Why I love to travel and enjoy vacations past a second time
Memories of vacations past fill our dinner conversations
“My favorite city is Venice and my favorite country is Greece.” So said my now 20-year-old grandson Phinneus Lucy. He and his mother, my daughter, Laura Cummings, and I often sit around reminiscing about vacations past that we starting taking 2012.
After a hiatus during the pandemic, we’ve added a couple more adventures including another Venice holiday and Laura and I visiting Phinneus this summer in Yellowstone where he was working. However, no matter if we are home or on the road, we always enjoy our memories of vacations past.
The goal was to instill the love of travel
Our trips over the years were never relaxing vacations, i.e. just sitting on a beach somewhere, but were designed to expose my only grandchild to variety, culture, history, and nature. In chronological order, we’ve been to Ireland, Wales and London, the US Southwest, Paris, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal, with trips to San Diego and San Francisco thrown in there, too.
Learning to love castles in Wales.
Most of Phinneus’ memories of the earlier trips are a little sketchy. However, once we start talking about them, he remembers more and more. Like how the phrase, “Going Dublin” became part of our lexicon when his mother lost it thanks to my faulty directions on the confusing Dublin streets. Or how our fearless Irish friend and former chief bosun on tall ships Tom Harding guided our then little 9-year-old over barriers and along treacherous walkways on the many castles we visited in Ireland. Or how Phinneus wasn’t interested in anything in Albuquerque, NM, until we took him to the Rattlesnake Museum, which was totally creepy for his mother and me, but he loved it.
The joy of getting lost
We also laughed about the many mistakes we made, especially during our earlier trips. Like taking three-plus horrifying hours going 24 miles over a spring, deeply rutted road because we didn’t heed the warning that a dotted line on the New Mexico map meant the road was not maintained. Luckily, we made it and ended up having our best meal of the trip in a small diner, Prescilliano’s, in the tiny town of Cuba, NM.
READ ALSO ON TRAVELERS UNITED BLOG:
Great travel memories — pressed between the pages of my mind
Why do souvenirs bring back happy travel memories?
On our earlier vacations, we often missed the local charm by not booking suitable lodging. Either it was not in a good location, was part of a chain, or had no character at all.
But, once we stayed in a luxurious and perfectly located VRBO apartment in Paris that a friend recommended, we got better at picking our lodging. From then on, we opted for vacation rentals whenever we could. On our most recent trip to Portugal, Phinneus became the finder of our lodging. He searched out options online from which we could choose (and he made some great choices).
We learned not to let them upgrade our rental car, especially in Ireland or England. Renting a roomy Vauxhall in Wales seemed like a good idea. We almost immediately regretted it when we barely fit through an ancient stone arch (as the driver, my daughter, said she just closed her eyes to get through). Their incredibly narrow bridges provided a challenge. The big car was also tricky when parking.
Learning to enjoy local foods
One of the best benefits of our travels has been Phinneus’ expanding palate. On our first three trips, it was hard to get him to try anything new, except for once sampling mushy peas in England. Hamburgers were his regular meal of choice.
Until Paris.
On our first lunch in the City of Light, he, per usual, ordered a hamburger. His mother ordered duck (canard), and I had my favorite, mussels (moules). They must have smelled or looked really good because Phinneus asked to try them, and after that, it was canard or moules at every meal.
Future meal discoveries became a focus on our trips. We dined on exotic baked fish in Italy. Ate piles of skinny lamb chops in Spain. We enjoyed locally-fished sea bass and plenty of lamb in Greece. And, tested tasty sardines in Portugal.
I always smile when Phinneus tells his friends, “The food is much better in Europe.”
Don’t put off travels until tomorrow
As time seems to be moving along faster and faster, it’s never good to postpone things and that’s certainly true with travel.
After the Notre Dame fire, we were horrified at the destruction. But, we talked about how glad we were that we visited inside the iconic church and climbed up the bell tower during our 2015 visit. While the steep climb almost killed us (at least my daughter and me), we did get a truly unique view of both Notre Dame and Paris (and felt a bit of kinship with Quasimodo, whom we had Phinneus learn about before we left on our trip).
The flooding in Venice brought back the same feelings – how completely lucky we were to have traveled around that magical city and visited St. Mark’s and the Doge’s Palace when we did. Walking in semi-isolation past the floating vegetable market, down to where gondolas were repaired, and along empty lamplit canals at night was magical.
Seeing the images during the pandemic of the empty attractions that we have visited made us sad that they were not being enjoyed as they should have been by more tourists.
We marveled at the empty plaza around the Eiffel Tower. During our visit, we had to reserve our time to go up and then wait in line with a crowd. We were shocked by the photos of the Trevi Fountain in Rome with no tourist crowds. On our visit, we couldn’t get close enough to get a photo in front of it. And there’s the Vatican, where my daughter and I waited interminably in a security line, but Phinneus went off with an Italian-speaking friend who was accompanying us. He talked his way into a different line and they climbed to the top of the dome. It was a special treat Phinneus will always remember.
Once again, we are deciding where to go, and dreaming of something our whole family can look forward to
Now that Phinneus is off in college in Wyoming and planning trips with friends instead of his mother and me, our memories are sustaining us. I’m still talking about where we three could go during our next vacation, but if he consents, it will probably the swan song of our trips.
My daughter and I had been considering Scotland to find ancestral homes while Phinneus was once interested in either Croatia or Morocco. Any one of them would be fantastic as every one of our trips has been despite our missteps here and there.
But now I’m thinking of giving Phinneus a college graduation trip. Maybe a safari in Africa to see lions and tigers, and bears… No, no. I mean the lions, cheetahs, elephants, hippos, rhinoceroses, wildebeests – all that magnificent wildlife that might not be there in the future due to man’s encroachment on their environment.