I’m not a cool traveler

S is busy editing photos from our trip to Europe and soon this blog will be graced with my words and his images, and you might read along and think to yourself, These people travel so well.

So let’s start by setting the record straight right now.

Last Monday I had to wake up rather early to get ready for a trip to Mountain View, CA (my second home, really). I didn’t glide out of bed — I sat up in a panic. Why panic? Because, travel.

Cool travelers are always dressed for the occasion. They breeze through security, wind in their hair. They have the perfect outfit that transitions from plane to party and their eyeliner and lipstick are still perfectly applied when they get to their destination.

This is not me.

You’d think it would be. I certainly have enough practice at it. But I have never been and will never be this perfectly put-together person.

“I wish I were less high-maintenance as a traveler,” I lamented to my therapist last week. “I wish I was this easy-breezy, low-maintenance girl.”

“What does that mean to you — ?” she asked (and by-the-way, what does it mean to you is both the best and worst therapist question).

“Which part?”

“What makes you high-maintenance?”

“Where do I start,” I said, throwing up my hands. “It takes me so long to prep for travel. I have to get everything just right.”

There was a long pause. “It’s not that you are shortchanging yourself,” she said, “though you are. But do you know what happens to people who struggle with anxiety? I mean, really really struggle? Their worlds shrink — they stop traveling, even stop leaving the house. And you have figured out how to do it. You don’t let it stop you.”

Well. Okay.

It doesn’t help that I have the most easygoing travel partner I’ve ever met.

Oh, in many ways it’s a great things because God help us if we were both panicked at the same time. When we got off of our overnight flight in Heathrow at 7:30 in the morning, we were accosted by perfumes, disco lights, terminal announcements, food smells and crowds of loud, slow-moving people.

My worst nightmare, really.

He is so poised and calm and collected and completely unaffected, so easygoing and carefree.

But back to me.

You read my blogs and you get this picture in your head of travel amazingness. And there are some fantastic moments — moments that take my breath away, moments of connection and perfection.

But I want to share more about the awkward bits. On our last night in Zurich? I walked right into the glass shower wall. Not sort of walked — full-speed, nose-to-glass, head-bonking walked into the wall. When we were hauling our luggage to the hotel in Salzburg? I have never sweat that much in my life. I suck at beaches (too much sand), am the worst dining partner (too many restrictions) and I still freak out a bit during turbulent plane rides.

Oh — and that’s not counting my most awkward travel moment ever, fainting on a plane and being so sick they had to land it for me and — get this — carry me off of the plane. As in I told them, “Hey, I can walk off” and they said, “No, you can’t.” And so they carried me off of the plane and I had 150 people staring the whole way (fun).

Travel — and life — doesn’t always have to be Instagram-friendly. There are beautiful moments and there are tough moments. By not talking about all of them, we rob ourselves of a deeper connection to one another beyond where you’ve been or what you’ve done. So I want to behave like I say I will and keep sharing the good and the bad moments with you. And I hope you will do the same.

xo,
Sarah