The road more or less travelled

I have an apology to make (no, not that, hairy legs and frizz forever and ever amen).
I've travelled and haven't properly let you in. I promised and promised but all you keep getting are photos of yours truly, which, let's face it, are not a phénomène nouveau. What I'm saying is, I like visiting places not because they are a pretty background for pretty photos, but because I am curious about them - in fact, I prefer writing about music and travel far more than clothes - what does one say about clothes anyway, when one is tired of them? "She cried, 'I am aweary, aweary'" - Tennyson knew all about clothes and ennui.
All this hasn't translated on this blog... yet. Partly because I could not be bothered to write guides or was busy. I think I've floated the idea a couple of times, but you're still waiting, right? And the more one keeps promising something, the less likely it is to happen, right?
Tomorrow, I am going on a trip, and it might be one of the last for a while.
I used to be spoiled with places. Absolutely, undeservedly spoiled with them. My parents would drive and drive us around Europe. France, Belgium, Luxembourg, central Germany and Bavaria, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Spain. Major cities, hidden beaches, side streets, cathedrals, underground city networks, outdoor concerts, hot springs, ruins, mountains, abandoned buildings, forests, palaces, castles, stately homes, nature reserves, abbeys, monuments, galleries, museums. I was beyond privileged to see an incredible amount for someone my age, but what a curious paradox: I wasn't interested. Or, perhaps, more interested in surface things, or in "amazing sights and experiences" I've seen on Tumblr, instead of giving the kaleidoscope I had around me a decent look, asking some questions, and creating those experiences for myself. Because - for all those "inspiring" images you #regram that somehow still end up being your desktop background even though it's not 2002 anymore - sometimes, you arrive in a place after looking at these and experience Underwhelment. It takes a little work - and thorough use of your 5 senses, plus initiative - to feel really great there.
For a bratty kid in a car, it was all the norm. And while you and I laugh at this pretentious post I wrote way back on my second trip around Italy's Lago di Maggiore (temporarily resurrected from its revert-to-draft state for your pleasure), when really I was marginally different from the people I was attempting to criticise, more than one thought of mingled true and false nostalgia crawls around somewhere between my ears. I keep wishing I'd remembered more from those trips. It's as though I haven't even been to half of these places. Let's call it all "the road more or less travelled" - more or less, the cop-out phrase to end them all.
Hang on - is the "initiative" advice old news? Perhaps it is to most people. Curiosity, if not innate or if suffocated at a young age by the python called online activity, is one of the hardest skills to learn. But that doesn't mean you can't start afresh, and it's just a matter of getting into good habits.
Often, you get somewhere and you think the place alienates you. For instance, I was recently upstairs at the National Portrait Gallery, and got an "erudition shock" - I forgot or knew nothing about anything, and everything was get-the-phone-out boring (the worst kind of boring). Then, I took another look around, and right there in the corner, was hanging my saving grace - Joshua 'Sloshua' Reynolds' fantastically dopey self-portrait, with its signature teddy bear button eyes and explorer-of-the-unknown-seas hand. I called my sibling over and asked her what he was holding. It took her around 10 minutes to work out that it was an artists' pallette - our collective laughter about this then produced more research, in which we found out that 'Sloshua' was a moniker applied to poor J by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who found his work cheap and brash.
Interacting - you get the idea. The internet blessing-or-curse debate is worn (more and more, I write out posts by hand first to avoid staring at the screen for hours), and really I'm only writing about all of this to see if anyone else has ever got up one day and 'reawakened' from their comfy 21st century slumber. Particularly when travelling. The place I am going to - let's hope it proves another opportunity to practise what I preach, and report back to you with something more than me standing in a pair of (incidentally bloody comfortable straight out of the box, and my hiking footwear of choice) Dr Martens pretending to wait for a lift.
~ Jacket, Barbour Beadnell Jumper, Ralph Lauren Shirt, thrifted Skirt, Debenhams Dr Martens 1461, c/o Cloggs Glasses, Gokkers at Specsavers