my lab tests were at better levels than they had been in years. [One of my friends (half) jokingly suggested that I get my doctor to put that in writing, so that I could claim my travel as a tax deduction!]

[BTW- in case you're wondering how I've managed to do all this travel: my husband was a frequent business traveler for many years, and his accumulated pool of airline miles and hotel points has been my travel mainstay. Combined with a keen awareness of travel deals and how to find them, I've been able to cram in quite a bit of travel in the past year- and there's still plenty of points left to easily keep me going through at least the middle of next year (I'm already working hard at figuring out how to finance my travels once the points run out!) Please feel free to ask me questions- I'm always happy to help inquisitive travelers :-).]