There is Always One More Place to See

No matter how much time you spend in a country, or even a city, there is always one more place to see or thing to do. Sure, it may not be the most important thing to see or do, but it probably something interesting or fun that someone else has done. After returning to the United States from spending six months in Europe, our least favorite question that people asked us when we got back was “did you go to…?”. We were working during the week, so we only had weekends to travel and didn’t have an unlimited budget, so obviously we couldn’t go everyplace. We also wanted to take advantage of our close proximity to other countries in Europe, so we couldn’t see every place in Germany, let alone Europe.

The same is true of many other trips. We spent two weeks in Spain and upon our return people inevitably asked whether we went to Madrid, Barcelona, or Portugal. We concentrated on southern Spain, so we did not make it to those places and we had a wonderful time and treasure every memory of our trip. We also spent two weeks in Bolivia, but didn’t make it to the Uyuni Salt Flats due to the distance and costs from where we were. When we spent a week in Paris a few years ago, we decided to go to the Catacombs on the next to last day of our trip and it turned out that they had closed the Catacombs that day to do some repairs. It was just bad timing.

The point that we’re hoping to make is that it is okay that you don’t see everything. Don’t worry about the places you didn’t get to see, restaurants you didn’t get to try, or the attraction that happened to be closed during your visit. Our standard response to people these days is that those are just reasons to go back sometime in the future. Worrying about the things you missed is like complaining about the half empty glass. Keep traveling and your glass will only get fuller and fuller.