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Want to read something great and not too long about travel? Try travel poetry. Two Go Round-The-World has launched a new column called “Looking Back,” where they include a journal entry from their past travels. Daniel kicked the series off this week with Looking Back: Langkawi (Malaysia) which includes a photo and one of the most lyrical descriptions of a place and time I’ve read in awhile. Lauren Quinn occasionally shares some of her travel poetry on her site, Lonely Girl Travels (for instance, see the poem at the bottom of her post “It Itches! Feeling the Burn of Wanderlust”. And J.B. Conway writes daily haikus about Disney World at his site, MouseofZen.com. It’s been a good 20 years since I wrote poetry, but I can see the appeal of applying it to the travel genre. Do you know anyone else who writes travel poetry? I’m kind of getting into this.
I hate to sound like a complete fangirl of Daniel and Kathryn at Two Go Round-The-World, but they also produced a second one of my imagination-capturing posts this week, their entry to the I Backpack Canada /Gap Adventures competition to create your own adventure. What can I say? They were on a literary roll this week, and as a former English major, I was very receptive to this. Their entry was “Channel Your Inner Hemingway”, which really sent me daydreaming about following in Hemingway’s footsteps around Spain, though I don’t think I’d want to run with the bulls in Pamplona, since being gored isn’t on my bucket list.
A terrific photo essay titled 10 Reasons to Love Brazil by Robin Esrock and Ana Alheiro at MatadorTrips set my mind to daydreaming about Brazil, beautiful, exotic Brazil. Lovely photos, and excellent reasons for traveling there.
I was jazzed to read an article in the New York Times this week called How Vacations Affect Your Happiness. Apparently, some researchers from the Netherlands did a study on the happiness levels of people in relation to their vacation travels. It proves my long-held theory that I get as much enjoyment (perhaps more, depending on the trip) out of the process of planning my travels as I do out of the actual travel itself. It also explains why I am always planning my next trip.
On a more sobering note, Staying Safe While Traveling (by Stephanie at My Melange) offers up a sad story to serve as a reminder that bad things can happen to us, even on vacation. So please be safe out there.
Photo credit: alicejamieson
