getting around

Gothic Quarter, Barcelona, 2018

I love walking in London.*

And also Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris, Porto, Rome, Washington DC…

Okay, I really like walking, meandering, perambulating, and flaneuring everywhere I go.

I love to explore by foot because I can see small details that I would otherwise miss when biking, driving, or riding on public transportation. I can also stop whenever I want to take photos, which is pretty much every 20 steps or so.

My husband and I have always walked a lot daily and even more so when we travel. Before we had children, we walked a lot on our vacations. We did — and still do — go out for long walks with no aim other than to see wherever it is that we are visiting. Once we had children, however, that changed, as our offspring were not happy with aimless wandering and exploring around a city for hours on end. They were happy to walk with a goal — such as to visit a museum or get something to eat — but random peregrinations were not their jam.

The first vacation we took as empty nesters was to Barcelona to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday, as well as the recent launch of our secondborn off to college. It was also the first vacation we'd been on alone without a child or two in 20 years. We really had a lot to celebrate, didn't we?

We walked on that trip. And walked and walked and walked. 8-10 miles every day, just exploring the city, for 9 or 10 days.

Some days we'd wake up with no plan, so we'd take the train to a new part of the city, explore there, and eventually make our way back to our Airbnb. Barcelona has gorgeous sidewalks, so walking allowed us to see those and other small details that we would have missed if we hadn't been exploring at a walking pace. And of course all the gorgeous Gaudi buildings, plus other great architecture. And so many shops to pop in and out of.

It was glorious.

*Not just my own sentiment, but also a line spoken by the titular character from Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.