It's All Worth It, and It Always Is

Here’s an actual conversation with my six-year-old on the final day of our eventful spring break.  
“Well, what was your favourite part of our trip?   Was it visiting the Statue of Liberty that you so desperately wanted to see?  Was it the American Museum of Natural History, or that hilarious show we saw on Broadway?  Was it hanging out with your aunt in Central Park, or taking the busy subway around the city?   Was it spending a week playing in the big waves of Copacabana?  Was it the cable car to Sugar Loaf Mountain to get that incredible view of Rio?   Maybe it was the Wishing Tree and the monkeys we saw at the top of the mountain?  Was it climbing on massive floats and dressing up in carnival costumes to dance with a beautiful samba princess?  Maybe it was the sharks and stingrays we saw at the aquarium, or eating beach corn, grilled queijo and drinking coconuts at the beach?   Playing with your cute Brazilian cousins, riding a bike along the beach, or spending time with your grandparents who spoiled you rotten with candy and cakes?”
Galileo thought about all this for a half a second, and replied:
“My favourite part was taking the airplane.”

I write these words during our final flight home after two-and-a-half weeks abroad. After a ten-hour overnight leg from Rio to Houston, we spent 90 minutes in line-ups to clear US customs and airport security.  Removing friction from travel is a primary driver for tourism growth.  Adding friction and making life difficult for passengers is the domain of government security and regulations, which has built nonsensical layers of procedure atop unnecessary layers of bureaucracy that make no sense to anyone.  Are we still removing our shoes because one idiot unsuccessfully tried to blow up a plane with his shoelaces twenty-five years ago? Are we still confiscating perfume because liquids over 100ml are deadly?  Are we still getting grilled by customs while connecting through a transit bubble, and going through security again even though we never left the sealed-off arrivals hall?  Which is why, if you have anything less than a two-hour international connection these days, you’re playing with fire.   All this said, our planes took off on time, United Airlines staff have been lovely, and even though they misplaced one of our suitcases for 48 hours, the system somehow worked well enough for little Galileo to have the time of his life, both on the plane and off it. 

​I’ve never been a particular fan of New York.  I’ve visited the city a half dozen times, mostly for professional reasons, and I've always got the sense it's a frenetic place for those in ivory towers, and the overworked masses who support them.  How does it go: Live in New York but leave before you become too hard, and live in LA but leave before you become too soft.  New York tends to be city utterly swept up in the sense of its own self-importance. This is not the centre of the Earth (geographically that’s somewhere in Turkey).   Being rude to strangers is not charming, it’s just being rude.  Perhaps when I was in my twenties, I’d have more fire and energy to take on The Big Apple, a zest I’d exhausted in late 1990’s London (The Big Smoke).  Age has now mellowed me, and nature holds infinitely more appeal than nightclubs or fancy restaurants.    On this trip, I found the subways exhausting, the line-ups at the attractions intense, the people brusque.  Times Square was a violent display of overwhelming advertising and grift.  I certainly enjoyed visiting the Statue of Liberty and American Museum of Natural History with my kids.  Both world-class attractions are transitioning from Covid protocols and were somewhat chaotic. We used a CityPASS which saved us a few bucks, and a company called TodayTix to get heavily discounted Broadway show tickets.  I took the family to see The Play That Goes Wrong, which had all ages in stitches and was the perfect family-friendly live theatre experience, especially for kids who have never seen this level of professional theatre before.  We caught a lovely sunny day at Central Park, and my daughter’s birthday present was a visit to the goopy Sloomoo Institute, which will get its own sloppy sticky story in due course.   We stayed with relatives downtown, and as always, reconnecting with family proved to be the best highlight of all.

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​It's been almost a decade since I visited Rio de Janeiro, presently emerging with the rest of Brazil from dark political days. Just about all my time would be spent with family in Copacabana, staying with my in-laws who live one block from one of the most famous beaches in the world.  Heading into fall, the weather was spectacular: 30℃ blue skies, crashing waves, not a drop of rain in a month that could just as easily be a washout.   Little stalls along the beach offer chairs, umbrellas, drinks and food, and with a caipirinha in hand I was content to watch the kids play in the waves while an endless stream of touts made the rounds offering everything from bolinho de bacalhau (cod fish cakes) to loud shirts and Bluetooth speakers.  I don’t recall Copacabana being this clean, lovely and safe, especially in the evening.  New waste treatment plants have made the water safe to swim in, tourism police and lifeguards patrol the shores, locals wear their teeny-weenie bathing suits, and you can happily spend all day doing nothing (the Brazilian way).  The neighbourhood was also noticeably LGBTQ-friendly. My kids got to know some local characters, relished their acai bowls, street food, Brazilian family, shopping excursions and night markets (the Canadian dollar goes far here). 

Of course, we still had time for the sensational views atop Sugar Loaf Mountain and the AquaRio, the largest aquarium in South America. We also took a braziliant tour called Carnaval Experience, taking us backstage at Samba City to learn about the city’s legendary festival.  Staying relatively put – by my standards anyway – I was reminded of the months my family spent in Chiang Mai and Hoi An, which allowed us to get under the skin of a different place and culture.  Like New York, the traffic and chaos of Rio can get a little much, but since my goals were modest, it was a joy to reconnect with our Brazilian family on these too-few, too-rare occasions, allowing the kids to immerse themselves in the culture of their mother’s heritage.  Ipanema, Santa Theresa, Lapa, heck the rest of Brazil would have been fantastic.  Maybe next time... or maybe I won’t get too far from the beach again.  Either way,  the friction of six airports, the white-knuckle taxis, the financial expense, the subways, the heat, the rain, the packing, the crowds, the jetlag…it’s all worth it, and it always is.

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