Have you ever traveled to a place and said “Wow, maybe I could live here?”
Last summer my husband and I had this experience for the first time: we were sitting on a beach watching the sunset. We looked at each other and said, ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be great to live here? We could live here.”
We happened to be in Western Australia, and we had spent a few days driving around the countryside in the Margaret River area. We loved the small towns, the dramatic coastlines, nice beaches, huge forests, farms, vineyards. There was something about the friendly people we met and the general vibe of the region that attracted us. In all our travels, we had never both felt this way about a place we had visited.
This was so interesting to think about: Where would we live? What would we do? The fantasy was nice to ponder for a while.
Of course then reality set in. We knew that we wouldn’t actually pull up stakes and move to the other side of the world, far from family and friends. Perhaps if we were younger and unencumbered….. but it was fun to imagine the possibility.
Too often in our travels we look at the monuments and speed walk through museums and we think we can get to know the place. It can be a new city in your home country or an exotic new place abroad. We say we’ve “seen” it, but have we seen the essence of what it would be like to live there? How many times have we heard, “New York is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there?” Why is that? What makes a place livable for someone?
Of course we make decisions on where to live for many different reasons: to be close to family, for a job, for love, to meet a budget. The location we end up in may not be our first choice. We get entrenched in our home and make the best of it. But for many people, they have the option to live anywhere and they do. How great to have that freedom of choice.
On my recent trip to Paris, I spent some time watching how people go about their daily lives.
What is it with skinny Parisian women carrying their baguettes with the tops nibbled? Is that their lunch? I saw an extremely well dressed young man have a problem scraping something off the bottom of his very pointy, shiny shoe as he was leaving the metro-an annoying situation for him, but an interesting slice of life picture for me. And then there was the guy sitting by the water fountain having a coffee and using his phone. Work break? Waiting for a taxi? Friend?
If I lived in Paris what would my days be like?
