Last week I was reminded about the emotional pull that a picture can have. On a trip to London’s National Gallery, my dashing date and tour guide reacquainted me with Piero della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ. As we entered the room with the painting front and centre, a wave of … well, I don’t know what it was, nostalgia I guess … whomped me.
Read MoreA few years ago, I found this quote in a magazine somewhere, and took a photo to keep it with me. In just a few lines it reflects the tug that we feel, us wandering children, who choose to live so from home.
It's blindingly simple.
You never fully understand or appreciate where you're from until you leave it.
Until you have to explain and defend it to others, to whom it is foreign.
Only then can you see why it is the way it is and why you love it. Nay, how intensely you love it.
If travel does one thing, it shows your roots in a way that nothing else can.
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Through a comedy of errors involving an absent passport and a surprise birthday trip, I found myself on a weekend jaunt to Brussels a couple of weeks ago. My only previous visit to the city was a sad, grey tale of a group of rugby fanatics having their hopes dashed as the Les Bleus demolished Les All Blacks in 2007. I was looking forward to updating my Belgium anecdotes with something a little more positive.
Read MoreIt's been 17 years since I first learned In Flanders Fields by heart. A chorus of 13 year old girls dutifully reciting; children who had never known war or conflict, who were far more concerned with gossiping about boys than the stories of a war long past. But here I am so many years later, on a different continent, at the place it all happened.
And unexpectedly, I am in tears. It starts with Atatürk's message.
Göreme at 6am is still. There's a slight chill, but no wind. The light filters through the sky, inky black softening around us as we stand on the roof of our hotel. At first you can just make out a few of the little clusters, black rounded shadows, dotted around the the outskirts of the town. But then as your eyes adjust to the light, you see more groups surrounding the town and out into the distance. Now and then, you see a burst of colour, a glow in the darkness as one of them is filled with burning gas.
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