Things I Have Discovered While Travelling

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
~ Terry Pratchett

Hello, Lovelies!

I am more than halfway through my holiday, and this morning I have found a little café in Corfu, Greece, so that I can send a few emails and upload a bog post or two.

These are my top ten realisations thus far, while travelling:

1. You take yourself wherever you go. Whatever is at the core of you – your worries, your habits, your dreams, your beliefs – they come with you.
2. When you are in a strange land, the things that are an unconscious part of your everyday landscape back at home can suddenly become illuminated in ways that help you to truly see and understand yourself better.
3. I travel with family, and with ghosts. Even when they are not here with me. I walk into an antiquarian bookstore and suddenly think of my father. I stroll past a florist’s window and know how much my mother would delight in the artistry and the fragrance. I drink a glass of wine with lunch and remember my grandparents, none of whom are still alive. I drink to their memory and their good health anyway. I see a busker in the street and think of my friend Kate, and how she would have loved that. We have a little conversation in my head, and I know that up there is heaven she is smiling down and appreciating the sights and the sounds as much as me.
4. People all smile and laugh in the same language.
5. You’ll see more on foot than you’ll ever see from the window of a car or bus.
6. If the locals eat there, you should too!
7. Travelling is a kind of dream state, where quiet and forgotten parts of you can come alive again, and new aspects of yourself can be birthed or discovered.
8. Life is a gigantic wheel of birth and adventure and love and suffering and death and everything in between. Whether it happened 2000 years ago or last week, life has a drama to it, but only in the moment. Eventually, everything is rendered into dust.
9. If you need wherever you go to be like home and taste like home and behave like home, you should have stayed at home!
10. Travelling cracks your heart and your mind open, so that you can never be the same again.

When are you planning your next adventure?

Lots of love to you, Nicole xx