Note: This post is my weekly contribution to the Five Minute Friday community that is hosted by Kate Motaung on her blog Heading Home. Click here
for more information about Five Minute Friday and how you can get
involved! To link up with all the other entries for today's prompt word,
click here.
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| Yeah, it's a Doctor Who travel reference. The Doctor loves to visit new places :) |
I'll come clean. I am a very enthusiastic tourist. There are few things I love more than visiting a new place. There is something about seeing new things and new places that just thrills me. I love to explore all the streets, shops, cafes, and ins and outs of a place. I love to visit with the locals. I love to visit art museums and theatres and street markets. I love visiting historic sites and monuments and local places of interest. I love visiting new places in our hometown too. Just this morning, GB and I had to go run an errand and it took us near a
new grocery store that opened about a week ago called Sprouts. I've
never been to one of those before, so we decided to visit and check it
out.
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| I love this quote by St. Augustine! |
In particular, I have a special fondness for visiting new countries. Don't get me wrong. I love America and all its many and varied cultures and people, but I really get excited at the idea of going to a new country where the language is foreign and the culture is vastly different from my own. Even going somewhere where the native tongue is English is an amazing adventure. For example,
I spent an entire semestre in London, England and it was, hands down, the best semestre of college for me. I visited every place and thing that I could in those months and soaked it all in as deeply as humanly possible. I shopped for groceries in the local grocer's, bought fruit at the corner stand, visited museums and saw plays, shopped for books and clothes and uniquely British things. I drank tea at every opportunity and visited with the local homeless community at a soup kitchen where I volunteered my time.
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| St. Peter's square in Vatican City on the occasion of the canonization of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II |
One day I want to go back to Europe, but this time I want a chance to see Rome, Italy so I can visit the Vatican and the many and varied churches, shrines, and other Catholic historical sites. This time though, I want to take Gray along so we can visit these places together and visit with each other. If there's any activity I love more than visiting new places, it's visiting with my beloved Gray.
Your writing makes me want to travel too. Your enthusiasm is contagious! Thank you for sharing your sense of wonder and adventure. (Visiting from FMF...just a couple after you today)
ReplyDeleteThank you! It's one of my favourite subjects to write about! :)
DeleteThank you for sharing! I LOVE visiting new places too...and would LOVE to go back to Europe; and would LOVE to visit England...I flew into London when returning to the US after being in Germany with my first husband...that's as much as I saw of England...the tarmac of the airport runway!!
ReplyDeleteEnjoyed reading your post today!!! Hope you and Gray get to make that trip some day - soon!!
Isn't it so much fun? If you ever get the chance, jump on it! It's so totally worth it. I've had the great pleasure and blessing of getting to visit England twice -- once in college and then once after college with a church group -- and I would go again in a heartbeat. :)
DeleteWhen I saw the word prompt last night, it made me think immediately of you! I am so glad you posted today. I've missed you friend! I love to visit new places too!
ReplyDeleteAwww, thank you friend! I've missed you too. We need to vox soon and catch up.
DeleteAh, wanderlust! I spent a year in Europe (most of it at a school in Spain, but I got to see lots of Italy, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, England and Greece, as well. I, too, love to visit! The cathedrals were amazing.
ReplyDeleteI love the word "wanderlust!" Apparently it runs in my family. My mom has told me that my great-grandmother had a bit of wanderlust, although hers was more just that she liked to go for drives locally and visit with family and friends. I'd love to have seen more of Europe. I made it to France one weekend and saw Paris and Versailles and to Ireland another weekend and saw Dublin, Howth, and the Boyne Valley, but that's the extent of it. I'd love to go back to both places and see the cathedrals. I saw Notre Dame in Paris, but I wasn't a Catholic at the time, so I'd love to see it again having a Catholic perspective. I have a feeling I'd find it even more beautiful and meaningful.
DeleteYou sound like my mom. She could be a professional tourist. She actually works for Delta now and flies for free. That's how much she loves it. I only know one other Gray, but I think that is such a cool name by the way.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like my dream job!!! :) If I could, I would totally do something like that! Gray is actually a pseudonym for my hubby. It's his favourite colour, so I thought it would be a good name. I use pseudonyms for everyone to protect their privacy.
DeleteSo happy to see another Catholic mom blog!
ReplyDeleteI loved reading this, after living overseas, I have this desire to travel more. Once God gives me the green light!
I'll have to come look at your blog! Always nice to meet another Catholic mom blogger :) Living overseas really does seem to inspire a desire to travel in most folks, I think. There are exceptions (like my uncle who was in the military and now prefers to stay in the smaller city he lives in rather than go too far afield), but I think a lot of folks who have been abroad find themselves with a bit of wanderlust upon coming home. It's not that you dislike being home, but God made such an amazing world full of people and cultures and things to see and appreciate that you find yourself wanting to see it all! I hope you get the green light soon! :)
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