Carrying the World Home

Carla and I will wrap up this chapter of our travels tomorrow, when we leave Chania, Greece, and begin our journey back to the States. We’ll stop in London for the weekend to see Carla’s sister, Eileen, and then we’ll head home for the summer.

This stretch of our travels began on December 8th in Turkey. From there, we made our way to Sicily, Montenegro, Croatia, and finally Greece. It has been a beautiful six months.

We’ll be back in the States for about four months, until mid-October. Then we’ll head out again for a couple of months, return home for the holidays, and begin traveling again in mid-January through mid-June of 2027. We do have our next destinations mostly chosen, but I’ll wait until later this summer to share those. We’ve been known to change our minds a time or two as plans take shape. But for now, we’re very excited about what’s ahead. Then again, I’m not sure there has ever been a trip we planned that I didn’t describe that way.

Travel is now such a part of our lives that I don’t think we ever come home quite the same. Each place leaves something with us, though not always in ways we understand right away. Sometimes the meaning of a trip is clear while we’re still there, walking the streets and feeling what it is like to be in that particular place. Other times, it takes longer. We have to come home, return to ordinary life for a while, and let the experience settle before we can really understand what it gave us.

And six months is a long time to be away. After a while, the places we visit simply start feeling like home. We have favorite streets, familiar cafes, morning walks we come to count on, and views that become part of our daily life. So, when it’s time to leave, it doesn’t feel like the end of a vacation. It feels more like saying goodbye to a place where we actually lived.

Yet returning to our real home is wonderful. And the best part, by far, is reconnecting in person with family and friends. That fills our hearts in a way nothing else can. When we first started being away for long stretches, I wondered if it might weaken some of those relationships. I wondered if we would feel too absent, or if people would begin to feel more distant from us. But in many ways, the opposite has happened.

Because we are gone for long periods, the time we spend with people when we return feels more focused and intentional. Yes, we do miss some of the ordinary day-to-day moments. That part is real. But when we're back, we tend to give our relationships a kind of attention and presence we might not have given as easily if we believed there was always plenty of time. That has been one of the beautiful and unexpected gifts of this life.

The harder part of returning to the States is the culture shock. And in some ways, I feel that shock more sharply returning home than I do anywhere else.

The first thing that usually hits me is the car culture. We go from walking almost everywhere, or using trains, buses, trams, and ferries, to suddenly needing a car for nearly everything. After months abroad, the lack of public transportation and walkability in so much of the United States feels glaring. It isn’t just inconvenient. It changes the texture of daily life. It changes how people move through the world and how often we casually encounter one another.

I also miss the international feeling that is present in so many of the places we visit. There is something beautiful about walking down a street and hearing several languages or seeing people from different parts of the world moving through the same squares, cafes, markets, and old towns. It makes the world feel large and varied and wonderfully mixed together.

Of course, there are places in the United States where you can feel that too. But for us, it has become one of the great joys of travel. It reminds us how wide the world is, and how lucky we are to experience even a small part of it.

Mostly, though, when we return home, I feel grateful. Grateful that Carla and I are able to live this life we have chosen, and for all it has given us along the way: the places we have seen, the people we have met, the walks we have taken, the meals we have shared, and those mornings when we stepped outside with no great plan other than to see what the day might offer. Travel keeps opening us, teaching us, and changing us, and I don’t take any of that for granted.

And, of course, coming home also means returning to the people we love. That is the part that makes it beautiful. The hugs. The conversations. The catching up. The simple joy of sitting across from someone we have missed.

I’m also grateful for the way travel has changed what home means to us. The more we see of the world, the harder it is to think of home as only one place. We still belong to the people we love and to the life we return to. That hasn't changed. But now we also carry pieces of other places with us: the languages we have heard, the kindnesses we have received, the streets we have walked, and the many ways we have seen people live and love and make a life.

So, in that sense, home now feels both smaller and larger. Smaller, because no single place can hold all that we have experienced. Larger, because more places have found their way into our hearts. We carry them with us, and because of that, the world itself feels a little more like home.

And now, to everyone who reads this blog, follows along with our travels, leaves a comment, or shares a story, please know how much your presence means to us. Truly. More than I can probably say.

Travel can look very solitary from the outside, especially when I’m the one posting photos and writing the stories. But in many ways, you have been a part of this journey. Your comments have encouraged us. Your travel stories have inspired us. And more than once, something one of you shared has made us rethink a plan, add a place, change direction, or notice something we might otherwise have missed.

So, thank you for being here with us, even from a distance. Carla and I are very grateful.

I’ll continue blogging over the summer, although It may be every other week, or every few weeks. But I’ll still be here, still writing, still sharing thoughts, and probably still sorting through more photos than I could ever possibly post. And honestly, even if we stopped traveling today, I think I have enough photos and memories to write from for years.

So please stay tuned, and thank you for traveling with us through this chapter. Thank you for your kindness, your encouragement, your stories, and your presence along the way. Carla and I are truly grateful.

I hope you have a wonderful summer. And I hope your own journeys, whether they take you across the world or deeper into your own life, continue to surprise you, open you, and bring you more beauty and love than you expected.