Losing the love of travel

[Anonymous]

I traveled a lot when I was younger like the OP, but now it is very different. Mainly this is because of the crowds. People will flame me saying everyone has the right to visit Paris and Venice and Kyoto and Barcelona and London, but given the crush of people, it's not enjoyable.

I enjoy visiting small towns (third tier not even second tier places) either here or abroad more than being processed to visit top attractions.

Although I used to travel for months at a time, now after 5 or 6 days, I'm ready to come home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like you're getting lonely, what about traveling with someone? What about taking someone with you who hasn't traveled and getting to show them the world (like a niece or nephew)?

I don't think so necessarily. I feel this way when traveling with family.

Sometimes it's worse traveling with someone else because you feel obligated to do the things they want to do that you really don't like doing.

[Anonymous]

I think this is totally normal. This happened to my dad at around... 60? He was still in great health (and remains in great health now!) He travelled a ton before I was born, and we traveled a ton as a family when I was growing up, and couple trips with my mom, plus work took him all over the world. He really loved it and got a lot out of it. Did more traveling when they were empty nesters. But then they just kinda petered out on it. I asked him about it, and was surprised with his answer of "I feel like I've seen it all." Which certainly isn't objectively true (it's a big world) but I think he'd seen all HE wanted to see - which is great. It doesn't mean life adventures are over or anything. Now he's picked up a new hobby (tennis) that he's actually gotten really good at, and they're OBSESSED with the grandchildren (which keeps them traveling less ambitiously very regularly, as some of them live a few states away), and he's writing a book. He's also gotten into birding.

Life is long. It's okay, even good, to have your likes and interests evolve over time. No one wants to be exactly who they were at 30 at 60, just older, right? Life has phases. Roll with it!

[Anonymous]

What about combining travel with another hobby or interest? You could still see new places and make connections but the day-to-day focus would be something other than the travel itself:

Plan a hiking, biking, kayaking, sailing trip

Enroll in a cooking seminar in Italy, knitting retreat in Iceland, yoga certification program in Costa Rica, etc.

Study the history, art, architecture, geology, birds, music, whatever of a particular place and then build a trip around exploring that particular aspect of the place

[Anonymous]

We just took our first lazy holiday where we didn't attempt to see anything. I had literally never just laid on a beach for an entire day. I didn't even read a novel! I just turned sixty and my husband and I have decided we are still interested in travel but only for the purposes of relaxing. Perhaps no more tourism. Pretty sure that makes us uneducated or something, but I'll take it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We just took our first lazy holiday where we didn't attempt to see anything. I had literally never just laid on a beach for an entire day. I didn't even read a novel! I just turned sixty and my husband and I have decided we are still interested in travel but only for the purposes of relaxing. Perhaps no more tourism. Pretty sure that makes us uneducated or something, but I'll take it.

This sounds lovely. I basically these days like going somewhere warm in the winter, but just lying in the sun/reading a book/eating good food. I need nothing else.

[Anonymous]

I traveled as a kid, then as a young adult in the Peace Corps, and then as a professional in my 30’s and early 40’s. By 40 it had lost all appeal, and I felt allergic to travel at all, even for vacations. I came to associate it with work, and absence from family, and loneliness.

I felt ashamed of losing my verve for travel for a long time, but now in my early 50’s I am at peace with it. It’s a big world, and I’ve seen a lot of it. In the end cities are cities, and people are people. I still feel thrilled by natural beauty, and I would happily hike in different parts of the world if I didn’t have to sit on airplanes for a day or more to get there. But travel for the sake of travel? Nah. I’m good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I traveled as a kid, then as a young adult in the Peace Corps, and then as a professional in my 30’s and early 40’s. By 40 it had lost all appeal, and I felt allergic to travel at all, even for vacations. I came to associate it with work, and absence from family, and loneliness.

I felt ashamed of losing my verve for travel for a long time, but now in my early 50’s I am at peace with it. It’s a big world, and I’ve seen a lot of it. In the end cities are cities, and people are people. I still feel thrilled by natural beauty, and I would happily hike in different parts of the world if I didn’t have to sit on airplanes for a day or more to get there. But travel for the sake of travel? Nah. I’m good.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I traveled a lot when I was younger like the OP, but now it is very different. Mainly this is because of the crowds. People will flame me saying everyone has the right to visit Paris and Venice and Kyoto and Barcelona and London, but given the crush of people, it's not enjoyable.

I enjoy visiting small towns (third tier not even second tier places) either here or abroad more than being processed to visit top attractions.

Although I used to travel for months at a time, now after 5 or 6 days, I'm ready to come home.

I agree--and having traveled a lot in Europe and Asia in the late 90's & early aughts, I think the increased volume in tourism is a difference of kind, not merely degree. (Which, yes, is perhaps a net boon--everyone should see Kyoto--but certainly makes it less appealing if you already have seen Kyoto!). I also spend more time poking around smaller, less famous destinations and go to the "big places" now mostly just to experience them with my kids (and perhaps through somewhat gritted teeth).

[Anonymous]

I agree with just about everyone on here. I'm also in a similar boat. I'm in my mid 40s and after a lifetime of travel, including substantial off the beaten path travel, the notion of traveling doesn't hold the same appeal any more. Some if it is the growing sameness of the major cities. Some of it is the hassles of flights. Some of it is because you reach a point where anything new you see is more likely to be a variant of what you've already seen. I don't get excited by museums any more and tend to see them as something to do on the last day while waiting to fly out the next morning. Some of it is also the explosion in crowds and mass tourism. Some countries have lost a great deal of distinctiveness in the last 20 years, the UK being a great example of a place that had a highly unique British character into the 1990s but most of that is now gone.

I still travel but it's now around a key activity. I did a cycling trip that was terrific as I loved the cycling. I did a 10 day hiking trip in the Swiss Alps that was gorgeous. The days of a mad rush just to see a different place and ticking off a list of all the local must-sees are now over.

There's also a long list of places I'd like to see here in the US, ideally combined with an activity, but shocker, it's now more expensive to travel in the US than to go overseas!

[Anonymous]

So much about travel has to do with off season/away from crowds/weather.

When I was younger, it was a lot easier to control those variables than now as a parent of 2 teens around school and their needs.

When we travel now, it's about budgets and a list of variables that makes it less about travel and more about process of elimination for which destination should we target. Takes a bit of fun out of the wanderlust part BUT I have to say, seeing the places we do because we've put so much thought into it, things generally work out well.

As many beautiful places as I've been and having studied abroad as well, I think people discount travel around the US esp out west. CO, AZ, NM, CA, OR, MT and UT offer so much opportunity. There's more than just natural beauty to appreciate but actual activities like rafting, dude ranches, wildlife focus, spas and general R&R, glamping, etc. There's a lot of interesting off the beaten path things to see out west. I tend to shy away from the south and east coast.

Also, if you're just going to see stuff, the Internet makes it so easy. The experiences of activities is what makes it for us.

[Anonymous]

Same here. Early 50s, been to at least 70 countries. Not much desire to do it any more. I still have to travel this year, for work, to places on many people's bucket lists but I feel kind of "meh" about it even though they are amazing places. I've been to those places many times before.

[Anonymous]

I haven’t travelled nearly as much as you, OP, but I also have noticed that I am losing my enjoyment of travel. I’ve been to most of western and much of eastern Europe, parts of Canada, Mexico and Central America, and probably half of the US states, but I haven’t lived outside of the US and haven’t been to anywhere in Asia, South America, Australia, Scandinavia, etc all places I once wanted to go very much.

For me, it’s a combination of health issues and anxiety that have decreased my comfort level when on an extended trip. I’m “only” 55 and I hate that I feel this way, but every time I push myself to travel I don’t enjoy it very much.

I especially have found that everything seems so crowded and to require so much preplanning nowadays - has this changed or has my age caused me to see things through a different lens than when I travelled when I was younger?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I traveled a lot when I was younger like the OP, but now it is very different. Mainly this is because of the crowds. People will flame me saying everyone has the right to visit Paris and Venice and Kyoto and Barcelona and London, but given the crush of people, it's not enjoyable.

I enjoy visiting small towns (third tier not even second tier places) either here or abroad more than being processed to visit top attractions.

Although I used to travel for months at a time, now after 5 or 6 days, I'm ready to come home.

I just posted saying travel seems so much more of a hassle nowadays, and I hadn’t yet read your post or the several in agreement with you- count me as another who agrees. I’ve been to Paris a lot and have just enjoyed it so much less in the past 7ish years due to crowds.

[Anonymous]

On a recent trip I counted it up and I had to download and make accounts and register for two airline apps, a hotel app, booking.com, Travelocity, open table, via tour, an app for the conference I attended, Uber. And I had to download airline tickets, info for the hotel, tickets for our tours, etc. and then I worried that my phone would run out of juice or I would somehow accidentally delete everything and I hated having to book everything in advance and then being locked into specific plans when I just wanted to relax. I remember growing up and my parents going to a travel agent and having someone else make all the arrangements and. Print out all the tickets etc. I think that travel is stressful today because of the apps and booking etc.