Sweaty palms? Check. Funny palpitatey heat. Check. Constant reorganisation of bag and touching of passport. Check.

Welcome to the life of an anxious traveller.

So why do we travel? Answer: the eternal quest for the ‘heart-bursty’ excited moment when you arrive in a new place and realise there was nothing to worry about. In fact, there is so much to look forward to you think you might explode.

Two examples. 

Claire: After a long flight to NYC I arrived in quite the dramatic snow storm. I was feeling pretty tired after 8 hours of sweaty-palm time and constant map watching over the Atlantic. Standing in a long taxi queue in whipping winds therefore wasn’t ideal. But, as I got into my yellow cab (there was a bloody TV in it!) and asked to be taken to Manhattan, my heart went a bit weird. In fact, it went so mental I was preparing for imminent heart failure. The promise of the most amazing city only being a cab journey away blew any anxiety away and my heart-bursty moment was in full swing.

Laura: When we visited Tokyo, Japan, it was pretty bewildering. It’s busy, really busy and it was one country that I can honestly say feels nothing like home. On our first evening there, we visited a department store. I wandered around a bit before eventually finding myself in some sort of paradise: the stationary floor. I was surrounded by very small novelty erasers modelled on food (including small noodles). The heart-bursty excited moment had arrived. This sort of stationary does not exist in the UK, let alone in a scented form. I went into a frenzy, grabbing as much stationary as possible, with all anxiety slowly being buried under a growing pile of small burger and fries shaped erasers. I was in heaven.

So, what do all these weird memories mean for us? That we like stationary? That we aren’t used to TVs in cabs? Yes. But it also means something much more important. For the anxious traveller, the main worry is based on the unknown and uncertainty of what you’ll find. But as we worked out, those heart-bursty moments are born out of the unknown and this is what keeps us travelling. 

We wonder if this heart-bursty moment is common? (Or just a weird twin thing!).

C & L