Destination: Uncategorized

I just received an email that resonates with me. Many people my age (mid-fifties) have parents who, while once avid travelers, are now winding down their lives in retirement homes and assisted-living communities. My parents and their friends now “travel” via travel shows on TV. This story illustrates how travel can still invigorate minds and bodies that don’t otherwise get out that much:

Dear Rick,

As I get ready to order a guidebook and the newest set of your TV shows, I want to share a personal story.

It all started about two Father’s Days ago, when I was pondering what to get for my Dad. My Dad was living in an assisted-living home after the passing of my Mom. He lived so close, but I could feel us losing connection. Since my Dad was now mostly bound to a wheelchair, we were both at a bit of a loss about what to “do.”

Then came an idea that changed our lives. My Dad, whose parents were born in Europe, had never been to Europe. As it turns out, he had never really thought much about Europe, as his immigrant parents wanted to start new lives and leave memories of the old country behind. I, too, had never been, and was starting to realize it was something I wanted to discover…and maybe we could discover it together. So I bought your complete set of Rick Steves’ Europe DVDs, wrapped it up, and presented it to Dad as his gift. In my card, I wrote, “With this gift, we will travel to Europe together. Every Wednesday night at 7 p.m., I will come to your home and we will watch two shows together. We’ll start with Austria, since that is where you parents were born, and we will just keep on traveling throughout the year. When we are in Austria and Germany, we’ll drink some beer; in Italy, we’ll enjoy some wine; and maybe when we are in England, we’ll get out Mom’s teacups.”

And so it continued all throughout the year. I made up a schedule and emailed it out to all of our immediate family ‘ the ones close by were welcome to join us, and often they did. Wednesday became an evening we all looked forward to. Lively discussions started as we watched the shows with our Rick Steves maps on our laps, thinking out where we had been and where we would go next. Dad made up a little notebook of our plans, and at dinner on Wednesdays, the other residents would ask him where he was off to, often leading to lively discussions of travels that would spread throughout the dining room.

About halfway through the series, I decided that I would turn my dreams into reality, and booked a month-long trip to Europe with my daughter. After that, our viewing became even more exciting, as together we discussed and debated all the places my daughter and I would go. I remember the night that Dad and I re-watched the Tuscany shows to choose which hill towns to visit. Watching the travels skills shows reassured him that my daughter and I would be safe as we traveled. When I sent back postcards, and showed Dad our photos, he was excited to see that I had actually visited the places we had “been” to together.

When my Dad heard my sister, who lived in Calgary, was planning on spending three summers in Europe doing her masters, he bought her a complete DVD set. He couldn’t imagine how she could possibly travel without them! My sister tells me that much of their telephone calls are richly filled with discussions on places to visit. Without our virtual travel, Dad would have been out of the loop. Instead, he has become an active participant.

My Dad and I, along with other family members, are continuing our Wednesday-night visits. His home is once again a place for our family to gather. And tomorrow it’s time for the European Christmas show, perhaps with a pot of mulled wine bubbling on the stove.

Thank you so much, and feel free to use our story to inspire other families to buy their parents or grandparents a gift that can really enrich the times that they have together.

All the best,

Joanna and Steve, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada

To fill little gaps in our weekly hour-long radio program, we share haiku poems submitted by our traveling listeners. Here are a few that we thought were appropriate for the season.

Dana Ivey from New York City paints this landscape:

Stark and white beauty

Fairyland snow on bare trees

Central Park New York

Rick Preston of Miramonte, California, describes the scene hiking in Utah’s back country in this double haiku:

Sun on cottonwood

Reflections of leaf and sky

The smell of river

Moving through canyon

Winter light beckons me on

Don’t know when to stop

Gretchen Williams of Mercer Island, Washington, commemorates surviving her first winter in Europe with this poem:

Moving to Munich

Our coldest winter ever

Then beautiful spring!

While Lisa Treder of Edmonds, Washington, has a more practical concern:

The sun is shining,

But I still feel a bit chilled.

I hate my jacket.

Wintertime can inspire you to look for the poetry outside your own window. Marianne Disney of Bend, Oregon, sent us this haiku she wrote about the view from Pilot Butte:

bowl made of mountains

rose edge, blue basin, cloud rise

filled with light and snow

But for some others, it can inspire a wish to visit a warmer climate. Tom Besson splits his time between Nelson, New Zealand, and Hillsboro, Oregon. He had this poetic observation from the veranda while having breakfast in Ubud, Bali:

Four dragonflies dance

Droning on their vine-like perch

Sixteen wings sing songs

Danielle Sapino of Warren, Ohio, sent us a batch of haiku she wrote on the beach in Kailua, Hawaii. Here are two of our favorites:

All the grains of sand

a stage for the sunbathers

and waves to crash on

it’s times like these i

wish i had my camera

but i got haiku

And Mark Erickson of Portland, Oregon, shares a different memory from a trip south of the border:

We met in A.A.

I took her to Mexico

SHE never came back.

I was just interviewing Paul Theroux about his cross-country adventure from Cairo to Cape Town (the theme of his book, Dark Star Safari) for my radio program. He painted a beautiful verbal picture of sunsets in East African plains. And that got me thinking about how sunsets can be a vivid and romantic capper for a beautiful day on the road.

Dramatic and memorable sunsets that come to mind for me are: On the Greek isle of Santorini, nursing a drink with a single flower in a vase on my table, as I sit on the lip of the crater high above the glittering Aegean Sea. In the Indian section of Kashmir, sitting on the roof of my houseboat with a chipped, old pot filled with steaming tea as families running domestic errands glide by silently in sleek and timeless canoes. On Denmark’s Aerø Island, warming myself by a beach fire while children splash in the mild and shallow waters of the bay, and parents sit peacefully on the porches of tiny beach cabins. In Granada, Spain, joining the “Gypsies and hippies” at the St. Nicholas viewpoint as the setting sun makes the Alhambra glow red, evoking the tumult of its violent history. On a ferry in the Greek sea, with dolphins ‘ who seem to come out for the sunset ‘ playfully loping ahead of the ship’s bow. In England’s Cumbrian Lake District, sitting pensively on a stone at the Castlerigg Stone Circle just outside of Keswick, savoring a moment which inspires anyone to poetry…especially as sheep stir up the fragrance of the wild grass and the scent bringing forth visions of mystical druids, who once used these stones for their worship, dancing in the long shadows.

Take a moment to savor memories of sunsets in your travels. Then share your favorite here.