Hi, there! Ordinarily, this would be Anne Gracie’s day to post, but she’s driving from Melbourne to Sydney to attend the annual conference of the Romance Writers of Australia, so we swapped.
Knowing her destination made me start to think about my own visit to RWAust last year. I was so excited about speaking at that conference and the New Zealand conference that I could hardly stand it! I was squeaking and drumming my heels—and I had months to plan the trip. Which brings me to the subject of travel porn. <g>
If you’re a regular visitor to Word Wenches, you’ve probably noticed that we all love to travel, and we often write about our trips. It’s not surprising that we’re all traveling fools—I suspect that a passion for exploring wonderful new places is an aspect of the curiosity that is so much a part of a writer’s nature. (We’re like cats, without the whiskers. <g>)
So we travel when we can—and the planning is half the fun. Before going Down Under last year, I spent huge amounts of time (when I should have been writing <G>)
planning where to go and what to do with the six days of vacation before the conference. Ditto for New Zealand, where the time would be split into two chunks of three days each. (Picture above is the bungalow we stayed in on Green Island, which is part of Australia's Great Barrier Reef.)
Where do you start when you have a whole continent or a whole nation to choose from? With the internet, of course!
The internet is the most amazing travel aid ever invented. You can look for fabulous, unusual places to stay. Discover attractions you never heard about. Connect with people who know the area and can offer useful advice. Bookmark sites so you can go there and gaze longingly at the place while you impatiently wait for the journey to begin. (The picture above I took in Portugal.)
I’m illustrating this blog with pictures of various places I’ve discovered on the internet. I also, by coincidence, read this extremely interesting article in the New York Times called “But will it make you happy?”
The premise of the article is that buying Stuff isn’t likely to make you happy for very long--the buzz of new possessions wears off quickly.
Rather, most people are happier when they spend money on experiences instead of Stuff. As the article says, “It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch.”
I loved this paragraph, which relates to travel: “One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.”
It also turns out that anticipation increases happiness. There may be mad fun in deciding to make a trip at the last minute and going flying off. But it’s even more fun to wait, to work, to plan. That adds anticipation and value. (Though you can enjoy the reminiscences either way, of course.)
So that’s the premise, and it works for me. We always have a trip (or more) in the planning stages. The trips don’t have to be weeks’ long visits to exotic destinations—they can also be overnighters to a B&B within driving distance.
Still, the exotic destinations are great. When I was invited to be a guest at a romance event in Rome at the end of October, and it turned out I could go because we’re ending an Eastern Mediterranean cruise in Athens just three days before, I started doing a wild Snoopy dance. Where to stay—a hotel, an apartment, a B&B? What to see when the whole of the Eternal City is there for the taking?
The trip is still under construction, but I’m having a wonderful time. And even if there are parts that don’t work out quite as well as hoped, I know I’ll have lots of fond memories.
What about you? What travel porn stimulates your imagination? Have you had wonderful planning experiences? Where are you thinking about going, even if you can’t set a date yet?
And do all those things make you happy? I hope so!
Mary Jo