As I step out into the great blue yonder
Here’s a thought for you to ponder: ‘Real travel is about memories, not just squeezing in sights.’ That was the headline on the first travel column that I ever wrote for this newspaper, a piece that appeared on Sunday February 4, 2007 and that eschewed the whole notion of what I think of as tick-the-box travel.
It was, if truth be told, a column that was somewhat scathing of the kind of travel that just concentrates on the main sights in any given destination, while completely ignoring the bigger picture when it comes to identifying what makes the rest of the country/city/ town really tick.
It was a piece that said that there is so much more to the experience of travel than simply seeing the world’s so-called ‘Seven Wonders’, or working your way through those dreaded lists. God preserve me from all those ‘best of’ lists! You know the kind of thing – The 10 Best Sights in Ballygobackwards; The 20 Best Bucket List Must-Sees, etc, etc... How do they know? It’s all so subjective, and one person’s idea of the best hotel they have ever stayed in, for example, could be someone else’s worst nightmare.
I’ve been privileged to be able to travel – and to write and broadcast about it – for close to 30 years now. And despite that huge length of time, I never take it for granted. Yes, I still get excited at the thought of heading off somewhere. Anywhere, in fact. I still even get excited the minute I walk into Dublin Airport, helped, no doubt, by the fact that we are lucky to have such an airport in this country, one that really ‘works’, where people are generally very courteous, where getting through security is rarely a hassle and where, well, where – especially in Terminal 2 – the surroundings and facilities are simply things of beauty.
I’m in reflective mode this week because, although I am certainly not hiding away my passport or cancelling my travel insurance, this is my final travel column for this newspaper. I have decided to move on, to take my foot off the pedal a little, to free up some time to write more, but at my own pace and on my own terms (still about travel, of course, among other things). And so, as I step tentatively out into the great blue yonder, I’ve been thinking about the past 12 years and the wonderful travel experiences that I have enjoyed during that time.
And no, I’m certainly not going to give you a list. Nor am I going to pass judgement on which was the ‘best’ of the bunch!
But when I think back over that time, there are so many memories that come flooding in.
When I started writing this column in early 2007 I had just come back from a wonderful week in the Seychelles where I’d stayed on the beautiful eco island of Cousine. On this predator-free island I encountered beautiful snow-white fairy tern birds that were so unafraid that you could actually pick them up. I stroked the necks of giant tortoises – massive, stoic creatures – that ambled past my bungalow, and I witnessed, on one particular sun-blasted morning, a mother turtle come ashore to lay her eggs on the sands. All of those images are still absolutely crystal clear in my mind.
And I was lucky enough, while here in the Mail, to be invited to travel on the Orient-Express – twice! On the first occasion, in 2012, we used the invitation as an excuse to celebrate the 60th birthday of Gerry, my late husband. And what a time we had on that exquisite, legendary train, leaving Paris
under cover of darkness, rushing to change into our finery for dinner – all candlelight, white tablecloths, crystal glasses and the finest of French cuisine – and enjoying the beautiful snowy scenery the following day as the train made its way from France through Switzerland and on to Italy, before pulling into Venice’s Santa Lucia station just as darkness was falling the following day. Then, last summer, I did the trip the other way around – from a sweltering Venice in August, on an overnight journey to Paris. This time I travelled with Nick, my adult son, and, once again, it was such a memory-making trip.
In fact, when I think back over the travels I’ve had during my time writing this column, the memories, the sights and the images all flicker through my head like the twisting of a kaleidoscope.
Sitting having coffee in the square in the little town of Palazzo Adriano in Sicily, the very square that featured in that wonderful movie Cinema Paradiso; standing on the Great Wall of China, just last September, and thinking of my late father who had always wanted to go there; struggling to keep up with my guide, Andrea Azzinari, as he led me at break-neck speed (while chatting at the same pace!) through his native city of Genoa; standing alone in the early morning of my 60th birthday on the Chain Bridge in Budapest and trying (not very successfully) to take a selfie to mark the occasion; watching Gerry being fitted for a hand-made shirt in the tiny Venetian studio of tailor Franco Puppato, on what I knew would probably be my husband’s last Christmas Eve, the two of them fingering fabrics, laughing and getting on famously together, despite the fact that Gerry’s Italian stretched no further than ‘Grazie’, while Franco’s English was nonexistent; walking through the stunningly beautiful Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the splendour of the interior only surpassed by the atmosphere of serenity and spirituality within, and then, later that same day, having something of a Lawrence of Arabia moment, making my way across the sands and through the golden dunes on the back of a lolloping camel.
So many journeys evoking so many memories... And all while having the privilege of sharing the experience with you, the readers. And so I want to say a huge thanks to all of you – for all the emails and the letters, and the kind words, and the queries and the recommendations. And also for sharing your own travel experiences with me, just as I have shared mine with you for the past 12 years.
And so I’ll end as I began. Many ‘sights’ are, of course, worth seeing. But that’s all they are – sights. They don’t define a culture or a country. To get to the heart of things you need to look beneath the veil, you need to take to the backstreets, you need to explore a place and its people to find out what makes them tick. That’s how memories are made.
As JR Tolkien once said: ‘Not all those who wander are lost.’
Happy wanderings...