We love to travel.  We love to eat.  We especially love to eat when we travel, or better yet, travel while we eat.  So what do we do when we can’t do that?  Why, we watch travel shows and live vicariously through them.

We’re not talking the kind of show with the geeky host wearing an unsullied backpack and wrinkle-free pants and good ‘walking shoes’ (which begs the question:  aren’t all shoes technically for walking?)   Our kind of travel show includes a cool host, lots of eating strange and unusual food (guilt!), lots of drinking local alcohol (and lots of suffering the consequences of drinking said alcohol), not to mention equipment breakdowns, unforeseen disasters and lots of laughter.

The first of the genre that struck our fancy was Michael Palin’s Pole to Pole from the early 1990s.  It was very good and very funny which is hardly surprising since it was hosted by Michael Palin.  I especially loved the Russian vodka scene (no spoilers here – rent it!).  The Amazing Race offers great excitement, a lot of breathless and frustrated contestants, but only short tastes of local customs that leave us feeling frustrated that we didn’t get to know more about the cultures of the countries that they visit.  It is a race, after all – no time to linger.  At least in the olden days they would challenge the contestants to eat some local delicacy that was abhorrent to the North Americans, but they haven’t done that lately.  Then there was a Canadian show called Departures.  It featured two guys who weren’t afraid of looking ugly and doing bad things while being filmed.  One of the hosts wasn’t not very adventurous with food, and vomit was featured occasionally, but the boys were charming in their own way.  We’re still waiting for the next season to be released.

Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is nearly perfect as a travel/food show because the host is suitably scruffy and food-fearless.  He rarely enters high-end establishments and street food is his favourite.  I love when he bites into something and says, “Oh this is good.”  He usually hires a local guide to take him around so we’re given a history lesson as well as the lowdown of the local culture and customs.  He scorns vegetarians but don’t they all?  More recently we tuned into the Ewan McGregor/Charley Boorman series Long Way Around where the two hosts drove on/off-road BMW motorcycles from London to New York going east! It was a great show but not a lot of food was shown being eaten, except for the odd scene where Ewan would be game for some local delicacy and Charley wouldn’t be brave enough.  They followed up with a second series, Long Way Down, where they travel on bikes again but from John O’Groats in northern Scotland to Johannesburg, South Africa.  It just made me want to learn how to ride a motorcycle and travel the world.  I’ll add that to my bucket list.

T understands the draw of the open road, since he used to ride motorcycles.  He and his friends would take spontaneous road trips here and there. Years later it was us, by car.  There is something about driving long distance that is calming and beautiful. The road trip can be therapeutic too.

We’ve had a week of unimaginable grief.  We seek the catharsis that the open road might offer us. Tomorrow we are embarking on a trip that will hopefully heal our broken hearts.

Please stay tuned.