Reality of Traveling

Whenever traveling we only highlight the good parts and fun times. I'm a realist, and I know that traveling can be dirty, exhausting and downright not fun. But that's the best part of it. You learn more about yourself in those times...and about others. When we were Edinburgh I told a twelve-year-old to F off. I know, I know it's horrible. Not my finest moment, but he was a street urchin and cussing us out, and I had had enough. I'm not proud of myself, but in that moment I learned what my limits were and that I can really disappoint myself sometimes.

So being a realist I know there will be times when we'll see ugly things, get annoyed with each other, and may be disappointed.

Any metropolitan area is going to have dirty streets, seedy parts, even seedier people, homelessness and urban decay. Tampa is fraught with panhandlers and seedy areas in the urban areas, but the tourist areas--the beaches--don't have that as much.

The alternative is to live/visit creepy pre-planned, government-run communities like Celebration, Florida.  It's a "master-planned" community that is gated and controlled by Disney who says what color house you can have down to how long your grass should be cut. The population is almost 94% white. Scary!!!

The only semi-interesting part is they snow out the town in December to "resemble" Christmas time for us Floridians transplants from the north.