Your Favourite Place In The World

You’ve returned from your holiday, tired and happy, and soon find yourself back in the frenetic rat race of work and weekends. Memories of your jam-packed vacation are relegated to your album which you have yet to extract and file, and you’re eagerly asking: where next? Yet believe me, there exists another type of traveller who, contrary to the norm, is thinking: I want to go there again.

Just why do travellers choose to revisit a place time and again? Can a trip affect us enough to create indelible memories and a yearning to return?

Revisits can be fun!

Whatever the reason may be, revisits can be fun for the seasoned traveller. We are better prepared, and can navigate the city like the locals. The usual sights are passed over as we hunt down more elusive tourist spots, restaurants and experiences that perhaps only locals know. We go back to a place with fresh eyes and compare what’s new and what’s changed.

The ‘feel good’ factor also plays a part. Perhaps it’s an annual tradition for your large family to hold gatherings and these trips rekindle familial bonds. Other times, we return just to catch up with the locals who have become our friends, or to experience the warm hospitality of hotels where we’re remembered by name.

Soon though, you might find yourself bringing people there, their interest being piqued after you continuously wouldn’t stop talking waxed lyrical about the place.

Another hint that the travel-bug has bitten deep is if you return home and start 

a) cooking up cuisine from that country, 

b) learning the language, 

c) buying books and reading up on everything you could get your hands on for the country. 

Interest has just been raised a notch to obsession.

Paris, Venice, Milan? Where would you like your ‘Second Home’?

Beware though, if the time you spend staying in a place tops the months you spend at your de facto home, if you keep leaving stuff at your ‘second home’ and find it increasing bothersome to go back to fetch more, you may just end up relocating your home and life. After all, life’s short, and if vacations there made you happy, what’s stopping you spending your golden years in a permanent holiday?