Post Trip Depression

People have asked whether I would write a book about our trip. I’m flattered and thinking about what themes, if any, unite what I’ve written so far but I’m a long way from fully appreciating the trip myself to be able to write about it. Even harder is the fact that I’m having a hard time believing its really over. Harder still is that I have an email account that gets daily notifications of travel ideas, special events in far away places, and discounted airfare. I have spent hours reading about new destinations rather than hours I used to spend tending to plants and people. Whole mornings can disappear in research of the next trip. Then I came across a post about “Post Trip Depression.”

The concept seemed a little far fetched and I thought immediately about the current need in society to diagnose everything. But I read on long enough to recognize the symptoms. Feeling restless and itching to get on the road, destination anywhere. It’s not that I don’t love home or appreciate being surrounded once more by family and friends and familiar places. Sometimes it even sounds like I don’t like America but to be clear, I love the founding principles of our country – freedoms easily discarded in many countries. But there is just something special about the newness of travel, the immersion in other cultures, and the identification of another culture’s idiosyncrasies. I crave it. And I’m not alone.

Lauren didn’t want to go on the BIG TRIP but now, she joins me in having caught the travel bug. We are sitting in Paris at our favorite cafe. We are here because we have a three day weekend and plenty of points/frequent flyer miles. As I write this, Lauren is looking at a book of small cafes in the world and eagerly proposing we visit each one, or Hey, rent a house in Amsterdam Noord for a summer so we can bike and learn to speak Dutch. I know how she feels. There are so many places we haven’t been. Yet.

But my take away is this: the BIG TRIP was life truncated. And post trip depression is just the temporary expression of a fear that I’ll not be able to explore the world again. So I have decided to shift my thinking to:

Life is long and it’s journey will unfold slowly for many decades yet. And… there’s no better microcosm of the world to explore than New York.

But today I’m blessed to be exploring Paris.

*Photos will upload Monday or Thursday 🙂

We stayed in the Marais and walked all over the place!

The Seine

 The Hotel de Ville

Ponts des Arts or the Love Locks bridge.  The locks are being removed to safeguard the structure of the bridge.  It’s somewhat controversial but removal is probably the right move.

Art in its many forms:

 “L’Africaine” is Café Angelina’s decadent hot chocolate.

  Marcel Duchamp Exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Street Art by “Space Invader”

 Boot Café for what I think is Paris’s best café crème (flat white)

 A bad photo of a famous painting at the Hokusai Exhibit in the Grand Palais   Such a talented man.