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There’s nothing better than getting home from vacation and being happy to be there. Austin right now is summery warm, well, hot. But not so hot that you can’t walk the dog. And Portugal’s weather was like California. Breezy, and nice, on the water.
Travel, more than anything, has helped me break and remake my lifestyle and my routines. Coming home, I was happy to find myself enjoying the foilage, seeing the signs for Buccees, noticing how different the neighborhoods are here than in Europe.
This is why I go to Central America to go offline in December. You get there and you immediately feel different. Like how I quit coffee cold turkey just because as soon as I arrived I realized… I didn’t need it! Call it sun, or fresh fruit, but I don’t discount the air, either, and everything about a landscape changes how you feel, which is why…
Sometimes changing yourself is as simple as travel. Going somewhere new. Not only does it break you from your routines, you get to see how other people live. Which is not the same. In Portugal it was mostly a view in to family businesses, and a few students. People are leaving the countryside for cities, and our Sommelier told us that they would be coming back within a decade, recognizing that the grass isn’t greener there.
I was mostly off wifi, which is often unreliable, every time I tried to get a moment away to review Twitter I would find myself being easily pulled away to go wander again.
And so different things appeal to you when you are somewhere different… And you feel different.
Unburdened by your routines, you also create space from your work. One thing I tell all of the Founder’s I work with is that “Space creates clarity.” It’s productive to step away, even though people pride themselves on always being heads down. If you’re always heads down, you become an ostrich; you can’t see the vista ahead. You take space on your calendar, no matter how hard it is to start, you’ll immediately have new ideas come in. Entrepreneurs thrive when bored, because they hate it!
Another thing I noticed back in Austin is the massive fleet of Waymos. Technology, and the future, is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. If you haven’t ridden in one yet, you immediately prefer them as the best option. Now every time I call an Uber I hope to connect to a Waymo. Which is funny because on vacation I enjoy talking to the drivers, like a few weeks back in Mexico City, which allowed me to practice my Spanish. Waymo, and the soon to launch here Tesla, are hinting at the future that’s coming, quickly. It took only 10-15 years to replace horses from NYC to cars. How long will it take for there to be fleets of Waymo’s everywhere? Probably about that timeline. In part because they will be very profitable. The stats are now showing that Waymo’s can be on the road for 18+ hours per day, needing just a bit of time for charging or maintenance. Whereas Uber drivers have limits, forced by the app to take breaks. And of course, sleep.
The first thing I do when I get back is fire up the huge backlog of media and info for me to cull through, which is a rush. At first, it felt great. Then I couldn’t help but have this sinking feeling, as I realized that… there’s so much junk to wade through! It feels like our networks have it backwards; you scroll and scroll and wade through so much material just to get what you want. Algorithms show you all types of things you don’t want, including ads, or things you don’t care about.
Hmmm… it’s almost like our social media channels are slot machines! So coming back I’m seeing more clearly how much noise we have to sift through daily: Marketing, ads, selling, explicit and disturbing content. This might be why LLMs can beat out Google Search… who wants to search? Occasionally, you want to, like when you go Vintage shopping. Otherwise, you seek curation. The only way X is usable for me today is through Lists and Search. I do not, or try not, to use the feed at all.
How does the saying go? “It’s not information overload, but rather filter failure.”
So anyway, I meant to write you this post about Portugal itself. It’s a great country, which used to be a great empire, which, as I learned, was under Dictatorship until the 1970s! And even more shocking was how they still controlled colonies, like Macau, up until the late 1990s!
Portugal ran the spice trade globally, mixing and mashing new ingredients together that they had grown or picked up from the East.
Turns out many foods and food combinations you’ve heard of are actually Portuguese. Except today we don’t recognize is. Like a Goan dish, Vindaloo… not Indian!
And same with tempura! If you can believe that. Portuguese origin. And if you go to a city that has it, you HAVE to take a Culinary Backstreets tour. It was fantastic. The places you go give you a real feel for life there and could never be found on your own.
Mostly, I want to ask the guide questions… personal questions.
Sometimes they oblige.
Are you optimistic about the country? How do you feel about politics? Are your friends staying or leaving? What’s different? What’s not? If there’s one thing that AI can’t replace, it’s travel.
You’ve still got a body, and your body is affected by its surroundings. You can learn facts, but there’s nothing like being there. Being in the library where they sold banned books, paying fines to the dictator. You feel it.
So travel is educational and changes you. I’m not saying it’s cheap or easy to get away. When you get there, you’ll be glad. If you can’t do it in a new city, you can do it in your own city or town. When was the last time you learned your location’s history, visited a museum, or even got a tour?
So I’m happy to be home, which is a good sign. And I’m bringing home some of the flavor and aroma of another country. And I’m changed, even if ever so slightly.
Travel will do that to you.
