February 2, 2007

I haven't traveled nearly as much as I would like. I've spent two weeks traveling England, Wales, and Scotland. Five days in France, mostly in Paris.  A week in Tahiti. And many places in the US (but not to some very popular/important sites, such as the Grand Canyon or LA).

People love the big cities: New York, London, Paris, Rome, LA. They thrive on it, and those are the places they want to visit over and over.

I realized recently that, although I enjoy visiting those big cities, my favorite memories/experiences/images from my travels have come outside of Paris and London and New York. And I realize that if I had my druthers, I'd spend more time in the countryside, in the small towns and villages, than in the big cities.

Call me Cruise-y, but while the big cities are exciting and full and have so much to see and do, and I've enjoyed my visits while there…but the rolling hills and stone fences of Loire, the barns and fields and quaint Cotswald villages, the scraggy hills and rough villages of the Highlands hold more excitement for me.

One of my favorite memories was during our travels in Britain. We drove all the way north along Loch Ness, and ended up in Inverness and tried to find a little inn or B&B to stay at…but nothing appealed. So we drove out of town, no destination in mind, and we ended up at a wonderful little manor house that had been turned into an inn, right on a lovely firth about 30 minutes outside of Inverness. Bunchrew House will go down as my favorite place ever, in any trip we've ever made.

We were there on July 4, 1994, and we were the only Americans there. We bought drinks for the entire dining room and had a wonderful time in this proper, well-appointed, old house. Loved it: from the antique canopy beds, to the very proper manager, to the meeting in the parlor for before-dinner drinks, to the walk along the firth afterward…to the fabulous, fabulous food!

And another favorite place was in the Lake District in England. The Pheasant Lake Inn. We stayed there an extra night because we loved it so much. We took our laundry in to the small village nearby and ate pizza and chatted with the locals while we washed our clothes.

Last March, when we had our whirlwind trip to Paris, we spent one day driving from Paris to Taize (about 150 miles southeast of Paris, nearly to Lyon). On the way back, we stopped in the small town of Buxy–just a lovely village with close, winding streets and quaint shops and stone buildings. We had our first chance to try to speak French in a restaurant–it was a little pub, actually–where the proprietor didn't speak English, and it was between lunch and dinner and they weren't serving any food and we were starving…that memory of the Croque Monsieur he ended up serving us, that tasted so good, will be forever stamped in my mind.

So, while I loved walking the streets of Paris, and seeing the sights in London, and shopping SoHo, my "best of times" have always been outside of those big cities.

What about you? When you travel, do you stay in the big city or do you hit the road?