The last leg of the trip home came off without a hitch. The best part was our first time through Global Entry – you stand in front of the kiosk, you smile at a camera, the light turns green, and you walk on. A CBP agent calls out your name as you walk past. That’s it, you’re on your way. From there it was easy, one more flight and a short drive home. And you’re right back where you were 3 weeks ago.

MLW always says, “Within 48 hours it will be like it never happened,” and that’s absolutely true. 1200 photographs, some souvenirs, and some memories that fade over time.

Just before we left on this trip, I finished a book by Frances Mayes, the author of Under the Tuscan Sun. The title of this one is See You in the Piazza and it’s the story of her driving around Italy with her husband and an assorted cast of characters including a grandson and a lot of American friends. It’s a fun book if you like recollections of meals and wines, and small-town plazas. It’s not your typical heavyweight travel writing, but rather an intimate account of being on the road and visiting places off the beaten path. I enjoyed it because it was a lot like what I like to write about.

She made three points in the book that stuck with me. Simple and yet profound.

Travel is a journey into one’s own ignorance

How true is that? If you think about all the things you need to learn to make a trip successful and all the things you encounter on the journey – every voyage, no matter how simple, is a learning opportunity. In the case of the Mayes book, much of their learning (as wine aficionados) was about the grapes that are used in Italy to produce regionally specific wines. When I think about all the things I didn’t know before I traveled, it’s a bit sobering. Every trip can be considered an introductory class into something -food, drink, language, politics. The list goes on and on.

The private moments, the little bursts of secret meaning that travel can give. Places give us such gifts if we are ready to receive them.

And being open to these gifts is the key. I think when a lot of people travel focus on the big things that they came to see, never noticing the tiny things off to the side as they make their way through some foreign location. For us, it’s frequently the people we meet – the rental agents, the cab drivers who want to talk about US politics, the restaurant owner in Portugal who loves Mexico and Mariachi, the waiter who patted me on the shoulder and said with a smile, “No more English while I’m serving you, only Portuguese or Spanish.” All wonderful and unforgettable.

The greatest gift of travel: the steep learning curve. Second best: how your vision refreshes you. Third: memory. How the places that are seen will layer into life as time moves on.

Circling back to one’s own ignorance, the learning curve can be daunting. Depending on where you’re going, the list of things you need to learn can be lengthy and you have to master it to have your trip be a complete success. It’s not always easy, but the curve softens as you master the things that are common to every trip, regardless of the destination. But each new place presents more things to master, so the curve is never completely flat.

The second best – vision. We had a lot of discussions about why we travel and the simple answer is “To see things and to vacate our regular life,” and in doing those things, be refreshed. That’s certainly what I get out of travel.

And then third best – as MLW says, “All that’s left are the memories.”