What they don't tell you

So it turns out I'm a lazy travel writer. I got all greedy with the amazing food and culture and sightseeing and decided my readers (if I had any) would be far more appreciative of travel pieces that had time and effort put into them. Not brief, mangled posts written at bus-stops and train stations and hotel lobbies at ungodly hours.



And this is what they don't tell you. That six weeks of travelling will undoubtedly be made up of the most mundane, impatient, long, gruelling, over-heated, sickness-inducing micro moments rather than 24 hours of amazingness a day.



They don't tell you that you will in fact get sick from bushing your teeth in crappy water in crappy hotels in barren locations. They don't tell you that you will wait an hour for the one bus that services an entire island. Or that 40 degree heat will make you want to do nothing but lie in an air-conditioned hotel room, even if the collesseum is mere metres away. That there are thousands of other people just like you at Every Single famous building, monument, painting or view. That you will queue for over an hour to get to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Or even that after awhile you will become completely desensitised to the pure fantastic-ness of your location. That after awhile all the little islands will look the same.



What they also don't tell you is that between every line of shoving tourists, after you've lost your last US$20, before the fiftieth Italian taxi driver rips you off and during the fourth stomach-churning ferry ride, something will happen. A moment of contentment. Goosebumps.



It's when your standing outside the Bellagio hotel in Vegas. It's midnight and you've left everybody else at the club just to watch the water show. It's writing postcards on a bus while your chugging down Route 66. Seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. Biking through the cobbled streets of Paris, in the rain, in a gaudy plastic poncho, trying not to get hit by traffic. The deliciousness of your first baguette by the Seine. Making like the Romans and having a siesta during the day and venturing out through the back alleyways at night, finding a piazza and devouring spaghetti, red wine, crusty bread, tiramisu. Black coffee. More red wine. Italian waiters whispering in your ear that they love you. The most amazing sunset you have ever seen in the most unusual spot. Deciding to head to bed straight after dinner in Ios but instead stumbling across a Greek band playing in the square, families dancing. Hours wasted.



It's looking back and realising that really, in fact, everything was just as it should have been.