Travel lust

We’re working on getting a ton of high quality Kansas City recap goodness over here. Holly is in the middle of a move and I am gearing up for another year at the high school, so things are moving a little slow. But here is something I am thinking of always:

I have travel lust. Forever and endlessly. I don’t think it’s wanderlust because my stable homebase is so insanely important to me. I don’t think you can meet your husband at 18 and buy a house at 25 and be wanderlusty. At the end of a trip I ALWAYS want to be at home. But as soon as I’m home, I’m planning another trip, thinking about the world through the huge lens of possibility, imagining getting caught up and lost in a new experience. It’s important to me, and I am forever glad that Holly and I have the kind of friendship that allows for these explorations.

I think the best thing for travel lust is a good set of tools. The internet, and the world, can seem overwhelming when you’re trying to figure out what you want to do next. Sometimes googling ‘unusual travel destinations’ gets you something amazing, but other times, you find yourself knee-deep in ideas without a safety net and no starting place.  Here are a couple of my favorite tools for nascent travel planning, from the realistic and soon to happen, to the ideal and dream vacation.

I LOVE Oyster. So much. Oyster.com is an online only service that offers you extremely detailed hotel reviews for destinations all over the world. They send undercover agents into each hotel they review, and they take hundreds of pictures of everything. From the facility itself to every level of room and all the amenities, you’re going to get the detailed information you need. Especially if you love hotels as much as I do.  Access is free and the destination list is forever growing. I like that you can look at hotel collections for any given location–I especially prefer to focus on “boutique hotels” and “hidden gems” when I’m hotel hunting. So amazing.

The New York Times Travel Page  is so beautiful and useful. My favorite feature is the “36 hours in…” column. They always feature interesting and unusual places, include a variety of price ranges, and this feature helps me easily map out at least a weekend of travel in a way that is sensible and exciting.

I think Lonely Planet is an awesome starting place for people who aren’t sure where to start. Unusual locations, a focus on insider information, and inexpensive options with tips on how to upgrade all speak to Lonely Planet’s success in transferring from printed guides to an online presence. I think they’ve been much more successful than Frommer’s, although they’re obviously targeting a different audience.
And finally, the books that launched, and continue to sustain, my need to travel. I’ve been reading travelogues since I was a kid growing up in a small Maryland suburb. This is just a handful of my favorites.

Sun After Dark: Flights into the Foreign, Pico Iyer.   Boy did this book change my life in high school. Pico Iyer writes a peerless, lyrical travelogue that carries you into the most foreign and complicated places in the world.

Alice Let’s Eat, Calvin Trillin. Oh, do I love Calvin Trillin. I think my favorite contemporary novel might be Tepper Isn’t Going Out, but let’s talk about Trillin’s take on traveling the world for the perfect meal. You drool and cry and laugh throughout the whole book, usually at the same time.

Under The Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes.  Forget the movie, although the movie is cute and delightful. This is the wistful story of an uprooting, filled with food and renovation and discovery. So completely beautiful.

In A Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson. There isn’t a Bill Bryson book I don’t love, but this spare, thoughtful novel on Australian travel gets me every time. Bryson shows us all the stages of travel–joy, fatigue, isolation, contentment, fear, homesickness–and sets it in the endlessly alluring Australian outback. Fabulous.