A Week of Decisions
I bookmarked my friend Neil’s post on Facebook because it made me think deeply. (And it’s public, so now you get to think deeply, too.)
He wrote about deciding to skip a museum in favour of seeing a train station, kicking off a list of what he did and didn’t do. These tiny decisions change his experience with the place. He writes:
Travel is interesting because of all the choices you need to make as a tourist. That’s why I never know what to answer when you ask me what to do in New York. What’s more important to you, a big museum or pizza in Queens? It’s hard to do both in one trip.
It’s one of those things that I clearly knew — travel, like all of life, is just a series of decisions — but it’s also mind-bending to think about how you could have an entirely different experience due to those choices. You could walk away from a place thinking you know it, and another person could walk away thinking they know it, and both of you have gone to entirely different spaces and seen, eaten, and heard completely different things.
2 comments
Love this! When I was in Poland in November 2019 I had an ambitious itinerary for exploring Warsaw over two-ish days and did so much less than I intended and got so much more out of it than I expected.
The first day I planned to visit two museums and ended up spending the whole day at the POLIN museum (which was incredible), including two hours of it talking with an older local man who asked to join me for lunch at the museum’s food area, after hearing my American accent, he was waiting in line behind me, while I was ordering. The man told me about his life in Warsaw, including being the coach of the National Water Polo team. He also said, with “no offense to me,” that he thought Polish women were the most beautiful in the world.
The second day I followed Rick Steve’s walking tour from his guide to Warsaw and meandered the entire day, which was really awesome, including the super yummy way they make hot chocolate there.
Loosely related, we just finished watching the One Day limited series (based on a book and previously made into a movie) on Netflix last night, which also got me thinking about all the little and big decisions that impact the trajectory of our lives.
I think the mistake is trying to do everything, and not leaving time for people-watching, exploring, getting lost, etc. I actually plan for down time! It means we can throw in things we want to do. But like your friend, sometimes we’ve just had enough museums! One of my happiest tourist days was when a pass we wanted to drive between Switzerland and Italy was still closed in early June, and we had to detour from Interlaken to Lucerne. The scenery was OMG gorgeous, and we had a wonderful day. It took another 15 years until we got to the Italian lakes, but I never regret that one day of unexpected joy.
And if we are in big cities, we’ll plan a day or two to “do our own thing.” Sometimes that’s shopping (though that’s rare when I travel these days) or art galleries or noodle soups for me, sciency/navy type things for DH, etc.