Suzy Says

Love/Hate for Friday, March 29, 2002

Travel: Being There

Once you’re decanted off the plane, have thanked whatever gods or spirits or what have you for your safe arrival (and that of your beloved baggage, too), have cleared Customs and are in the new place, that’s where the fun begins.

Even though the actual plane ride is hideous, isn’t it amazing that you can wake up in London and have dinner the same day in San Francisco?

I should probably admit right off that in addition to rarely having hangovers, I don’t suffer from jet lag, either. I have been as far as 12 time zones away from home and been perfectly fine, as Jacques P?pin would say. My usual technique is to stay awake until 9:00 p.m. on the first day I arrive in Europe, and then go to sleep for up to 12 hours. When I wake up, I’m on the right time zone and ready to go.

Now John will tell you that he has jet lag whenever we are in Europe because I deprive him of a nap on arrival. Naps are fatal to time adjustment, and can only be indulged in for a good reason, such as being able to stay awake until midnight and beyond on New Year’s Eve in Edinburgh, which is one of the best possible reasons. But I do realize that many people have a hard time with the time change.

However, even the worst case of jet lag is more than made up for the wonders of travel. I live in a very new state (California joined the Union in 1850, 31st out of 50) in a very new country, so I am fascinated and delighted by the ancient buildings and culture in other countries. Churches and houses still in use after centuries. Eating a meal or drinking a pint in the same place as Charles Dickens or William Shakespeare. Walking the same streets as kings, queens, poets, artists and ordinary people have for hundreds of years. There’s a wonderful sense of continuity, being connected to the past.

It’s also fascinating to see how other people live and think, how their daily lives are different from yours and how they are the same. To have coffee in a Parisian caf?, watching the crowds go by. To buy wine in an ancient hill town in Italy, where old men play chess in the town square beside a thousand-year old well. To look at masterpieces of artists and sculptors in London’s National Gallery, Paris’ Mus?e d’Orsay, Florence’s Uffizi. To see families strolling hand in hand after dinner in an ancient Mexican town. To see the sun setting over the Grand Canal in Venice and the pink lights beside it all going on at once to illuminate the twilight.

But no matter how wonderful the trip, how dazzling the sights, nothing makes my heart leap like the first sight of the Golden Gate Bridge from the plane or the road, telling me that I’m almost home, home in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.