Wanderlust

I don't think I've travelled nearly enough.  I say this because of an advertisement I saw on the tube today on the way to work.  The ad was for STA TRAVEL (or STAT RAVEL, I couldn't really be sure as I broke my glasses some time ago and have either been too lazy or vain to have them fixed).  I don't really remember much about the ad, but the tagline was "Before you turn 35".  As a 40 year old, I found this frightening and disturbing and vaguely offensive.

I can just imagine the meeting of the STA Travel marketing department where they came up with that one - a couple of pimply twenty-somethings in baggy pants and baseball caps guzzling Coke and kicking ideas around.

"Yo, Tyler, how about 'Go before you're dead.'"

"Shu'up, Taylor, thas sum sick shit.  Or, or, or 'Before you turn 35'"

"LOL.  Yo mama's 35, beeyatch!"

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?  I'm pretty well travelled for an American, but there are still plenty of places I haven't been to, even in America.  I pointed out to Caroline the other day that in her Brownies group there is a girl named Savannah and another named Georgia.  She stared at me blankly until I explained that Savannah is a city in Georgia.  She asked me what it's like but I have no idea.  I've never been to Savannah, though I have been to Hilton Head just a few miles north, and I remember the stench of the Savannah paper mills like the devil's own flatulence wafting up the coastline.  I hear it's lovely if the wind is right, though, so I'll put Savannah on the list, right along with all the others.

I don't like to brag (OK, yes I do) but I've got 144 cities in 11 countries tagged on my Facebook 'Tripadvisor Cities I've Visited' app.  Fact is, though, that's not enough.  I wonder if it will EVER be enough.  I'm not sure what drives this need to travel, to see new places and experience new things.  It's been a few months since I've been away and I'm getting itchy again.  I have a friend who's got three or four hundred cities tagged and he's still travelling.  It never gets old.

So the idea that you have to get your travelling in before you're 35?  Well, as a forty year old with a need to GO, I can say with some certainty that that's just bollocks.