Anyone else lost excitement for travel?
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Anonymous
| I traveled a lot when I was younger and lived abroad as an expat in my 20’s. Now that I am married and have kids I seem to have lost that desire/spark for travel. Don’t get me wrong, I love trip planning but the world is just so much more global now and every small town has ethnic restaurants, Amazon gives us access to random special international products we could want and it seems like we do the same novelty things on every trip with the kids whether it’s horseback riding, random museum, going for dim sum, going white water rafting or surf lessons. Some of the big bucket list trips for me are just out of budget/not realistic w young kids like an African safari or Galapagos. Anyone feel this way? The last two times we dropped a considerable amount for us …$10k+ on a trip (again with a family of 4 this is a nice trip, not extravagant) I wish we had just put it towards an exciting house project. |
Anonymous
| Never had any excitement for travel. I think you've grown up and realized it's a waste of time. |
Anonymous
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Nope haven't gotten sick of it at all. Have traveled and lived around the world and never get tired of it. DH is the same and DS seems to have inherited the love of traveling. I think its like anything though. Some people love it and others find it a waste of time. To me it is like cars. I don't care about them at all. I barely care more than making sure it is a safe and reliable car to get me from A to B. But I have friends who are super into cars. I don't get it.
Maybe you are finding out that you're not as into travel as you thought you were. |
Anonymous
| Yes, all the lines, tourists everywhere, airline mishaps, terrorism. It’s all too much. |
Anonymous
No I haven't gotten sick of it because I grew up poor and didn't travel a lot. I traveled some in my 20s with dh and loved it. Then we had kids and it was costly and had kids who were not good travelers so we took some breaks. Now my kids are old enough to travel well and we have done an international trip but it's getting so expensive and we have to save for college. I'm envious of people who have enough money to do international travel frequently. 
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Anonymous
| Me, just now and during the last year and a half. Not for your reasons. My DD is a huge drama queen, hypochondriac and everything turns into a cluster eff due to her hysterics. We are right now in one of those. Yes, she is sick with a virus, yes, we are traveling, no she is not having a stroke. Just a stomach virus. |
Anonymous
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A little bit. I used to LOVE to travel in my 20s.
I think all the social media has made travel so performative these days. I spend so much time researching the trip and seeing thousands of photos of everything, reading blog posts that describe the process, reading reviews, etc. that by the time I get there it just feels like going through the motions and I've seen it all before. Some of the excessive research is necessary with kids - I don't have nearly the flexibility that I did in my 20s to just show up in a city and find a bed somewhere for a night. But I don't think it's ALL necessary, my kids are pretty easy going and fun to travel with. I'm experimenting with my next couple of big trips... Doing barely any research. I don't want to know what to expect and I want my days to still hold a little mystery and possibility. We'll see if that helps. |
Anonymous
| I love to travel. I can't think of any house project I would find exciting. I think getting older is just realizing and accepting what you're into vs what people tell you to be into or what they expect you to be into. |
Anonymous
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Not tired of it but makes me appreciate the way we have always traveled.s. More relaxed, not strict itinerary pretty much nothing really planned. Then we don’t feel like we have to be standing in a line we don’t want to be in. If we decide to explore something more in depth we don’t have to rearrange the next 5 things on a schedule.
If we want to stop and spend two hours at a cafe watching the world go by, we do. |
Anonymous
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Meeting people in other cultures isn’t something Amazon can replace.
But I do understand. |
Anonymous
Having a stomach virus while traveling is miserable! Have some compassion for your kid. |
Anonymous
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I would never have thought I would agree with you, but actually I do kind of this year.
We will have done a ton of travel this year which is part of it, including a couple trips still leftover from our pandemic era. Maybe if I had stuck to 1/2 big trips I would feel less burned out. I agree that the destinations are more “global” in feel than they were 15 years ago. Everyone seems to speak English, the restaurants are more Americanized, even the small towns are crowded with instagrammers. I think I just need a break and also that it’s time for us to switch to less often, couples only travel - we’ve done our fair share of trips with the kids (2/3 of which are now teens) which are much harder logistically. |
Anonymous
Hmm, are you really meeting people while traveling? DH and I just returned from a week in Europe together - we interacted with people but it’s not like we were dining with strangers and getting to know them. |
Anonymous
Usually. |
Anonymous
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Maybe you need to start doing more adventure treks and things like that to more remote places if that’s where your interest lies. Like that lady who posted recently about wearing nothing but a grass skirt for a week with a tribe somewhere.
I’m not even totally joking. Have you ever watched Flying the Nest on YouTube? That couple takes their babies all over the world and did this whole Mongolia trip staying with local families. It’s not my jam, but it may be yours. |