Saturdays

SAN LUIS OBISPO, California // We hate Saturdays. For the past year, this has been our least favorite day of the week. It is substantially more expensive to get rooms on Airbnb, or any unique hotel in the area. Sometimes, there are not any rooms available at all in the smaller cities that we have traveled to. We usually have to book a few days in advance, and because we have no schedule or agenda, this is difficult for us to do spur of the moment when we arrive in a city with no rooms. Restaurants are crowded, and there is typically traffic the entire day wherever we are. We dread Saturdays. 

When we have been traveling, these strange circumstances have affected us in ways that we would not have realized. There is a strange beauty, especially in the United States, of being in a destination on a random weekday afternoon. Places change drastically depending on the time of week and the time of day. 

Where we lived in New York City, there was a church one block away that I would pass everyday to and from work. One night I had a cold, woke up, and walked to the CVS on the corner to get medicine. The scene that was so casual and banal everyday, was now nothing like I had ever seen. There were homeless people all over the place chatting, and the steps that are usually empty had sleeping bags and blankets. The next morning on my way to work everything was gone and just the same as I always remembered.

I think about this scenario often now when traveling. When we get to a place in the afternoon on a random Tuesday, we usually find that it is different from what we had initially expected. We realize now that Saturdays, and our culture of weekend leisure time, is much different than the everyday. Vacations and weekend trips are the normal. Saturdays will remain the day when every one finally gets out to do what they want to with their lives.