Oh, the Places You'll Go!!

As I was working on my Christmas list this year, I decided to make a picture album for two couples who are our best friends.  We have been traveling together for the past twenty years and have made memories all over the world.

Some of our favorites are the "man-on-the-street" interviews that Charlie and Jim have done from Rome to Hawaii, to Cape Cod and all over the world.  These are all spur-of-the-moment, funny interview on where we are and what we are doing.

There are so many memories - like the "I, Snorkel Bob" incident in Hawaii when the David, Charlie and Jim convinced a store clerk that they were from a television station in Chicago and wanted to interview Snorkel Bob, a Hawaiian icon.  We got out of Dodge before Snorkel Bob could get to the store. 

There are memories of the train trip through Italy where the trains went on strike three times in the ten days we were there.  And, we all will never forget our getting on the wrong train that we thought would take us to Florence, but we ended up in Naples.  Needless to say, our (Charlie's) Italian needed some work.

So, I made an album of our trips over the years.  You can see it by clicking here..  To say that we have had fun over the years is putting it mildly.  I guess what we cherish the most is the lifelong friendship that we have with these folks.  Thanks for the memories, David and Linda B and Jim and Linda T.  To quote Dr. Seuss, "Oh, the places you'll go!"

Some of the best things that happen are accidents

You've probably made some of those vacation videos.  You know the ones - the voice over describing things that you know should be interesting and you want your friends to be jealous that you've been there, but as hard as you try to dress it up, it's dry and it's bo-ring.  That was pretty much the case when the Brentwood Six went to Italy on a "free" vacation built around a 14-day Eurail pass (that's another story and there's another two or three blogs from that one trip yet to come), and we found ourselves in Rome.

There we were at the Spanish Steps, and I was panning around the square at the foot of the steps and describing the shops, the architecture, the ..., and that's when I panned around and there, full frame, stood my buddy Jim Tidwell.  Who knows why, but I blurted out "Excuse me sir, are you an American tourist?" to which he replied in his own inimitable accent "Why, yes I am!"  A bit of banter about what brought him to Rome ("an airplane") led to a discourse on what he had seen while in the Eternal City.  He assured me that he had seen every "church" and every "picture museum" that was ever built.  And his wife, Linda, had dragged him to every shoe store in the country, whereupon he confided "You know she'll buy shoes just to keep another woman from gettin' 'em.  And another thing - gun control.  You know I ain't seen a single gun since we got here!  But ever'body's got a knife.  'Cept me.  And I really wanted a knife, and they was two or three stores I saw that had them, but could I go in and look at 'em?  Nooooooooo.  I had to go look at shoes." 

We discovered that day that we all but read each other's minds, Jim taking my questions and improvising hilarious replies that led to other questions that fed the fire like gasoline on a barbecue grill.  The interviews became the "Man on the Street" series that we did all over Europe, Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, and the Caribbean.  Like the time The Six went to one of I, Snorkel Bob's dive gear stores in Maui and. totally improvised and spontaneous, became a crew from WGN, channel 20 in Chicago, doing a story on famous icons in Hawaii.  Or the time we were in the South of France and shot fifteen minutes at a junk pile that Jim insisted had come from his wife Linda's suitcase.  Sometimes the dialog would drift off on a tangent that would have squeezed a PG13 rating, but the bits were always really funny and made many good memories.

We've compiled about two hours of video that maybe someday I'll get really adventurous and convert to digital and upload to You Tube.

This One's Going in our Book

As travel agents, we get asked some of the strangest questions - some so incredible that we're going to write a book. 

There was one when a lady called our office in a panic at 7:00 am one morning. My husband, Charlie, was there alone, but answered the call, and she told him she was so glad someone was there early.  She explained that she was leaving on Saturday, and just realized that her passport had expired, and it was just three days before departure.  She said she was a teacher and it was the end of the school year, and she had just forgotten to get one because she had been busy with exams and grades.  Charlie pulled up her record to find out she was going to Hawaii.  He said, "Ma'am, you're going to Hawaii."  She said, "I know, and my passport has expired!"  Charlie assured her that she didn't need one because Hawaii was a state, not a different country.  The irony was, she teaches our children!

Or the couple going to Europe who, when their documents arrived, realized that they needed an extra day to fly to Europe overnight.  They thought their flight would be like one going to Miami. 

Our favorite occured about eight years ago.  It was a Friday afternoon.  We could hear one of our agents laughing hysterically.  She had a lady on-hold.  Seemed the lady wanted to take an Alaskan cruise, but would not give our agent money to hold the cabin unless we could guarantee that the "glaciers would still be out in September."  Charlie told our agent to take the credit card because if the glaciers aren't there, we had a much bigger problem than a charge-back.

There are some client concerns that are easier to answer than others.

A Charming Vacation

Growing up, I lived in a "Leave It to Beaver" household.  My mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad was the Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a drug company.  Although Daddy traveled extensively in his job, vacations were usually just staying home and going to the pool or a trip to Chattanooga to "See Rock City".  When I started working in the travel industry, the whole world opened up to me.

We opened Just Cruisin' Plus in 1988, the same year my dad retired at 63.  He and Mom were healthy, vibrant sixty-somethings.  They had bought a camper and had traveled all over the U.S., but had not traveled outside the country until that year.  Within two months of Daddy's retirement, they were off to see the world.  Their first trip was a cruise to Scandinavia and Russia.  Their journeys to six of the seven continents had begun.

Their travels took them to Hawaii, Alaska, the Holy Land, the Mediterranean, the Far East (Japan, China and Korea), the British Isles, Canada and New England, Australia and New Zealand.  They took a 16-night river cruise through Europe from Budapest to Amsterdam, the one city my mom wanted to visit so she could see the Anne Frank House.  They experienced more in twenty years than most will experience in a lifetime.

Mom and Dad were never big souvenir shoppers, but Mom collected thimbles and charms in the many places their travels took them.  Their house was broken into a number of years ago, and one of the things that was taken was her charm bracelet with all of her memories.  About five years ago, our family decided to replace this bracelet for her for Christmas.

A year ago today, we began a journey with Mom that would end on October 13 when she finally took her final journey.  My dad is now living in assited living and has Alzheimer's.  He still knows all of us and can call us by name.  I talk with him every day.  He can't remember things that occurred 20 minutes ago, but he can tell us about all of the many trips he and Mom took to places most of us long to visit.

When we were cleaning out the house they shared for 50 years, I came across Mom's charm bracelet.   There's the Canadian maple leaf, a cruise ship, a hula dancer from Hawaii, a pyramid and sphinx from Egypt, Scottish bagpipes, a windmill from Holland, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a gondola from Venice, the Capitol in Washington, the Colosseum in Rome, the Statue of Liberty, Big Ben in London, a Chinese lantern, a kangaroo from Australia, a shamrock from Ireland, and the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Mom and Dad had their first home when Daddy returned from Guadalcanal after World War II.

Of all the things at their house, this bracelet means more to me than anything else I found.  I helped them see the world, but more importantly, they were able to enjoy retirement as it is meant to be.