Finding the Humor in Travel

When you travel as much as we do, there will inevitably be bad days.

The weather will conspire to turn cycling or hiking into cold, rainy slogs or hot, windy tortures
Google map lady will lead you astray
Sites or museums will be unexpectedly closed
Small-minded bureaucrats will flex their meager little powers and stymie you
Subpar hotels & restaurants will leave you tired, ill-fed, or worse.

Or, periodically, you’ll just be tried and cranky and everything will be a bother.

When stuff does go wrong, we try not to get too wound up. One of the things that helps is to remind ourselves that we’ll get through it, and if things are really bad, in the end, “This could turn into a funny story.”

Even on good days we try to find the humorous side of things wherever we can. Laughing, even just a little bit can do wonders for your mood.

I think of this as our “Monty Python travel philosophy.” Most Monty Python fans are Holy Grail devotees, but I’ve always been partial to Life of Brian, and that movie’s final song, in particular. Just in case you’re not familiar with it, or would just like to sing along, you can watch the 3 minute video of the song Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Or just read the initial part of the lyrics below.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
“But Brian, you know what they say?
Some things in life are bad
They can really make you mad
Other things just make you swear and curse
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best
And
Always look on the bright side of life
Always look on the light side of life”

Capturing the Funny

During our 11+month travel trip that spanned the end of 2022 and almost all of 2023, we saw a lot of things that made us laugh and we caught enough funny things on camera that rather than create a ginormous blog post that fills up our subscribers’ email inboxes, I’ve created a web page to capture all this humor.

Please visit Finding the Funny in Travel to see what caught our funny bone. We hope that page brings you at least a few laughs and brightens your day.

And do remember to always look on the bright side of life!