Prompt #3: Music and travel memories often go hand in hand. A song can inspire our explorations, or it can take us back to a specific place and time. Tell us about your travel playlist and what it means to you.

“Music is what feelings sound like.” –Somebody

I often find myself listening to an album on repeat while traveling. So whenever I hear Manu Chao’s La Radiolina I’m taken straight back to Panama (and my first solo trip). Flaming Lips and I’m on the bullet train in Japan, Sigur Ros or Silverchair I’m on a long bus ride somewhere in Morocco, Air’s Moon Safari and I’m in Australia (I had the chance to see Air at the Opera House in Sydney on my RTW trip – which was “super surreal and amazing” according to Olivia of 2008), Eel’s Shootenanny! and I’m in Turkey, REM and I’m in Athens (they did a free concert while I was there, for the launch of MTV Greece), Velvet Underground and Wilco is Romania & Bulgaria, and Beach House takes me to Iceland.

It’s amazing how much your different senses can transport you to a distant travel memory – whether it’s sound, scent or taste. So here’s Air’s Remember from their 2008 show in Sydney that always leaves me grinning.

Have you seen any shows while traveling?

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We made really good time on the way back to Sydney and hit Central Station by 7:30pm. I walked to the hostel with my pack, checked in, called about Air tickets, but there wasn’t an answer. I decided to just go for it and bought a metro ticket down to Circular Quay and jogged from there to the Opera House. It was 8:15 by the time I got there. They had shut the ticket window as I was coming up the stairs, but will call was still open. The lady at the window was so cool. She said that they had a few tickets still and that I’d just missed part of the opening band. And then she was like “I’m going to give you really good seats.” I ended up in the 8th row, front and center! Cool beans! Air came on about 30 minutes later. Definitely a $99.95 AUD well spent. Loved, loved, loved it. It was also the chillest show of all time, which is good for at the Opera House. And they were both wearing white, they’re so French, lol. The skinnier one (I don’t know their names) played guitar and used the distortion mic, while the other one looked smuggly out at the crowd, over his keyboard. They played most from Moon Safari and Talkie Walkie and then came back out for a 5 song encore. This was the perfect ending to Sydney and Australia. Absolutely perfect and surreal.

I did a search on YouTube for videos from the show. Here are a few:

See you in the land of the long white cloud (New Zealand).