I caught the travel bug from my parents and it’s hung on all these years.

Many summers, my parents packed us all up in the car and took us on a family vacation. Sometimes we spent a week or two in the Italian ghetto of Brooklyn, visiting my mother’s aunt and cousins.

You really haven’t lived til you’ve slept in summer heat and humidity in a 5th floor walkup apartment, above a fish market, with the El train going by constantly. I don’t know how my mother agreed to this; she loved her creature comforts, and my father’s income as a doctor meant we could’ve stayed anywhere. But we stayed there. Summer in Brooklyn. The fish smell on the way up the stairs just about knocked us out.

Once we drove to Florida in the heat of the summer–the five of us plus my grandmother. No air conditioning in the car, either. (This reminds me of a discussion my brother and I had when he was here, about whether or not we were privileged. But for another blog entry)

My scale of travel and comfort may be different from my parents’, but I have that same desire to pick up and go. I love being in a new environment and exploring. I’m always ready to go.

I have a few trips on the schedule already and I’m impatient for more.