Thoughts on travel

The Phactors like travel, but not traveling. To be clear travel is when you are at someplace that is not home; traveling is the act of getting to that someplace. Traveling has become drudgery, a necessary ordeal to get to some place different. Nothing about traveling is fun, and it is often quite stressful. Traveling home is more so because there is no anticipation of going someplace new. Airports must be the most inhumane, uninhabitable, uncomfortable, uninspiring, and ugly places that humans have ever designed for themselves. This is why our recent trip was planned to maximize the amount of time spent abroad so that the ratio of travel to traveling was high (15:1 days)!  This time the travel home was uneventful, and clearly a 7 hr layover in Rome is a non-event, something to prepare you for the discomfort and boredom of a 9 hr flight, although TPP will admit, The Grand Budapest Hotel was quite amusing so only 7 hrs of boredom. It makes for a long day and 24 hrs with little or no sleep is never fun and tends to make you into an exhausted grouch. And with the exception of an OK lunch in Rome and an OK burger and margarita at the Chicago airport while waiting for the shuttle bus home the food was terrible, a real downer after enjoying quite good Italian food for a month. Wonder who supplies their kibble? The shuttle bus terminal at O’Hare has all of the services (none) and charm one comes to associate with bus terminals here in the USA. BTW, not the case in Turkey where they know how to do bus travel (yes, even stewardesses!). So home again The Phactors are; the kitty-girls and the F1 are happy to see us back.