A town of flowers

Today's post is again about traveling, but traveling to a place where you have previously been. For some this might sound boring, but for me this is even more exciting, especially if it's a distant place that you've never thought you'd see again.

When you come back after some years, you might get the strange feeling of regaining the lost time. It's a time illusion that makes you feel that nothing has passed since you had last been there. Although both you and your life have changed a lot, you feel unchanged. The time that has passed in between shrinks and seems like a dream. And as the illusion fades and lucidity comes back, you feel astonished at how quickly time has passed.

It was three years ago that I went to Niagara On The Lake, one of the most beautiful places that I've ever been to. It's a little Canadian town located in the South of Ontario province, near the Niagara Falls. It's not as popular as the Falls, but it's sure worth visiting. It's a town with a vintage flavor, full of flowers, marvelous houses, cute antique shops, golf courses, fresh fruits and wineries. Their wines are really famous and I've tried some of them that I'll never forget. This is probably the town with the most numerous and beautiful flowers and it's just mesmerizing how many colors meet your eyes. The photos that I've made are only a glimpse of the wonderful spectacle.

Something that really impressed me was a deserted house, forgotten among other rich beautifully arranged houses. The back garden and the chairs by the pool looked as if the owners had one day left home and never come back, never intending to leave their house for good. The house is now lonely waiting to dwell someone. If I had money I would have bought this house to properly take care of it...

Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down

Traveling...

The beauty and the sadness of traveling: getting into the atmosphere and then having to let go. Each time I leave a place I feel that I leave there a part of myself, but having a wonderful experience to remember. Scattered images, thoughts, sensations, thrills...that is what I feel when leaving a place and ooh... the bitter feeling that I might never see that place again.

If you are open, try not to judge or compare it's almost impossible not to get into the atmosphere of a place and breathe in the same rhythm as everything around you. No matter how famous, unknown, gossiped or praised that place is, it has its special flavor that will surely enchant you if you set yourself loose of preconceptions. That's why you feel sad at a departure, even when you know that another exciting trip awaits. You give a moment of your life to that place and receive a memory, it's an exchange that will make you feel richer and poorer at the same time. Traveling implies leaving, losing a place, but gaining another jewelry to hide in that box of memories. That jewelry never looses its sparkle, cause whenever you think of a past trip, you get a meaning and a lesson out of it, or at least it will make you smile and feel proud that you have been THERE.

Annie Lennox - Into the West