Sally Jane Smith was an avid traveler when, in 2006 on a trip to Sri Lanka, her bus had a head-on collision, resulting in severe long-term injuries and understandable anxiety about future travel. A decade later, she pulled out her mother’s journal of her own travels in Greece as a young woman, and she followed her mother’s path through Greece, exploring historical and archaeological sites while seeking to recover her own joy in travel.
I was happy when Smith approached me about reviewing her book, since this is a book that touches on ideas I love – travel, exploring family history, and dealing with anxiety. I also feel a special connection to Greece, having grown up loving the mythology. It was one of the first countries I traveled to with my husband, in 2006, so in some ways this book felt like retracing my own journey. It’s a place I hope very much to go back to.
The journal Smith follows from her mother is just a list of brief notes on each place, rather than her thoughts and feelings as she journeys. This becomes in some ways more of a mystery that Smith needs to unravel. What kind of traveler was her mother? How did she feel about the amazing things she was seeing? At one point Smith is dismayed by the idea that her mother pocketed stones from historic sites – we’re probably more sensitive today about not picking things up at ancient sites than in the 70s. There are so many places today we can’t see and touch because too many people have gone to them.
In this book, Smith wrestles with two ideas that I also think about when I travel. The first is how much time to spend on “touristy” sites versus going to lesser-known sites. When I travel, I know my time is limited and I also know I’m likely never to come back to the same place – so seeing the most important sites is important to me, and generally they are “touristy” for a reason. But I also don’t like crowds, and some of my most interesting travel memories come from doing something completely unexpected. Smith is a more adventurous traveler than I am, even after her accident, and I enjoyed reading about her explorations.
The second thing she wrestles with is how much time to relax and explore, really savoring a place, versus seeing as much as possible. Again, one reason I travel is to see and experience historical places in the world, and I don’t have much time to do that. Still, I’ve learned to sometimes ignore the voice in my head that tells me to push, push, push and see as much as possible. Mr. CG and I had that experience in Spain. We ran through as many sites as possible in Barcelona but then we got to Granada completely exhausted. We were almost dreading trekking through the Alhambra, which we’d really been looking forward to. On that trip we learned to take it easy and absorb the atmosphere of a place in addition to seeing the sites. We took siestas (evening naps) and spent long nights sitting outdoors with food and wine, and we’ve never had a better trip.
So there was much to enjoy in Smith’s exploration of her own travel experiences and her connections to family. She notes in her afterword that family played a more important role in this book than she expected. I actually would have liked more of her family memories in this book – my sense is she was trying to focus on the travel, but I think travel is an immersive experience, where you think about how what you’re seeing connects to your own memories and your life back home.
Thanks to Smith for a book that took me back to my own travel memories. This book will appeal to those who love memoirs, travel, and history.
Note: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the author and from publisher Journeys in Pages. This book published June 1, 2023. You can learn more about the author here.
