The Zen of Travel Shock

We are traveling to Montreal in June for a family wedding.  This afternoon I started looking up prices on Montreal hotels.

In one tab I was consulting a Montreal metro map. In a second tab I was checking out McGill summer accommodations, my alma mater, which I highly recommend for some of the lowest cost rooms in downtown Montreal.  I was also comparing information from a number of travel websites including hotels.com, venere.com, and tripadvisor.com (all of which we recommend).

In my mind, I was walking along the streets of Montreal, remembering the years I lived there as a student, thinking about all the museums and restaurants and little shops I looked forward to sharing with my parents…

And then Neil told me the time was running out on the parking meter, and Whoosh!—I was transported through time and space! Instead of walking down Rue Sherbrooke in Montreal in the late 1980’s, I found myself teleported to the Nob Hill Flying Star Cafe on Central Avenue in Albuquerque 20 years in the future. Wow!

It was completely mind-bending.  And completely disorienting.

And it is one of the things I love about travel: being totally and utterly shocked at the realization that right now, at this very moment, I am where I am.