Storyworth: Travel Style

How do you prefer to travel?

I like an balance of luxury and discovery that is sometimes hard to pin down.

I love trains, don’t mind planes, and don’t get seasick. I prefer to drive my own car, but am thankful to bus drivers who know how to navigate particularly tricky terrain. I like to walk. I don’t mind public transportation, but I don’t especially enjoy working out schedules and finding bus stops, and I hate making connections and figuring out ticketing machines.

I’m interested in authentic local experiences, but I’m distrustful of anyone who offers to provide them. I would rather map out my own itinerary and move at my own pace, though I recognize the value an experienced guide can often bring to a new place. I love to hear the stories of a place, to wander with someone who can explain the history and inhabitants and bring a seemingly featureless alley to vivid life.

I’m not interested in shopping, particularly not in stores I can find in any major city. I am interested in the craft of local goods, but rarely in owning them. I do not bargain well and there is nothing less likely to part me from my money than being harangued by a crowd of vendors. I resent being served up to a shopkeeper as a captive audience by a tour guide.

I’m more interested in cities than wilderness, though I quite enjoy a scenic drive and don’t mind the occasional walk in the woods. I find cities fascinating in their similarities and differences. I imagine living there, each visit like trying on a different life. I enjoy outdoor spaces—sculpture parks and botanical gardens, and zoos are particularly good places to stave off jetlag while synchronizing my circadian rhythms in the local sunshine. I prefer museums of art to museums of information—science museums, historical sites, museums of industry. I am partial to beautiful architecture, but I’ve seen my fill of churches.

I want to feel safe, my adventures and risks chosen and curated. I am not interested in challenging my endurance, or my digestion, and I’m aware of the target I present as a tourist—I hate to be witnessed reading a map in public, though I have no problem asking for directions.

I like to stay in nice hotels with beautiful bathrooms and a gorgeous view, but not ones built by international chains. I want to be able to picture the lobby, the hallway, and the room years later and remember clearly in which city they belong. I do not like all-inclusive resorts that frown on guests leaving the property unescorted. I especially enjoy holiday rentals, having a house or flat to call home during my visit. I feel awkward staying with friends, or family, almost always feeling like an intruder. I’m not interested in camping—when I was younger I was very susceptible to bug bites and now I worry about my back—but mostly because I’m afraid of being a drag.

I prefer fine dining to street food, but I want to eat local ingredients prepared by a chef interested in creating a conversation between the staff and the diners. As much as I enjoy a good steak, I’m unlikely to choose a steakhouse, knowing that I can turn out my own perfectly rare ribeye or steak au poivre with relatively little effort. Having done the experiment, I know that I can happily eat Italian food every day for two weeks before falling gratefully into the door of the first Asian restaurant I find. I enjoy trying different cuisines and love to taste anything I’ve never tried before.

I get very grouchy about heat and humidity unless there is a pool nearby and I do not sleep well in a warm room. I don’t mind cold, or snow, but I especially like to find a hot tub to soak in at the end of the day.

I haven’t taken a cruise and am not generally attracted to the idea, but I’m looking forward to seeing Alaska by boat and intrigued by the idea of European river cruises.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Disney when we were there the year Alice was six. So much of it is not my style, but they work incredibly hard to give guests the opportunity to be happy and provide lots of different options to that end. In the moment that we left, I wanted to go back instantly, but it’s been eight years and we’re still waiting for the right moment.

I don’t enjoy travelling alone. I prefer to have someone with whom to share the experience, someone to whom I can point out what I’m seeing, someone who will notice different things and help me to enjoy our surroundings from a different perspective, someone with whom I can remember, years later, the special moments and places. I have enjoyed travelling with friends the couple of times that's been an option. I am sometimes sad that we are not invited to do that more often.

When I was younger I wanted to see everything, to start mornings early and fill the days with different places. Now I like to balance that with opportunities to sleep in, to enjoy the odd pleasures of living in a different space, to simply sit and enjoy a different view. I have learned that I will not see everything, but I have also learned that I am less likely to have a second chance than I once assumed.

Storyworth: Born in Ice

Was there anything unusual about your birth?

I was born in the middle of an ice storm.

My mother was forty-three at the time and the doctors had warned her that I would almost certainly be deaf and might well have Down Syndrome. My father was recovering from kidney surgery.

Mom had arranged with a neighbor to drive her to the nearest hospital—half an hour away—and bring our car back so that my father could get his rest and join us the next day. But when the labor pains began around ten o’clock at night and my mother called Mrs. Bailey, she was too afraid to drive at night on the icy roads. My mother said that was fine, she would drive herself, if Mrs. Bailey would just come along to bring the car back after dawn. I’ve never heard any details of that drive, but they made it.

I was born about three-thirty in the morning. The call woke my father who said that for a third girl they could have waited until nine o’clock. He loved that story when I was younger, but later apologized to me, telling me that he little knew at the time just how lucky he was.