The trouble with things you just have to do / see / eat is
that you have exactly the same travel experience as everyone else. Or worse,
you don’t have the same marvellous
experience everyone told you about.
For example, Venice is a pretty magical city. Anyone who
has been there will tell you that you have
to go on a gondola ride. Grit your teeth, pay the exorbitant price and lower
yourself into that gondola. The thing is, some people do love it – they cry
from the joy of drifting on the canals of such an historic city. But others
hate it. They forget that Venice is still a functioning (just) modern city with
around 60 000 permanent inhabitants. The water does not smell sweet and fresh.
The washing on the line hanging outside windows is sometimes colourful, but sometimes
grey with giant underpants and drab singlets. The gondolier is a little seedy,
his singing forced and off key. ‘Really?’, they cry. ‘This is a gondola ride in
Venice? Why did I have to do this?’
Well-trodden holiday destinations can turn a little into
‘checkbox’ travel. Did you have Singapore Sling at the Raffles? Have you seen a
flamenco show in Madrid? Did you ‘mind the gap’ on a tube ride in London?
Surely you had pizza in Naples, right? (For the record, Neapolitan pizza is
very flat and usually pretty plain. If you’re picturing a big fluffy base with
five different meats and twelve different vegetables – you may or may not like
it. Just saying. The gelato, on the other hand, stands a good chance of being
everything you ever dreamed of.)
Sometimes you’re made to feel guilty if you didn’t do ‘the thing’ in a particular city. You’re
confronted with little crestfallen faces, full of dismay: ‘You didn’t go to the
catacombs in Rome? Oh. I see.’. Silence. ‘No time for the Vatican museums, you
say? Oh.’ You’ve failed. You’ve failed them and you’ve certainly failed
yourself. Never mind that you met a local and consequently ended up an authentic
little restaurant for dinner. Never mind you had a personally guided tour of
the Coliseum given by an art history PhD student. Never mind you lit candles at
church and ended up participating in the local Saint’s Day celebrations. You’ve
disappointed those that cannot go and you’ve been underestimated by those that
have been.
 |
| You actually do have to see the waterfalls when you go to Niagara Falls. Difficult to avoid. |
Ok, ok, I now confess that I too have been guilty of
starting some sage travel advice with ‘you have to’. And perhaps this blog is
actually about how I agree with those
that urge you on to do what you’re ‘supposed to’. But I’m going to qualify my
agreement by stating that I usually only use this statement for those that have
researched the crap out of their holiday destination to the point that they can
give you the dimensions of the Corcovado, the species of trees growing on the
Sugarloaf, and the preferred waxing salons of Brazilians living in the Ipanema
area.
If you (think) you know what you’re going to see, how
you’re going to see it and how you’re going to feel about it you could,
potentially, actually miss the point. There are some things your 72 inch LED HD
television screen is simply not able to convey. I found Uluru spiritual and
intense (not everyone does, see for example, my mother’s experience in Disappointments). And I
found Port Arthur illuminating – it put me in touch with a sense of colonial
Australia and connected me to history. Those are two places beautiful to look
at pictures of, interesting to read about – I’ve certainly done both – but
being there made me connect and flicked on the switch of understanding.
Travel, to me, is about witnessing. There’s something
earnest and genuine about witnessing in person. It means engaging all five
senses (six if you’re lucky enough!) and really connecting with a place or
people. That’s when magic happens and that’s what I’m encouraging when I say
‘you have to’. That picture you’ve seen of the Amalfi Coast doesn’t do it
justice – the picture can’t prepare you for the remarkable sunshine, for the
glittery effect it has on the ocean, for the brisk breeze, for the lyrical
background chatter, for the contrasting colours, and for the smell of food
wafting out of restaurant doors. That’s why you ‘have to’. That’s why, despite
all your research and your 3D virtual tour, you won’t know, really know, until you’ve witnessed.
