Travel stories tend to be about the high spots & low points; since to some extent those are all that remain in memories after the event. It is a pretty intense experience to travel out of your comfort zone to faraway places, so initially things tend to get sorted into 'great' or 'terrible' categories. I'm finding now that even the terrible bits are transforming into a more positive experience in hindsight.
Although we took warnings of pickpockets in Italy seriously, and knew about risks of poor hygiene regarding local food in Thailand, we treated those things pretty casually, and in spite of our fairly lax precautions, we were fortunate not to suffer any of the potentially disastrous travel misfortunes. We never missed a bus, train, boat or plane; in spite of language barriers almost everywhere. Nothing was lost or stolen. In spite of carelessness regarding food in Bangkok the only illness we suffered from was the (very bad) cold we caught off the tour guide in France. For us our low spots were more petty. Things like lack of sleep, due to jet-lag and continuously having to adapt to new beds; and in my case, travel swelling caused by sitting for 8 or more hours at a time while in transit. My legs looked more like tree stumps for the duration of our 7 week trip (and another week after we got home). Coupled with that was my chronic tendinitis in both feet that made every step I took painful.
My husbands lack of consideration in that regard didn't help either...
Next time we travel on a long haul flight I will wear travel stockings; I will carry a few sleeping pills for emergencies. I'll make sure I have a supply of painkillers on hand (and use them!!!). I wish now I'd thought about these things more prior to departure. I wish someone had been able to convince me to prepare better (they tried). In the end I bought those things in a chemist shop in Geneva, using a mixture of French, English & sign language (an experience that became a highlight).
The things we got right made up for the bad bits though. I'm glad we found the courage to go off on our own and explore. I'm glad I tried to speak a few halting words of French, Italian, Greek & Turkish. One of my highlights was buying Pate' de Fois Grois (in French) in a little french village, even though I failed to say 'stop' and ended up with far too much! I felt a bit silly at the time; but it was worth it. It helped break down the fear of ridicule that makes trying to speak a foreign language so scary.
Another thing we did right (thanks to a good friend) was download the photos of the first half of the trip onto disc. If we hadn't done so we'd have lost all of them a couple of weeks later when my husband inadvertently wiped them all. A couple of times only one of our three cameras was working for one reason or another, and so a few days of travel photos were totally lost in this incident. It would have been heartbreaking if we had lost them all...
Now that we are home, the photos are really important in reinforcing our memories of the trip. We took about 4000 between us, & that isn't nearly enough... There were times I forgot to take any at all; too busy just experiencing things to remember. Thankfully Roly took plenty (he had a new camera and enjoyed playing with it). In some cases the photos we took are the only memories we have, since the visit was so fleeting and so rushed!!! Now we have the images playing randomly on an electronic photo frame our son bought us for Christmas, as well as a photo album with selected images in it to leaf through.
I'm also glad we did tours (even the TC one) because they gave us respite from each other, and gave us other people to talk to. They gave us an overview of the countries I'd always wanted to visit. We packed in more sightseeing that way than we could have seen on our own. But I'm really glad we did nearly half of our trip on our own, doing our own thing. Those parts were the most real.
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