My 18 year old son recently asked me how I travel. He was recounting a trip he took to Paris (with someone else) about two years ago. His guide had tried to jam in as many important cultural stops into the day as possible, getting up at dawn and grinding him down by foot until late at night. The climax was one night at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, where he had rebelled and refused to move another inch. He was scolded and lectured (tearfully at that) that he simply must go to the top of the metal tower or it would be a very bad thing. He stood his ground, but two years later he still felt guilty about it.
I told him that I like to go to places that have some sort of culture to them, but that I travel loosely. I might have two can't miss places on any trip no matter where (Istanbul: The Hagia Sofia and St Savior in Chora; Paris: Two art museums chosen by whatever is fascinating to me at the time; Kyoto: The Mimitzuka (a monument built around the severed ears of 20,000 Korean soldiers, taken as trophies in a war in the late 16th century) and a grubby, but very intimate little restaurant run by a man from an old samurai family who makes metal fittings for temples and who loves to fish (I don't fish, but for some reason I love to talk about fishing in Japanese). It's not that I don't want to see anything else or won't see anything else. But I like to take my time, because invariably the most memorable stuff when traveling takes place outside of the plan.
My son could relate, but he thought I was holding something back. I tried to argue that one's time should be very loose so that one can really see things. But thinking about it I realized that he was right.
In 1976, I stopped in Athens on the way back from a summer in Cairo. I was rather sick and pissing blood. I checked into a hotel on Omonia Square, took a little walk to get something to eat, found a book stall and bought a couple of books, and went to the hotel to rest. It was not a great hotel, but from my window I could see the Parthenon. I ended up staying in the room for four days, only venturing out once a day to eat one large meal in the afternoon. And I never once attempted to go on the Acropolis. It wasn't that I was too sick or weak to make the climb. It's that it had no interest to me.
The reason was that I was alone. I didn't quite go into it with my son, but one HAS to travel with someone one loves, or at least likes very much. Otherwise, it's not really worth it. At least for me. Back when I used to travel a lot, I often found myself in fascinating places alone and I can't say that I enjoyed them very much. On the other hand, when I was with someone important to me I had the most wonderful times in some of the most rotten places you can imagine.
It's hard to explain this to an 18 year old boy. I can't explain to him that a city, say, like Dublin is wonderful with a partner and a grim catastrophe alone. Alone, there is nothing to do there. With someone there's never enough time to do everything. So I don't tell him really how I travel. I don't want to discourage him. And besides, he'll figure out himself how he likes to travel. The best I could do, then, was give him permission to take his time. Hopefully he will find someone to teach him the rest.
So. How do you like to do it?
At the moment, my caregiver duties make vacations impossible. But I agree about good company making all the difference. I have never taken a Europe trip by myself and I don't do tours. I didn't really take such trips until my 50's. Before that, it was canoeing expeditions in wilderness areas, which required company. I must admit that I fantasize about solo Bear Grylls trips into the wilderness if I'm ever again free to do so and if I still have my stamina. But travel in civilized areas, never without company. Order of magnitude more fun.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I found travelling alone more pleasurable, largely because it forced me to rely on "the locals" for help and companionship, and even the bad things were fun in retrospect. I also like to make side tracks and frequent stops that make me a nightmare for anyone on a schedule.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the trick is to go with someone who is happy being on his/her own a good part of the time, and who can meet up with you in the evening to tell a good story about what he/she did that day.
I suppose individual temperament plays a role.
Yes, wilderness travel best in a group of similar physical ability.
My husband and I are comfortable financially, and have traveled a lot over the last 45 years, mostly to Europe, but also the Caribbean, and Japan. We do not do tours. We make plane reservations, and a car reservation, and that is it. (In Japan, it was trains)
ReplyDeleteMy own family was not affluent. The first trip I took out of southern Calif was to San Jose, where one of my college friends lived. I wanted to spend my junior year in Paris but there was no money. During my soph year, I was technically homeless. My parents’ divorce cost my mother her home, to pay for my father’s debts, leaving her with nothing at age 55. She got a clerical job at a local conference center, and they gave her a small room there as part of her pay. I stayed with other family and friends during vacations. I was in college courtesy of scholarships. The college had offered me a full academic scholarship. When I won another full academic scholarship from the state of Calif, the nuns applied the scholarship they had offered me to room/board. But, it wouldn’t cover my room and board in Paris, so they arranged an ed loan to cover room/board plus plane tickets and other travel expenses. The nun who organized this sent me Eurail passes to use at Christmas and Easter as she wanted me to travel outside of France too. My friends were not as “poor” as I, but they cheerfully gave up nice hotels to stay in Europe on Five Dollars Day places – some of which were charming, as the author hyped, some of which were almost scary. My best travel buddy (the daughter of an MD, Harvard grad, who could have stayed in nicer hotels) and I would literally toss coins sometimes to figure out where we would go on our Eurail passes after seeing a “’main” attraction – eg, we spent Easter in Rome, then headed to Denmark on a coin toss.
My husband and I are still spontaneous travelers. Because we often use frequent flyer miles for trips, we learned to be very flexible. Eg - the first time we took our sons to Europe, I told the airline agent just to get us all to Europe somewhere (all 5 of us on FF miles) during the month of July or Aug (high season). We had to wait until a couple of weeks before departure to know where we were landing. Once we knew that, (Frankfurt) we worked on coming home from England. We accepted Manchester, but later they changed it to London for us. We reserved a car at Frankfurt airport and took off to find some place interesting. Our first stop was Heidelberg – a perfect first stop. The boys loved it because it is a picture-book European city on a river complete with Castle and they have loved travel ever since. We worked our way to France, staying in Strasbourg before heading to Paris. A couple of days there to hit the highlights, and then off to the Loire, Normandy and Brittany. One son convinced us to stop and stay the night in a town we passed through - because they were having the 14th of July festival on the banks of the river, with music, dancing, barbeques and lots of other fun things. And that’s how we traveled - where the spirit (or, often, a local) led us. In England on one trip we went to Fountains Abbey. The ruins are beautiful, and great for energetic boys. A local there told us about a park with unusual rock formations that kids like to climb. We headed there next, and it was wonderful (not in our guide book ). Once there, another local gave us a paper bag because they (the locals) were all picking wild blueberries. And so did we. That evening we put the blueberries in ice cream for dessert. Our adult sons now travel the same way – seat of the pants, no tours, but not alone.
That story is just an example of how we travel. No fixed itinerary, a rental car, and maps (now GPS). We like the towns and villages more than big cities, but we do visit highlights of cities – one or two, as Patrick does, not every famous sight. Return trips to Paris are for sitting at cafes and walking - to breathe in the Paris ambiance. The entire city is art.
We haven't traveled very much, because it is expensive, but mostly because we're basically homebodies. However we have taken a trip to California and one to Hawaii in the past several years. I had a good time both times, but first I had to get through two days of feeling that it was all a big mistake, and what are we even doing here? I faked it until I made it. Caught a cold both times, too, but managed to power through it. We didn't rent a car in Hawaii. We spent a week there (mostly Oahu), took public transportation and got wherever we wanted to go. Would go back to Hawaii in a heartbeat.
ReplyDeletePatrick, I agree with your boy. No one should bully kids into activities they they are too tired to enjoy, or didn't want in the first place.
Katherine, I am with you on Hawaii - we have been to the four main islands and ALL of them are gorgeous. And they all have their own distinctive personalities. We are hoping to go back this year.
ReplyDeleteTravel tip - I have often gotten colds from airplane rides. A couple of years ago I read a travel piece that said most people don't pick up the virus from recirculated air on the plane, as long as they are sitting at least two rows away from the person with a cold. (I see some people wearing surgical masks while flying!) The article said that most people pick up the germs from the tray table, the divider between seats, the arms of the seat, the bathroom door handle, and the other surfaces there. The article recommended taking clorox wipes or similar and wiping down all those surfaces before settling in. I have done that during the last few flights and I did NOT get a cold - for a change! I put the wipes in a small zipper plastic storage bag and put it in my purse. I wipe everything down as soon as I sit down, and take the baggie of wipes to the bathroom too so that I can wipe the handle before using it to open the door. Same with the sink surface, sink handles, and door handle for going out. I now use them in hotel rooms too for wipable surfaces because my son worked for Marriott for a while, and said that the cleaning is not always as thorough as one would hope. Most of the big chains now use easily laundered and bleached white duvet covers and that is an improvement also over the old days. I used to try not to think about what was ground into the bedspreads.
Anne, those sound like good precautions to take. I have heard, too, that that the recirculated air is unfairly blamed for spreading germs.
DeleteI am immune-suppressed because of the chemo, and I am also wiping surfaces. Also wear light will gloves or a long scarf so I have a barrier between hands and door handles, grocery carts, gas pumps, money, etc. I don't go to the movies anymore, though we do take in a theater show around Christmas. Life is not worth living without Gilbert & Sullivan every few years!
DeleteMy travel days have been over for awhile because of fatigue, but we still enjoy day trips. Sunday we drove to the Ohio border!
We had five children instead of souvenirs of Paris and Reykjavik. We did have 18 glamorous months in Germany while I maintained the strength in the Ordnance Corps. We traveled together -- one of us pregnant -- most of the time. The pregnancy precluded a Rhine journey by boat; we had to go by rail, doctor's orders. Yuk. While we were there I spent five days alone in divided Berlin in the dead of winter, mainly to talk to the UPI bureau chief about a post-Army job. There was snow in the Tiergarten when I strolled there and came upon a fresh floral wreath dedicated to Rosa Luxembourg. I also made a trip to Nashville alone after having been there with my father for the Grand Ole Opry (June Carter hunted up a banjo for me), but settled for Oscar Peterson with the Nashville Symphony (no kidding) that time. Everything else has been together, but it hasn't been much.
ReplyDeleteMy travel vacations were all courtesy of my employer. When I moved from the mental health board in Toledo to Lake County where I now live, I tried to negotiate four weeks paid vacation. They only gave me three since they would not even give my boss, the Executive Director, four. He said not to worry the board had a fund that paid for travel to professional meetings and that he would authorize one each year for me. So my fourth week of vacation was paid professional travel.
ReplyDeleteI decided that I would always submit a paper which I successfully did. Sometime I took colleagues along with me for the paper presentation. Whenever I did not, there were usually professionals at these meetings that I knew from academia or from the public mental health system. And usually there were new people to meet during the meeting days.
But I would also do some traveling alone before and after the meetings paid for out of my own money. Toronto is my favorite city so when there was a meeting there I would book several days before and after (all at the convention rate, of course). When I went to professional meetings in Tampa in February, I would also visit my aunt who lived near Cape Kennedy.
Except for Canada, I have never been out of the country.
I'm also not passionate about traveling. I travel a fair amount on business, and of course those trips are always alone, at least for the airline and car rental parts of it. After a full day of meetings or workshops or whatever, I don't do touristy things - I either have a dinner meeting or grab a quick, lonely bite by myself. Then I go back to the hotel room to call my wife and wish I could go home again.
ReplyDeleteThe summer after my ordination, my sister asked me to officiate at her "destination wedding" in Inverness, Scotland. Several members of my extended family went to the wedding, but we all made our own arrangements and converged on Inverness at different days/times. It turned out that, for me, it was cheaper to fly into London and stay there for a few days before getting the connection to Inverness. For the London leg of the trip, I was by myself. I had a really nice few days. I had purchased a "London for Dummies" book, which I flipped through on the plane trip there. I stumbled across Leicester Square on my first day - that is where the equivalent of the "hot tix" booth is (or was back then). So I went there each morning and bought a sorta-affordable theater ticket for each evening. The theaters are in the West End, which is a fun area for dining - found an Indian restaurant one time, wandered into Chinatown another time. Took the tube everywhere. In the course of looking for the Natural History museum, I came upon the Brompton Oratory, which I had heard of before, so went there for Sunday mass. One of the big international soccer tournaments was in-flight - think it was the European Championships - and there was active pub life in the evenings to watch the games, but I didn't feel up to venturing into that boozed-up atmosphere on my own. It would have been wonderful to do all of this with my wife but she didn't make the trip. I'm the kind of person who has no problem striking up a conversation with the person in the theater seat next to mine, so I had human interaction.
Other than that trip, all the traveling I've done since my marriage has been either with my wife for getaways, or with the whole family on vacations. We've done Disney World a few times (and have told the kids, Never again) but beyond that, don't believe we've ever done the same vacation trip twice. We've gone to Southern California, Boston, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, San Diego, Toronto, Montreal, probably one or two others I'm not thinking of. We have reasonably nice times but I'm always in "dad mode" - I guess one never gets a vacation from parenting. That's why the London trip was so nice for me. My wife would kill to do something similar.
I don't plan ahead on vacation trips. We wake up each day asking, "What would we like to do today?" and proceed accordingly. Best thing we ever did as a family was, on spur of the moment, buy tickets to a boat that headed an hour out to sea and did whale-watching. The kids still want to go back and do that one again - that was in Boston.
Jean, that is really tough. You have to be on the defense all the time - not just in airplanes. I've noticed that a lot of cashiers wear gloves too. Good idea.
ReplyDeleteWe we made many long distance trips with our sons in planes and cars starting when they were infants. My mom lived in Calif where I grew up and over the years my husband had many business trips there. I often found ways for all of us to go. My biggest coup when we had only two, was getting two free companion plane tickets using the tops of 10 Chex boxes! My husband's ticket was paid for (business), so we bought one for me and got freebies for our sons. We have seldom paid for plane tickets for big trips - to Europe and Hawaii. We bought tickets when flying domestically to save the points for the expensive overseas trips. During a 25 year period we took our kids to Hawaii, to Europe, the Caribbean, and sent all three at different times to Australia for special opportunities. Sent one son to China to study - all using airlines miles. Never bought a ticket. In recent years when my husband and I travel to Europe (just the two of us) we either use airline points, or buy tickets if it's off-season and use points to upgrade because flying for many hours in the cattle car section is too miserable in our advanced years!
We also took many long road trips. Every summer we headed to New England somewhere - 8-10 hour car trips. Our sons became great car travelers because we started them as infants. Every spring we took a 2000 mile RT to Sanibel Island, Florida. We took lots of side trips to interesting places and they got a lot of history, especially in cities like Boston, Savannah, Charleston etc. All the sons went to college in Calif and I drove across the country four times with one or another of them, different routes. Incredible mom-son times and the best way possible to see the beauty of different parts of our country unfold before us.
I was fascinated by foreign cultures from the time I was a little girl, long before I ever got to travel. Fortunately, I married a man who also loves travel, even though his first trip out of the US wasn't until after we were married. He had business in England, we both went, and he was hooked. But, now we are getting older. We still love to travel, but no longer so much for adventure. Won't be hiking up Machu Pichu. We now prefer going back to places we love and staying a while - especially France and the UK. We are planning a stay in Hawaii to break up our trip to Australia next spring. Our youngest son and family are moving back to the US next year after 5 years there. So we will go there while he's still there. After that, we will either stay closer to home or just go back to our favorite places. We still drive to New England, but have broken down now and buy plane tickets to Florida. We still go to both places every year. Of course, close car trips too in the mid-Atlantic states. Fortunately my husband and I are on the same wavelength when traveling as to what we want to see and do. I think if I traveled with anyone else I would get frustrated, and probably prefer Jean's approach - semi-independent. As far as travel with kids - we set the general itinerary (which countries or US regions), but often let them decide on specifics. This led to adventures like a lovely dinner in Honfleur, France – we went there because our oldest was a huge Shakespeare fan, and he thought that's where Henry V gave his famous speech. Turns out we had a lovely dinner in the wrong town - should have been Harfleur. The sons' ideas led us to some of our greatest experiences when traveling. I also mastered the art of getting really nice, but relatively inexpensive, places to stay, often as last minute cancellations freed up accommodations at an affordable price. Lots of advantages to being flexible when traveling, but some can't stand not knowing where they will be each day and where they will sleep when they get there!
The worst part is having to be wary of small, leaky children. I like toddlers, but they are Typhoid Marys, so wary of cuddling.
DeleteRaber wants to go to Rome, and I have urged him to get in a travel group or something. Travel has lost its appeal for me, even without the germs and elevated clot risks.
My sister-in-law has end-stage cancer, and her husband is constantly dragging her places in a wheel chair to make fun last memories, I guess. Last trip, she fell out of the chair, knocked out a tooth, and broke something. Ugh. Reminds me of the last scene in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? when Bette Davis drags Joan Crawford to the beach.
Jean, seems like somebody is always getting up a Catholic tour to Rome or the Holy Land in our diocese. Maybe Raber could find something like that. I have no interest in going either place, must be something wrong with me. Our pastor is getting up a tour to all the shrines in France for two weeks this summer. That doesn't really interest me either, especially since it would be around $9000 for us both to go. I keep thinking we could do Hawaii again for about half. (Well we could go to Molokai and visit Father Damien's shrine and call it a pilgrimage.)
DeleteI'm sorry to hear about your sister in law. Traveling under those circumstances just doesn't sound enjoyable. I guess if I don't do bucket list things before I'm terminal, I'll wait until I have a glorified body and can travel at the speed of thought.
I pray that after I croak Raber will go on a tour group to Rome and meet some nice Catholic lady with a lot of energy to make up for what he's dealing with now. The worst part of being chronically ill and tired is that you are a long-term drag on your spouse ... and your energetic spouse is a trial to your patience. I don't look sick, and I get snappish having to insist that I have hit the wall and have to rest.
DeleteI travel way too much. To universities and conferences, it's very bland: boring airports and flight, typically modern soulless hotel, days cooped up in an air-conditioned conference room from 8am to 6pm. We meet the same community of colleagues, whether we are in Berlin, Oslo, Boston, Toronto, Tel-Aviv, San Francisco, or wherever. We take advantage of small windows of free time to work on some projects with colleagues whom we usually see only remotely. Smalltalk often is about airports -- which ones are most convenient or comfortable. The whole thing does not really count as traveling, or rather, we get mostly the nuisance part of it. At best, the hotel is in the center of some large city and we get to walk a few blocks to go out to a local restaurant, and that's our brush with local culture.
ReplyDeleteVacation is often centered on family. Since my children and I are scattered around the world, we take long trips to visit one another. We're all sick of flying at this point. To think that when I was 10 years old I thought it was the most exciting thing in the world!
For actual vacation, I organize backpacking trips with friends or family. We see mostly natural sights, we're off the internet, we don't see cars for days. It's like a retreat from the hectic rhythm or the rest of our lives. I also, when I get the chance, do local travels in Europe, short hops of 1 hour flights or two hours on the train or driving, followed by two days of sightseeing, when the opportunity arises, usually by invitation from some friend. I enjoy those.
Jean and Katherine, I subscribe to several travel sites that send "deals". Today there is a good deal for off-season trips to Rome. Traveling off-season is the absolute best way to go!
ReplyDeleteOnce there, choose the city/sightseeing tours you want. Maybe Raber can go with Katherine's husband? ;)
Anne, you scandalmonger :-).
DeleteClaire, it sounds like your nest is empty? Maybe that will improve my view of leisure travel. My business travel sounds similar to yours re: the airports and hotels, except I don't get to go to glamorous world cities - my company sends me to places with cheap labor :-).
My wife would love it if I would take up backpacking. I have a lung issue - my diaphragm no longer works on one side, so I can't take in enough oxygen when I am really exerting myself - so long hikes in roughish terrain don't work for me anymore. It's really frustrating because I would have loved it before this thing kicked in.