Revisiting travel destinations

I’m a big fan of Rick Steves.  Listening to his recent podcasts, my spirits were uplifted — clearly he and his listeners think they’ll be traveling again.

But in the meantime, Rick is revisiting his favorite places in Europe via his blog (and the book that he put together this spring).  The pieces are lovely — I’ll be ordering his book.

Listening to these podcasts gave me hope that we will be able to visit special places in the world again.

I’ve been focused about when we might return to Quebec. And we have a tentative plan for fall 2021 to exchange again with our friend in Freiburg.  

But this podcast had me thinking about if I were younger, well, I’d probably take advantage of the cheaper fares (I think?), definitely cheaper hotels, and empty cities in Europe.  And I’d go in the fall (or whenever the EU lets Americans travel there).

It would be lovely to experience that, although the social side would be disconcerting, without the cafe/restaurant/museum culture back to normal.

But these are different times.  

I was buoyed today thinking about all the wonderful places in the world that we’ve been to — traveling for decades now.  

Just thinking about Ireland, Italy, Ecuador, Columbia, Vietnam, Chile, Argentina, the UK, France, Peru, Mexico, St. John (in the U.S. Virgin Islands), Dominica, Guatemala, Laos, Thailand, Southern India, Tanzania, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, etc.

We are fortunate, indeed, to have these place in our travel memories.

Here’s a photo from our trip to New Zealand in 2018.