Welcome!

First stop on your tour: hit the About page to find out why and how Blogtrotting came to be. Then go to the Destinations page to sign up your blog and find other bloggers in your region or one you're interested in. Finally, FOLLOW Blogtrotting using the widget on the right! Come back every day to see what corner of the world we're visiting.

Can't wait to see where we'll go next!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Field Trip Friday: Favorite Vacation Photo

I've done a fair amount of traveling. And I am something of a shutterbug, which means that I have taken a vast number of photos during those travels. The great majority of those photos, especially from the pre-digital era, are not all that spectacular. The translation from "Wow! That would be an awesome shot!" to an actual awesome picture is a rocky one, fraught with sun glare, bad shadows, poor composition, and the worst, people moving. But sometimes, despite all of that, you get a good one.

The one that immediately came to mind when I thought of this topic is not one of those.

Despite this, it is hands down my all time favorite vacation photo. In fact, it is framed and hangs on my living room wall.

















This is me, my mom and my stepdad* at the top of the Eiffel Tower. If you look down to my right, you can see the Seine. We took this on a family trip about 10 years ago. My cousin was in the Netherlands for an internship and we took the opportunity to visit her and make a big trip out of it. So my Uncle (her father), my parents and I all met her in Paris, where we spent five days before moving on to Rome for five days.

This is the first time I took a big trip with my parents as an adult, and it was a different experience than when I was younger. I will always be a kid in my mom's eyes, but our relationship has changed as I've gotten older and the nuances of our interactions more flavored by my maturity. Importantly, though, it was the most time I had spent with my parents since I had moved to Baltimore several years before. For financial and scheduling reasons, my trips home to Kansas in those days were short and infrequent, so getting to spend that much time with my family was extra special.

So this photo embodies for me the quirky nature of my mom and I's relationship paired with one of my favorite cities in the world, Paris. I can't look at it without smiling.

Link up your favorite photos! Please link directly to the post, please!




*I'm not crazy about this term, because the connotation for "stepparents" is bad and my relationship with my stepdad is anything but. He is a very, very important person in my life and the term stepdad just doesn't do justice to how supportive and loving he has been to me. Unfortunately, there just isn't a replacement that doesn't sound contrived or silly. Sigh.

2 comments:

  1. I can see why you like that picture, Cara...it made me smile just looking at the happy expressions on your faces. You look so young and carefree!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love how your stepdad (despite the insufficient word) is totally on his game, smiling straight ahead and you and your mom are having your moment!

    ReplyDelete