We always associate traveling with something new and unexplored. Psychologists advise changing our environment on and off. The monotony of the work-home chain evokes a feeling that nothing happens in life. As a result, depression and nervous breakdown can be up.
Traveling always means a way out of your comfort zone. But what about traveling to the same places? In this way, you are just moving from one comfort zone to another.
Is everything as simple as it seems at first blush?
And why do people like traveling to the same places over and over?
My Precious
It’s not too exciting to do the same on every vacation, agree? Of course, most travelers relate new experiences to excitement and expectation of something unusual. But, if you think about it, people always pay more attention to fresh and even potentially dangerous things than the familiar ones. They enjoy traveling long distances, visiting unseen places, and putting new stamps on their passports. Isn’t that the perfect picture of a family vacation?
And who on the Earth would want to waste their precious days going the same way year after year? For example, Martha. She has been going on vacation only to the Greek island Zakynthos for 15 years, with her husband and children. And Martha would never change her lovely vacation place for any other resort in the world, despite a good family income. So, Zakynthos is Martha’s Precious 
. Sure, it has a vast range of benefits. But, the quiet beaches of the Ionian Sea can sweep even the most experienced tourist, and rightly so.
Walks through the underwater caves or along the narrow paths in the green valleys can hardly ever leave somebody indifferent. The evening program of Zakynthos is also always lively, and no night is complete without a concert. However, everything always gets boring because people look for new experiences. But not Martha’s family. And there are not a few people like her, and it’s a fact. So what is the secret?
Avoiding newbies’ mistakes
You can’t avoid all newbies’ mistakes when you travel somewhere or do something for the first time. Well, it’s perfectly normal. However, if you are traveling with young children and have a limited travel budget, you have much fewer rooms for mistakes. Here are some examples. As you don’t know about fridges in the hotel lobby, the food you bring in spoils while waiting for your room to be ready.
You often get in a traffic jam as you don’t know a shortcut to get around it. The same thing goes for lovely restaurants nearby that offer good food and reasonable prices. And all those unexpected detours and stormy afternoons don’t make the best travel memories. Thus, if you want to take an actual break from everyday life and young children, the fewer surprises, the better.
Measure time in sweet ways
One of the main reasons Martha visits Zakynthos every year is the pleasant memories of the place. It allows her to measure time in delightful ways. So, the woman, with a smile on her face, told the following story. During her first visit to the resort, she and her husband couldn’t leave their four-year-old son even for a second by the pool.
In a couple of years, a little boy could swim without help and even go down a water slide. Now, Martha’s son is an excellent swimmer who can stay in the water for hours. Precisely these memorable dates Martha finds valuable, and sometimes they let her see how much has changed.
Special treatment for regular visitors
In most cases, the service of local hotels and restaurants treats regular visitors with more affection. The special treatment may come from gifts, benefits, discounts, and other small tokens of appreciation for choosing a particular resort year after year. Of course, you can consider this reason superficial, but it doesn’t make it less accurate. When you return to specific resorts, they love it and sometimes show you how important it is by giving you a higher class of service. And who’s going to turn down drink coupons?
More photos!
Are you one of those people who loves taking pictures for the annual holiday card? And you don’t tire of posing for your kids and husband every year at the same restaurant table? That’s why a repeat vacation is your time to shine and rise to the occasion. For instance, Martha has lots of photos on Navagio Beach or Shipwreck Beach. It’s the island’s premier photo location, and the number of photos Martha has taken tells that she will never tire of it. And not just she does.
The half-destroyed ship still stands alone on the sandy shore. It actively becomes rusty from the sea proximity but attracts many tourists who want to take unusual photos against its background every year. Navagio Beach is one of the most stunning and picturesque places in the Mediterranean. It’s on the island’s northwest of Zakynthos and has one exciting feature. You can’t get to Shipwreck Beach by any means from the land — only from the sea. The water in the bay has an unusual milky blue shade, and the sand is so white that it dazzles in the sunlight.
Hedonic adaptation or a new challenge
It’s essential to learn how to find new things in the familiar ones. No one could argue against that. But what is the critical problem of returning to the same place? Perhaps, no matter how wonderful it was for the first time. It may not bring out the same vivid impressions on a second visit. Finally, there is a particular term for this phenomenon in psychology: hedonic adaptation or hedonic treadmill.
It’s a perfect metaphor for what is going on in our brain: we are running tirelessly to pursue a permanent state of happiness and never achieve it. Researchers believe that hedonic adaptation has a protective function, preventing us from too much external influence, the same as our sweat glands save us from overheating. Some scientists even call this phenomenon “psychological immunity” since our ability to adapt depends on our response to exogenous stimuli.
The magic goes away, so we look for the next thing to do that will bring us joy. But, as with boredom, there is a definite challenge here with learning how to do nothing.
- How can we find new exciting things?
- What haven’t we done yet? How can we find joy in the same things?
Martha thinks there is a lesson to be learned here about finding more profound pleasure in what you’ve done before. The ability to see different facets confronts adaptation.
The more memorable, positive events you notice throughout the day, the harder it will be for your brain to adjust to at least one of them. We all have little tricks to lift our spirits, whether it’s a favorite food, place, or hobby. Our purpose is to create an endless variety of that happy menu. But it’s important to remember that we can also find joy in the mainstream setting. Even after the initial feelings of novelty have cooled. So, what is a recipe for happiness? Just remember how great it is to have what we have.
Things stay mostly the same
Changes happen all the time, and it’s good. Even if the world is spinning too fast and news is running one after another. So, Martha finds pleasure and comfort in returning to her now native Greek island, like many other travelers who choose the same resorts. If only because to greet raccoons in the stone park of Askos. It’s a fantastic place where all objects are made of stone with human hands.
The ancient reservoirs and water vessels, the pools carved in the rock, and the old stables are in mint condition. But kids are more into watching the animals. And Martha too. Ponies and raccoons, roe deer and turtles, a wide variety of birds and insects inhabit perfectly here. Speaking of which, it’s the children’s zoo, and they can touch and even feed the animals. This place remains the same, but new tourists’ emotions still fill it with every year.
Conclusion
Of course, Martha’s kids are all grown up and don’t beg for candies at the candy store anymore. Instead, the children in the pool are becoming more and more adorable. And as Martha estranges herself from those childhood years, she seems to get drunker and drunker fewer and fewer every year. However, the point stands. An annual return to a beautiful Greek vacation is precisely that kind of vacation that Martha and many other travelers choose again and again.
Dominic Hyde has been working as a project manager with 5+years of experience at progressive insurance company – EKTA . He is a professional writing expert in such topics as HR, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.
The post Why Do We Like Traveling to the Same Places Over and Over? appeared first on Travel Experta - Travel, Lifestyle, Freedom.
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By: Marina Villatoro
Title: Why Do We Like Traveling to the Same Places Over and Over?
Sourced From: feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheTravelExperta/~3/9EFpZUbqH5w/
Published Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2021 19:29:43 +0000
