The Frenchies’ Escargot

Yesterday was one of the more nostalgic days of my life.

In 2022 shortly after I returned from my Italian Mormon mission I went back to Italy with my parents to show them around. After two weeks of sightseeing, they flew home and I had a backpack and tent and I plan to spend the rest of the summer in Europe.

Nicole, a friend of mine who had a father who was a pilot for Delta, came over to hang out with me because she could fly for free.  We went to Venice for a day and then to Genoa, where I met up with my best friend, Bryce. Then we took a ferry to the island of Sardinia.  I don’t remember details but somehow we took a boat and then taxi to an island called La Maddalena which is in between Corsica and Sardinia.

It was this day where I was converted to being a vagabond and world traveler.  We went to a small beach, and there was only us 3 Americans and another group of 3 men hanging out.  After a while we got to know them.  They were from France and took their boat over to these islands for a month.  They invited us to eat dinner on their boat. They had recently dove for sea snails and that became my first escargot experience made fresh by some Frenchies.

That night we talked about all sorts of life experiences and opinions on the world around us, but it was clear that I knew nothing about the world and that I could travel the rest of my life learning from others through serendipitous encounters.

I set up my tent on that beach and didn’t get a great night sleep. That was 22 years ago. I didn’t remember the name of the beach and back then there was very little Internet or ways to index your travel with technology.

So here I am in 2024 with my family over here in Sardinia and yesterday we drive north to go on a snorkeling excursion, but it is too windy so we take the ferry over to La Maddalena and I find a beautiful beach for the family to play on.  I then start to wonder if I could find this memorable beach that I was at years earlier and I get busy on Google maps zooming in and out.  I see this place that has a cement pier and I remember that was a feature of the place we went years ago. We drive to it and sure enough a thousand memories come back to me.

It was this beach that I saw a vision for my future 22 years ago. A future where I would never stop exploring the world and learning about how little I know and how small one person’s perspective is comparatively.

I have continued to see all of the world each year with my kids no matter their age or resources we have.  We try to travel for a month or more at a time so it goes from vacation to travel. When our first born was 6 months old we came to Italy and used coachsurfing.com before there was Airbnb.  We somehow stayed 2 months on a budget of less than $3000.

When you leave the USA you quickly reflect on how important and yet how silly our politics and problems are to the rest of the world. For me I begin to realize I could plop down on any coordinates in the globe and find a way to live and live.

If you have been converted to traveling, was there a distinct experience where it happened for you?

Thanks for letting me share this. Here is a boat I saw yesterday in same place as the boat I ate on years earlier

SP