When traveling, you may encounter a few cheaters, but not in the traditional sense. Well, there are those too, but I’m talking about those travelers that stay committed to one place. They set up camp in one city for 3 months, 6 months, a year, or 10 years. These travelers settle into one location. Many fall in love with a place and never leave. They become experts about that one destination. Twenty-Something Travel recently wrote a post about revisiting the same place or trying out new locations. Stephanie mentions the schools of both ideas. Do you head to a place you already know and love or do you try somewhere new and different?
In exactly one week, I will make my way to Italy, a country I know almost better than my home of Colorado. Shame on me I know, but I love Italy. In college I lived in the country for over a year. I return yet again to live three months in Italy. Am I a travel cheater?
Sure, I could have selected a new location to start my three-month travels, truly traveling to a new place or stopping in a new city every few days. For some reason, I didn’t. I stuck with Florence, a city on the surface I know all too well, but yet I don’t think I do. If you are faced these same worries about frequenting the same country or city for a long period of time, here are some reasons you are not a travel cheater. You may remain in one spot, adoring it to pieces, but you are still a traveler through and through.
1. You never really a know a place fully, but you can certainly try.
Just like in a relationship, no matter how much time you may spend with your adoring country or city, you don’t know it fully. Spending exorbitant amounts of time in one spot alleviates this problem somewhat. While some may visit a destination and say, “I’ve seen it all”, they never have. It may be a change in the season that transforms a city or a new turn of the corner presents a surprise find. Out of the places I have lived in Italy, whenever I return, there were changes. There were things I didn’t notice the first time around. You may not know the places completely as a local would, but you certainly come close.
Fitting in with the local models in Florence
2. You learn a new language in the process.
To learn a language, its chatter must surround you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You must live and breathe your destination’s language. Maybe it is British quips you discover while living in England. Or perhaps you become conversational in German while living in the Black Forest. For me, part of why I love Italy to such a degree comes through its language. I can’t get enough of the exaggerations and gestures. At home, the most Italian I hear is pizza and pasta for dinner. If you keep returning and living in the same place, you have a better shot at understanding a place on a whole new level through the sounds of its people.
Learning Italian graffiti
3. Sticking to one geographic area develops personal loyalty.
Being loyal to Italy perhaps makes me more loyal in my everyday life. Then again, I did just up and leave Colorado in the dust. I am always quick to defend the country if someone says something out of turn or without knowledge pertaining to Italy. I have noticed this loyalty has grown so strong, that I have become stronger in my daily convictions.
Sure! I can make that dinner date.
4. You become a master at looking for changes and details.
If you frequent a new destination every few days, you probably don’t notice how the place changes on you. Why are these changes important? Once again, it all boils down to understanding a place to its fullest degree. Often times we travel throughout our daily lives, never stopping to smell the roses. While I am guilty of this, when I travel to my favorite country, I become engrossed in every little detail, appreciating each turn of the corner or long stare from the elderly about my bright red hair.
Stopping to smell the roses
Should anyone call you a travel cheater, remind them you are just faithful to one place. That makes you the ultimate devoted partner in this relationship. You are still a traveler. You are still experiencing something new and different. You just tend to linger longer than the others, wanting to discover ever facet of a place rather than just going home with a few photos and a passport stamp. In fact, you might say those that only stay in places for a few days are the travel cheaters, the lifelong bachelors and bachelorettes that aren’t satisfied with just one place. They never settle down or commit. However, the stationary travelers for long or short term seldom cheat on their locales with others.
Do you think returning to the same place makes you a travel cheater? Are you a travel cheater like me?
Thanks for the shout out! I am a “travel cheater” when it comes to London. It was the first foreign city I ever visited and I came back to study abroad, then again to work and live, and again to visit this past fall. I just love it there. I feel like I could probably live my whole life there and still discover more things.
Funny, cause I feel like a travel cheater sometimes because I typically only go to new destinations. It’s like having a ton of casual acquaintances but no best friends…
I’m with Lauren. It seems like the cheaters would be those that keep moving just because they have planned to move on, even though they have fallen in love with a place. Slowing down and enjoying a place is a part of the travel experience not it’s antithesis.
As a multiple returner to Germany and defender of the place that is ignored by a large number of round-europe-tourgroups, I applaud your willingness to go back to a place.
lol. i’m all about being faithful and cheating when it comes to travel. there’s a time and place for both trip styles. my travel cheating involves maui, whistler and seattle. when i want to be faithful to travel, i try diff places–which I try to do a few times a year.
That’s what keeps me from going to Paris every time we take a trip. I really want to go back, but I feel bad using the time when I could be seeing a new place.
I don’t think that’s cheating at all. I think it means that you travel to a place you know and love. There’s nothing wrong with that.
We keep having discussions of where we want to go on our next big trip. We obviously want to see countries and cities we’ve never been to, but it’s so tempting to go back to places we love. Bangkok, Buenos Aires, the whole country of Colombia, India, all are places we’ve been that I’m dying to go back to. Too much world, too little time, I guess. I certainly don’t think it makes you a travel cheater to keep going back to the same places, but it’s a tough decision to make when it’s between going to a completely new area or re-visiting a place you’ve already been. Obviously there is no right answer here, you just have to do what you’re feeling at the time.
I do that with Switzerland. Even though I’ve been there three times already, I still love to go back. Each time I learn a little bit more about my favourite country.
I am a massive travel cheater. My husband and I love living in countries as foreigners. Every day brings something new and turns what would usually be mundane very exciting. I always return to certain places in the world. I lived in Dublin twice, always return to London after living there for several years, lived in NC twice, and now thinking of returning to Bangkok to live again. Every two years we seem to pick up and move to a new place to keep on cheating. And then there are all the places we return to that we just traveled through as well!!We love it and will never stop!
This is great. Only in the travel world would the concept of being “faithful to just one” be considered cheating! 🙂
Interesting post! I don’t have the luxury to travel cheat yet, but I do have the desire to travel cheat New Zealand and the island of Crete 🙂
This is one of the things I struggle with in my current planning. I could easily spend 3 months in France, then 3 months in Italy, then 3 months in Portugal, etc.
I start to feel guilty about all the other places I have yet to see, though! Finding a balance will be interesting.
Loooooove the pic of you in front of La Perla, bellisima! 🙂
I have struggled with this question for ages. While I continue to see new parts of the world, my heart aches to keep returning to the places that nave REALLY touched my heart. But, then when I return to those places I feel a little guilty for not going somewhere new. I think the points you raised will help me with my guilt in the future, because they’re excellent and so important for the growth of the soul! So, thanks darling.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Turkey lately. How do I tell London it’s over?
I do a little of both. I love London, but I love to explore new places. My compromise is to generally fly from the States to London – generally a good entry port for the price. From London I have access to many of the budget airlines that span out across that continent. So I save a little money, but always have a gentle re-entry in the form of London. I have explored much of Europe this way, and am planning on doing this for Northern Africa. Now when I branch out to South America…
I’m trying to experience more places (since I only have 4 stamps on my passport) but my mind keeps going back to Japan. I really want to visit there again. It doesn’t help that a friend of mine is heading out with the JET program and staying in Osaka (GREAT place) and even offered her couch. /sigh
We have also considered going back to visit our friends in London as well. What an amazing place. 😀
It’s a great idea to start out somewhere familiar. I hadn’t been to Mexico before but as it’s North American I used it to ease into my RTW.
There are only a handful of places I’ll see more than once but Italy is definitely on the list and I can see why you’ve been there so many times.
Definitely a cheater – I love to settle down and work somewhere for a while. Interspersing batches of travel with a long-term love affair with a city somewhere is my favourite way to go.
And then of course I always have to go back and visit those old flames.
I feel a bit guilty about always coming back to France, but I just love it here! I definitely think that my next destination will be somewhere completely different, so I’m trying to soak up all the French-speaking and pastry-eating that I can!
I would like to be a cheater, I hope Kirsty and I are lucky enough to find somewhere we love and spend a lot of time there.
I love travel cheating 🙂 I’d much rather know a place well.
I love your take on this, and the title is very clever. 🙂
Who wouldn’t be a travel cheater when it comes to Florence? (Actually, I take that back– I’ve seen many ppl say 2 days in Florence was 1 day too many!!)
I am a total travel cheater. I could spend ages revisiting Prague, Florence, and some other really amazing places that feel comfortable yet exciting to me. There are still many things in my favorite cities that I haven’t done. Not only do I tend to return to the same cities over and over again, I tend to do the same things there! Luckily my husband is more restless and forces me to move on a bit, which is good. I have been to some places I wouldn’t have planned on because of him.
Great post Suzy. Although I’ve never been to Italy, I’ve traveled to Vancouver so many times in the last few years that it’s almost a second home. I have my own routines when I’m there, and my mood determines which part of the city I want to stay in.
If I wasn’t planning on traveling round-the-world later this year, I would move to Vancouver. I love it 🙂
To travel is to be free and part of that freedom is having a choice. Some choose to stay in one spot and others must keep moving. I guess if you stay in one spot while traveling it eventually becomes home and then when home you are not traveling. An interesting question is when is that bridge crossed where a travel destination becomes home?
Travel can also be thought of as a frame of mind. If you look at it this way then travel is possible when at home if of an adventurous mind.
Great stuff Suzy. I’m afraid I’m a travel cheater – I’m looking at spending a couple more months in Queenstown and I’ve already been in NZ half a year.
I like a combination of the two I suppose. When I lived in Europe, I did about 14 months based in Ireland and Scotland then spent a solid two bouncing around Europe. My plan after I leave New Zealand is to spend some time exploring South East Asia.
I don’t think this is cheating. I’d rather stay and stay and stay in one spot that travel my head off. I love getting to know different places – unless I end up not liking it.
No reason not to do both: Stay in a favourite place and explore new countries or cities nearby.
I just read this post after I’d written mine about feeling burnt out and shallow from travelling so quickly… i really do think slowing down and stopping to really get to know a place is a marvellous thing. I think I actively prefer it to the non-stop nomadism that seems to be super-popular these days. I love knowing a place so well that I can see all the small seasonal changes…
It’s funny to read this post, because for me, it was Madrid. When I was 18 and was legally able to travel alone, I got a hold of my passport and I bought a ticket to Madrid, the only European city in which I had A friend. I fell in love with the city, although nowadays I wonder if it was just the experience of being alone, abroad, free, young and seeking new experiences. In any case, three years after the initial trip, I went back to live there.
And I’ve been in Europe ever since. Madrid will always be my European home, even if my current residence is in Warsaw.