My big sis led the way in traveling

My sister is 18 months older than I am, but I’m taller. It used to drive her crazy as we were growing up when people asked whether we were twins or, worse, if I was older.

I thought it was obvious. She was friendly, confident and funny. I was proud to follow her.

And follow her I did, from kindergarten all through high school. Our paths diverged at college. She spent her junior year abroad in Sydney, Australia, and had friends all over Europe.

A family medical emergency brought her back home after graduation, but she later found a way back to Europe. She spent a year in London studying international business and hopped to other countries on breaks; she picnicked at Versailles, France, and saw the northern lights in Norway.

I finished college and stayed put in Pasadena. I loved hearing her stories and seeing her pictures.

After her stint in the U.K., she settled in San Diego, but travel was never far from her heart.

Early last year, she told me about a deal on plane tickets to London. She hadn’t been back in five years. I told her, half-jokingly, to book it, and she emailed me the flight confirmations for a 10-day trip — my 30th birthday present, she said. Well, then. We had visited London as children on a family summer vacation two decades ago. There was a lot of art I didn’t fully appreciate at age 10, long before I majored in history.

I gave her a long list of things I had to see (Buckingham Palace; Kensington Palace; and such staples as the British Museum, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, and the Tate).

Our biggest adventure was Chatsworth House, the seat of the Duke of Devonshire and home to the Cavendish family since 1549. (It’s best recognized as Pemberley in the Keira Knightleystarring “Pride and Prejudice.”)

We stayed at an inn on the Chatsworth property and, despite asking the front desk attendant for directions twice, still managed to get lost.

A kind man helped us. Once we crossed the road, we were on our way. Walking through fields of sheep in the English countryside felt like a Jane Austen movie moment.

My sister planned everything, from train tickets to the Airbnb where we stayed in Camden. She timed our entrances to museums and didn’t give me too much sideeye when, after touring a museum for two hours, I spotted a postcard in the gift shop that showed a piece I had to see.

Strangely enough, I think my favorites were the pieces I didn’t expect. Turning the corner at Hampton Court Palace and coming face to face with “Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (La Pittura),” by Artemisia Gentileschi, took my breath away.

It wasn’t all museums. She showed me where she used to live and the pubs she frequented. I met her friends, matching names to faces, and imagined them as young adventurers, hungry to see the world. I marveled at how they hadn’t lost that sense of wonder. I think it was the most beautiful thing I saw on our trip.

We also went to the exhibit of Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings at the Queen’s Gallery in Buckingham Palace. One of my favorite quotes of his: “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”

Thank you, my adventurous big sister, for exemplifying this, for saying yes when it would have been easier to say no.

All these years later, I’m still proud to follow you.

I’ve already started another list of things I can’t wait to see with you.