According to travel websites, there are either eighteen or seven or ten or five types of travelers. With labels like “The Hunter Gatherer,” “The Collector,” “Free Spirit” and my favorite, “Chatty Cathy,” I read through every one of them and still couldn’t find me. None of them addressed the kind of traveler I am: “Giant Toddler Who Just Drank a Liter of Espresso.”
I don’t love the idea of sleeping when I’m on a vacation. I get so excited about traveling to a new place, I get a little panicky that I’m not going to fit in everything that everyone has told me that I have to do. My fear is that I’m going to get home and tell someone where I’ve been and they’re going to say, “You saw THE THING didn’t you?” And I’ll be forced to choke out a confession that I didn’t do THE THING. I did 1,350 other THINGS, but not that THING. And everyone will whisper, “She doesn’t deserve her life.”
So I turn the whole trip into an exhausting enterprise that ends with someone getting a virus and my whole family hating me until Christmas. I can’t help it. I’m just not a chill traveler. [Read more…] about No Sleeping on Vacation