The Year I Stopped Counting Countries
A year ago I gave up the list and started returning to the same three places again and again. Here is what I learned about travel by going less far.
For about a decade I kept a list. Forty-two countries, three continents, a small folder of stamps. I told myself this was curiosity. Most of it was actually accounting.
Last January I deleted the list. Instead I went back to Lisbon, to a small Greek island I had been to twice, and to my grandmother's village in Umbria. Three places, all year. It was the best travel year of my life.
Returning is not the same trip twice. The cafe owner remembers your order. You walk past the famous viewpoint without stopping because you already saw it last spring. You learn the names of the cats. You eat at the second restaurant on the harbor instead of the first because the second one is where the fishermen actually go.
Travel marketed as a list will always feel thin. Travel as returning starts to feel like belonging — and belonging, even temporary, even borrowed, turns out to be the thing I was looking for all along.
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