The Things I Like About Travel Which I Am Meant To Hate

Airports. Flying. Hotels.

We are meant to hate them all . But I love them all - all three are fantastic travel experiences. Here’s why.

Airports.

Are exciting places. You can always feel the great breadth of human emotions swirling through them. Whenever I’m in one I’m always going somewhere interesting, going home or with somebody who is doing one of these. So there is always some kind of significant emotion going on.

I love the departure lounge, the feeling of anticipation. I love going through customs. Shopping for duty free. Crying and waving goodbye. Though I’m totally with Douglas Adams, the author who once wrote “It is not by accident that no culture on Earth has ever come up the phrase ‘as pretty as an airport’”.

Flying

Is amazing. To begin with, every time you fly you do something every single human who ever lived before 1900 dreamed of doing but couldn’t. Think about that - Da Vinci, Caesar, Shakespeare, Newton - people who accomplished phenomonal things. All would have given much to have experienced what exhausted businessmen complain about.

Anyway flying is fun. You get enforced closure from the world so you can sit there and read, write, watch films, play games, think or whatever without distractions. How often do you get the chance outside of flying. Stewards bring free food and drink to you. Great little meals inside cute little compartments.

You get breathtaking views outside your window. You get to travel to the other side of the world. Or a city near you. Very quickly.

Hotels

Hotels are cool. You get a perfectly made up room. And its uncluttered. You get to feel excited as you unpack.

Weird things in hotels are fun. The tight bedsheets. The folded arrow shape on the toilet paper. The long and trippy hallways.

The reason we travel is to experience things anew, to feel fresh and alive. Whether its a resort, a backpacker hostel or something else. We travel for the experience. All of it. Even the bits we are meant to hate.