What you call your hometown is someone else’s vacation spot. Where we go to stay on holiday is someone’s place of work. Each town exists as a place to call home. To call a getaway. A place to pass through along the interstate. Each measure of land is gifted importance by those that experience it.
There was always a sense of personal failure when I would see tourists squinting at a map in San Francisco on my way to work. I wanted them to find the city enjoyable and worth the trip from wherever they came from. I hoped they could ignore the filth and constant stream of homeless and pan handlers that they were to inevitably meet and to look passed that, and see the city, the state, fresh and exciting. California is my home. It’s what I know and as I get older and visit other places around the world I open my mouth and out pours the state. California is inside of me. It has made me.
My bones are California grown.
The wife and I just toured the Mediterranean Sea. We passed through Spain, Monaco, Italy, and France. It was cruise, and most of the time was spent in a constant state of transit. Fall asleep on one coast to awake in another. The thought of going on a cruise didn’t sit well with me at first. It was a world of old people and flocks of tour groups in port to pillage a foreign city of its charm with cameras. Being somewhat young and vibrant, or wanting to appear to be, I fantasized about us taking trains across Europe and do that generic American format of global travel of backpacks, metros, hostels, and bed and breakfasts. Turns out I don’t have the ability to plan a trip on that level and a cruise gave us what we wanted. We were allowed to see some great cities and the ship did the job of hotel, transportation, and restaurant.
We saw Rome and the Vatican. The Sistine Chapel. Michaelangelo’s David in Florence. What I remember the most was the water at night. Our room’s balcony was twenty five feet above the water where the ship’s hull tore through the sea in deep mystic blue, boiled like gelatin. There was no shore to watch, just the water below folding into itself.
Those night’s at sea I came the closest I’ve ever been to understanding the reason I like traveling. I’ve always loved road trips and hotel stays, those moments between the site seeing and the “important to remember” events. On a balcony with the darkened sea under foot, this is where peace exists and nothing can find you. There are no stresses of work, the drama of normal life is gone. It’s man versus nature. Survival and communication.
This doesn’t need to come across as so serious but there is just something that feels so epic about a quiet moment with your own thoughts, your breath and the sea with nothing in sight, just blue, endless and endless epic blue.
Part I of the upcoming “I took a cruise!” volume of posts.
Evan
October 1, 2011
Totally rad!
PCGuyIV
October 2, 2011
Cruises are awesome, and I am envious of your Mediterranean romp. That is definitely on my to-do list. So far the best cruise I’ve been on is an Alaskan cruise. I’m sure some of that is because we were in much nicer quarters than any of the Caribbean cruises on which I’ve been, but also, it was someplace that I had, (and still have,) much more interest in. Don’t get me wrong, the Caribbean can be interesting, but after a while, all the islands blend together, plus, the humidity is awful, (and this is coming from someone who lives near the gulf coast).
Chris Jalufka
October 3, 2011
Alaska is something we definitely want to do. We made friends on the cruise who have done a lot of Caribbean cruises and said the same thing about the islands blending together. I’d still love to do it, but would hate to be stuck on a ship with a bunch of drunk college kids for a week. The Mediterranean has a lot to experience in every port, perhaps too much. In both Florence and Rome we scrambled just to get a glimpse of everything we wanted to see. The cruise was a great way of getting an idea for a city, enough to know if you want to make a return visit.
Where abouts along the Gulf Coast are you? I’d like our next trip to be somewhere like Key West, just to mill about along the coast.
PCGuyIV
October 3, 2011
Sadly no place quite so interesting. I’m stuck in Mobile, Alabama. There are worse places in the world, but it is far from my ideal place to live.
Regarding drunk college kids and Caribbean cruises, don’t leave out of New Orleans and don’t go with Carnival Cruise Lines. Go with Royal Caribbean and sail out of Florida or (even better) fly to Puerto Rico and leave from there. Also, if you can afford a longer cruise, (at least 10 days, preferably more,) you’ll have fewer of those kinds of issues.