When I visit England, which I try do a few times a year, it’s not for carbon copy experiences but for new-to-me football grounds, theatre productions and hiking trails. If I only stayed in Wandsworth and saw matches at Craven Cottage, my holidays would get dull quickly. Instead, I traverse the country, eat in different restaurants and allow my curiosity to guide me to new adventures. According to Russell, this blend helps keep the spark for exploration alive while still providing comfort. This is important because she says, because “there’s a point at which revisiting the same place starts to become problematic. If we return to a place too many times and exceed our ‘appetite’ for it, it’s called hedonic adaptation – acclimatising to pleasurable things and reverting to our original baseline emotionally.”
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Tiger makes a similar case for her Greek predilection. “The country remains new to me – new beaches, islands and rural towns – so many places to explore that I could spend a lifetime there and not get to even a fraction of them.” Judged solely on arrival airport codes, our trips may appear like duplicates. Yet the experiences we’re having – Tiger in Greece and me in England – are different enough that our journeys never feel stale.
Growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, I watched neighbours travel en masse and in traffic to the Jersey Shore every summer. They’d go to the same town, the same beach with the same amusements on the same pier and stay in the same rental homes. I once wondered: what happens when travel becomes not a break from routine, but just another routine itself?
Now, in an ever-stressful world, I see the appeal of seeking out joy in the familiar while still stepping ever so slightly out of my comfort zone to find new thrills in old places.
Tiger loves her Greek holiday routines but admits that other parts of the world appeal to her too. “I am very curious about Japan, but I really like to control the rhythm of my days,” she says. Her work as a professor is tiring, as is her commute, so it’s understandable when she says, “My time in Greece is a respite that I welcome, both because it’s familiar and strange at the same time.”
She adds: “Athens almost feels like a second home.”
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