Many years ago, I interviewed Kevin Bacon over breakfast at a quiet restaurant on the Upper West Side. He was one of my favorite interviewees of all time, and to this day I remember the gratitude with which he spoke about his profession. Even if the script is mediocre, I remember him telling me, even if you don't connect with the director, even if it's a 14-hour day, “it's still the greatest job in the world.”
Travel is a little bit like acting for the rest of us. You get to step out of your everyday and enter another world. And just like acting, travel comes with irritations and inconveniences, small and large. We travelers are likely to experience a few of those this summer, which, despite skyrocketing ticket prices, is widely expected to break volume records. There will be lines, and there could be meltdowns. You can save yourself a lot of grief by planning smartly and getting to the airport early, but sometimes the headaches are impossible to avoid. When they come, remember how worth it it is.
Another guy I interviewed a very long time ago is Casey Neistat, the celebrity YouTuber and professional traveler. He flies business often enough, to enough places around the world, to be an authority on which first-class lounges have the best showers. But we found ourselves, in the midst of a journey to several African countries, wedged into the back row of a flight from Johannesburg to Livingstone, Zambia. The seats didn't recline, and the air was thick with restroom odors. Gesturing out the window at the wondrous landscape below, he said that even in a lousy seat in coach, he loved to fly. “It's still the greatest thing in the world.” He was right. Even when travel isn't perfect, we're all so lucky that we get to be travelers.
This article appeared in the July/August 2023 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.
