Unexpected pleasantries
One aspect of traveling I really love is the things that catch you off guard.
You know, the things you weren’t expecting to be anything special, but turn out to be amazing. Taking an impromptu road trip, being redirected somewhere, meeting someone amazing in a strange place – anything can happen, if you let it.
I think the key to finding these things is to lower your expectations, and be flexible. I think it’s best to try not to expect too much of anything or anyone – otherwise you’re really just setting yourself up for failure. Some of my favourite places in the world are places I wouldn’t have given a second thought to in any other circumstance. Sweden’s a good example of that. When I first found out about my scholarship, I did some research on the country, and thought ‘well, I’m excited about going, but to be honest it looks pretty boring.’ It’s one of my favourite places in the entire world, now. Same with Iceland, and Portland (Oregon).
There’s no point going anywhere with a rigid itinerary, either. That’s just asking for trouble, general annoyances and missed opportunities. When we left Australia, we started out with a plan – and quite a rigid one at that. It cost us LOTS of money in abandoned bookings, rerouted travel plans and a priceless amount of pissed-offness. Luckily, we only planned that rigidly for the first couple of weeks of our trip – but it still meant we missed out on doing a couple of things we would have liked to do (like Banff, Yosemite, Alcatraz, spending more time in Portland and Vancouver to name a few).
One plan we had to change was our trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles. We had originally planned to take a Greyhound bus into the downtown LA station. Then I actually read up on the station, was instantly horrified at the extremely large number of people saying things along the lines of ‘blah blah blah, never go to the downtown LA station, blah blah skid row, blah blah junkies and gangs, guns and murder, blah blah hurty pain’. It was this review that tipped me over the edge though, “What’s that old saying? Something like: Fuck Greyhound with a thousand fires.” It made me laugh, but at the same time I’m glad we never took that bus trip.
Instead, we took a flight to LA – via Salt Lake City. Yup, bit of a detour, but you know what I loved about it? Salt Lake City airport is stunningly beautiful. Okay, so not the airport itself, but the view from inside it is absolutely incredible.
Check it out
Yup, it’s pretty awesome.
Wow. very funny. I looked at the first photo, and thought, “That looks just like the airport in Salt Lake City” where I lived for 10 years, but I was sure it was somewhere else, given that you are writing from Australia.
And it was, in fact, from Salt Lake. Lulz.