The Art of Traveling

A few weeks ago we headed east to visit family. Cruising on a turnpike that often has me stopping for Diet Cokes to avoid nodding off (it’s the drab repetition) was a different kind of experience.

At one point, I don’t know how else to put it: I felt my heart swell—lightening, lifting. Was it a grove of pink-orange maples? A dogwood so red it was almost purple? The cumulative effect of all that fall color streaming past the car window? Whatever the source, it was such a welcome feeling.

~

Our ten months of world travel included so many memorable visuals, natural and human-made, including in our own mutable home.  

We all got in on the making. One day Ray, inspired by the view from our San Telmo apartamento (Buenos Aires, stop #1), hit the balcony with a blank postcard and some watercolor pencils.

Another day, he drew a pup (inspiration) that would come to decorate our fridges over the course of the trip.

I didn’t do much by way of drawing myself, but while in Tunisia I collaborated with the kiddo on a Duolingo-inspired stuffie (he colored, I stitched).

Flynn’s role as the family’s resident artist was on full display throughout the trip. And although I don’t recall feeling any palpable heart swells in response, his creations brought his parents plenty of delight.

Whenever we’d land in a new place, tracking down a block of standard printer paper was in order. Thankfully, doing so was easier than acquiring tape (cello, duct, you name it) and absorbent sponges, the latter of which I may have attempted to stockpile a few months in only to realize, drat, our luggage would not accommodate.

Said paper enabled the creation of this one-of-a-kind, exclusively-for-Mama activity book. Side note: Adventure Guy got his start as the protagonist of a 2021 Flynn-authored book series. Since then, AG has also appeared on a one-of-a-kind, exclusively-for-Flynn T-shirt.

Visually cataloging items has always been a Flynn fav—and las frutas de Buenos Aires offered lots of inspo.

Coloring was another pastime. I bought the above poster—Argentina with images and words describing its 23 provincias—from the folks at the A+ Lunfarda Travel. It surfaced again in our Spain and Tunisia Airbnbs.

Those rojo locks complement the overall palette nicely, eh?

Kiddo even dipped his toes into installation art while in BA, with an ephemeral work that went up and came down inside a day. Hee.

Again taking advantage of ofertas de frutas locales, the culinary arts also got some play. (Shout-out to Adventure Guy, hanging out on F’s shirt.)

More eats! F made these in Buenos Aires, and here they are at our place in Málaga, Spain (stop #2). That Coke bottle still makes me smile.

Speaking of BA + burgers, don’t miss El Banco Rojo if you’re in that city with that hankering. Muy bueno.

Busted out the construction paper for this short book project. (Had the U.S. already started feeling to him like a distant memory??)

Málaga, like most all cities we visited, stopped us in our tracks with the street art. This was in el barrio de Lagunillas.

Lagunillas was also where, earlyish in our Málaga stay, I stumbled across a small art studio, El Retornó de Lilith, which I learned offered a weekly drop-in painting class in English for niños. F ended up going three or four times, emerging with cool creations like this pouncing wolf.

We found very few structured kid activities in English on our travels; it wasn’t something we had expectations (or had even thought much at all) about before the start of the trip. That said, R and I definitely appreciated opportunities like the art class, including for the date nights we got out of the deal.

I always made a point of decorating the walls, shelves, etc of the places we stayed, starting soon after arriving and then adding bits, like new artworks and school curriculum-related printouts, as they were created and acquired. The effect was a visual representation/trail of the trip to date, and I think it probably brought me some comfort, the continuity.

Flynn’s 🇹🇳 bedroom decorations included a note from his babysitter in Buenos Aires and a Bulbasaur illustration from his sitter in Sidi. (Kid’s love of Pokémon was a constant on the trip.)

Speaking of Pokémon, F beefed up his parents’ collections with super packs and VMAX rarities galore.

Those special edition Pokémons eventually gave way to a series of collector cards Flynn called Legend Creatures. For a week or so in Sidi Bou Said, he would put together groupings that would be the talk of the family for a few: “I’m working on a new drop!” “Ohh, Flynn says another batch is about to drop!” “Check out this latest drop! Best one yet!”

Flynn found a collaborator in new friend M, also a patient Pokémon play-along-er and talented photographer we met through my dear old middle school pal Garrett. M gave F’s chaotic creation a digital spin during a weekend trip to the lovely Chiang Dao.

While in Chiang Mai, we learned about Crafty Art Club, a cool operation that offers M-F camp sessions for locals as well as tourists during summer break in CM, which happened to coincide with our time in northern Thailand. After confirming we wouldn’t be taking a slot from any interested local families, we signed Flynn up.

He had a hell of a time, returning with pop-art-inspired self-portraits, superhero costumes, bean creations that transported me straight back to my own childhood…and the wild number shown above. The adult artists running the show may have had a big hand in its making, but dang! What’s possible with cardboard, an industrial stapler, a hot glue gun, and some paint. We paid $400 total for two weeks of this delightful offering, and the concentrated kid social time that came with it (a first for F in more than eight months) + the welcome break it gave kid from parents and parents from kid were gifts. Flynn has even remained in touch with a kiddo he befriended there.

Artin’ it up with new friend R at a Yakult Swallows game, where we met R and his parents a few weeks into stop #5’s stay in Higashimurayama, Japan.

We actually first met the family in Buenos Aires, through a tourist/expat parent group on Facebook. After hitting it off at a picnic the group organized, the six of us hung out a few more times in BA. And when we learned that R/N/H were gonna be in Tokyo around the same time as it would make sense, potentially, for us to be there, Ray and I both started feeling the pull to include Japan on our itinerary.

It was so cool/strange/delightful to reunite with these folks almost half a year later in a completely different corner of the world. N, being from the area, was full of fun plans and ideas, and we ended up hanging with her crew a half dozen times over the 4.5 weeks we were around.

We’re thinking maybe Seattle for our next meet-up(!), as H is from and has family there and so visits regularly.

Our next and final stop (#6) was Iceland, where the artistic output included doctored Pokémons and we were all starting to feel a little pasted together.

Man. Now, on this planet, I’m feeling words like these extra: Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

Thanks for reading/viewing. I hope the stream of color and creativity brought you a boost, too.