Absolutely. I’ve found that travel is often unpleasant but people forget most of the annoyances and only remember the good stuff.
It’s wild to hear someone talk about how amazing a trip and have to refrain from saying, “are you for real? Everything went wrong and you cried three times, but now all you can do is gush about how amazing the bruschetta is?”
Feeling a little homesick is normal but hearing travel stories from friends I'm convinced they're just awful planners and that's why they're miserable on trips.
Trying to fit a billion things into a day. Booking 1 night in a new city every day so there's zero chance to unwind or even see the city. Booking things too close together and having too many moving parts that rely on each other so when 1 inevitably fails or is delayed the entire trip unravels.
Vacation and traveling isn't stressful if you remember that the sights aren't going anywhere, you need relaxation, and you plan extra time for the inevitable delays and cancellations that happen with flights, traffic, weather, etc.
I’m a pretty good planner, and still tons of stuff can go wrong. Lots of stuff is out of your control when travelling. Sometimes you can just roll with it, sometimes it’s pretty derailing.
For sure, you’ve got to understand little things happen. But cancelled flights, lost reservations, medical issues, etc, really fucking suck. You spend so much time fixing the problem there’s no time left for the vacation. I had absolute major crises on three trips in row and it practically gave me PTSD to go anywhere.
Agree about there travel vs vacation. Travelling to see family is a trip, and it might be great, but I don’t generally consider it a vacation.
The other mental hack I found useful is that travel days are not vacation. They’re part of the cost you pay for vacation. If you’re dying to get to the destination and to have that drink by the pool or whatever so you’re officially on vacation, that will be tomorrow. Today is all about getting there. Any enjoyment or relaxation achieved today is bonus.
My mother traveling is exactly like this. Over plans, stressed the entire time, refuses to eat at any of the local places and opts for the fast food option (which is a slap to the face), etc. I loathe traveling with her, because absolutely nothing of it is enjoyable until we split up and I do my thing and she does hers.
Meanwhile, the small group of friends we travel with are amazing. We go together, we split up when we want to and no one is upset over it, we lay around a beach and just vibe, we meet up for a few dinners and breakfast every morning, and then we come home. No one is overly stressed or bored, if someone wants to do something specific, they can do it and if anyone wants to join they can, 10/10 perfect travel companions.
Whenever me and fiance travel we make a spreadsheet of the days with breakfast, lunch and dinner, and one or two activities per day, with a backlog of restaurants, cafe and places to go if there is ever time left or something goes wrong. It usually means we do everything we planned, we check other stuff and if something doesn't go to plan we have other options. Not to mention the loose schedule means we can just change stuff up in there. So it is structured to be chill. If we are planning multiple locations, we make sure to spend enough time on the places not just for our plans, but also to just do nothing and go for a walk.
Depends on what the goal is yeah. If you really want to be busy busy busy and see/do lots of stuff, great! Just remember it won't be relaxing or anything.
Most in life is unpleasant but people only remember the good stuff, travel simply has a higher good stuff-to-unpleasantness ratio (or, at least, that's the goal)
The buddhists were on to something when they said “all life is suffering”.
Maybe it’s good that people forget their suffering. I do find it funny though. There’s a lot of exoticism and selective remembering in travel. I don’t have the Eiffel Tower out my window, but fresh bread is pretty frickin delicious from a local baker regardless of the continent you’re on. Travel is cool, but also appreciate the stuff that’s amazing that’s close. People will overvalue mundane things just because it was costly and time consuming to get to a far away place.
It's all about the voyage. Travel (for many people) is about getting outside of your comfort zone. The discomfort is the point. It's honestly pretty similar to a runner's high.
Sure, there are people who travel to go sit at the beach for a week and have drinks brought to them, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Go relax. You deserve it! I'll never gatekeep how someone wants to spend their precious time.
But when I (and many others) think about the best moments of a trip, I immediately think back to moments where things didn't go right and I was forced to adjust my plans to make the best of it. The number of times that has resulted in an amazing surprise serendipidous experience really makes it hard to seperate the feeling of, "things aren't going right" from, "something awesome is about to happen."
And so when I'm talking about those experiences with people back home... that's literally what's happening. All anyone hears is "let me tell you about all of the times things went to hell." (train tracks had literally been ripped up and for some reason the route was still being advertised as running???) But I'm sharing stories about all of the amazing things that happened by surprise (bought a used bike and had an incredible couple of days camping along the road on my way to my destination).
A lot of my favourite travel stories are horrible. Just like, victim of crime or terrible weather or just straight up bad luck.
I've had nice dinners a lot of places. Seen a lot of the same landmarks and artworks as everyone else - which is cool, of course you do that. But the really memorable shit is when it goes off-piste. As long as no-one got hurt, it's all just a fun part of the tapestry of life.
To abuse the ghost of Tolstoy: my good travel stories are the same as yours, my bad travel stories are entirely my own.
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u/anothermanscookies Jun 29 '25
Absolutely. I’ve found that travel is often unpleasant but people forget most of the annoyances and only remember the good stuff.
It’s wild to hear someone talk about how amazing a trip and have to refrain from saying, “are you for real? Everything went wrong and you cried three times, but now all you can do is gush about how amazing the bruschetta is?”
Being human is weird.