The gift of travel comes in two forms: cruising on a ship or staying in one place. I like to cruise from country to country. I don’t have to unpack my luggage at every stop. The meals are always prepared for me and ready at any time of the day or night. I know where to go to get food, and how to order if I have missed the meal in the dining room. There is so much entertainment on a ship that a person never has to get off the boat – and in fact some people do just go from one cruise to another, a way of enjoying their retirement. Not me. A little too expensive. But it is a way of life for some cruisers.
I have also enjoyed travel where I stay in one place for a long time.
Callella, Venice, Rome, Guangzhou, Buenos Aires, Belgium, London, Paris – I am embarrassed at the abundance of riches.
But there they are – a happy list from the past.
When I went to these places (usually through the generous booking arrangements of Wyona Bates), I stayed for at least a week, exploring the leisure pathways that are afforded the less hurried traveller.
So while I am not choosing any of these places as being #1 destinations, I am saying that staying in one place and walking through the churches, the museums, the art galleries and the grocery stores is a delicious travel journey.
Arta
 |
| Guangzhou, China Greg Bates lived here for a few years and many of his extended family visited him there. |
Callella, Venice, Rome, Guangzhou, Buenos Aires, Belgium, London, Paris – I am embarrassed at the abundance of riches.
But there they are – a happy list from the past.
 |
| We travelled along the Pearl River to get to Ghangzhou. |
So while I am not choosing any of these places as being #1 destinations, I am saying that staying in one place and walking through the churches, the museums, the art galleries and the grocery stores is a delicious travel journey.
Arta
I have been thinking about the people I met in the market in Guangzhou. I walked there in the scorching heat with Greg as our guide initially, and eventually all on my own. I went there often enough that I came to have perferred stalls to purchase from, and vendors began to pull me aside and teach me, without a common language, how to choose the best mango, and who was over charging me.
ReplyDeleteIt was the summer 2001. The twin towers still stood in NYC. The Huoshenshan and Leishenshan hospitals were not yet standing.
It would be another month before the horror of planes being used as weapons would cause deep sorrow and forever change privacy, liberty, and security in travel. It would be another 18 years before an invisible force would jump species resulting in more lives loss, more sorrow, and more radical changes to how we travel, who can travel, and where we can go.
I remember Arta saying, it's a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity. You won't regret it. A whole month in an apartment in China staying with a guide who has lived there for two years. She was certainly right.
I was in a transition. It was an unexpected window that opened up between my leaving a post-doc position at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and my starting an Assistant Professor position at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Wyona, Moiya, and Arta had been planning this trip for months. I piggybacked into their group only weeks before they flew out of Canada. At least that's how I remember it.
I had been speaking on the phone with my mother and she said, "Why not cancel your other vacation plans and come with us for a month?" I think both she and I were surprised to hear, "yeah, why not?" come out of my mouth.
I don't know why I said yes, nor do I recall what the other plans I had were. What I do remember is spending an entire month with four amazing relatives in a time between one chapter of my life and the next.
Yes, Arta, travel where you stay in one place must be placed in my own list of 53 memories of 53 years.
I can't help but wish I had been in a position to make that similar jump. I will comfort myself with thoughts of being able to listen in on these memories!
ReplyDeleteWasn't I lucky!
DeleteYes. I like to listen to other people's memories.
DeleteI also like to reflect on the past to find things that really worked for me. One of those now would be the speech lessons I took as a child. I thought that was the job of every parent -- to give their child unwanted speech lessons, and so I did that when I was a parent. Now I can see for some, those lessons really worked out. And for others. Well, if they didn't work out, they were just speech lessons. And now, living alone, I don't get much chance to talk to others. But if I want the sound of a voice, I can always pick up a book, read out loud and practise those old speech lesson tips.
In reply to Bonnie saying she was lucky, yes, the stars had aligned themselves. And she had the leap of faith to join all of those old people, who in retrospect, seem like young people.
ReplyDelete