MAY 31, WEDNESDAY

WHAT MAKES A GOOD TRIP?

Everyone is flying somewhere, or wanting to. With the pandemic over everyone wants to cut loose. I’ve been hearing stories of people who just came back from Paris or other parts of Europe. And I’m going to Montevideo in August and Italy and Greece in October and dream of India and Sri Lanka in January and February. I’ve been traveling for 6 months out of 12 for the last two years. So I am going to sum up what I have learned, not for other people’s trips so much, but to help me plan ahead for myself.

1. FLIGHTS. There are low cost flights to almost anywhere if you are flexible about where you might go and when. Most of the lowcost flights seem to be reported on GOING.COM, my favorite travel site, about four months in advance. You have to be a person, probably a retired person, who can go wherever and whenever a low cost flight appears and be able to make up you mind in half an hour before the offer vanishes. Book the flight and then see if you really want to go with 24 hours to decide. You increase your flexibility if you are open to flying from hubs near you to hubs in the vicinity of the place where you want to go and then find an inexpensive way to get to and from those hubs. (To get to Sicily I am flying to far away Milan and then taking a cheap flight to Catania, Sicily. Basic economy with no perks and changes allowed is cheaper than economy. Business and first class are not worth the money and have a far heavier carbon imprint.

2. ACCOMODATIONS. For a single person accomodations are a greater part of your costs than airfare. Airbnb’s are everywhere and the Airbnb website makes them easy to find. Airbnb’s are usually much more expensive for per day for a day or three than for two weeks and a month is usually much cheaper per day than two weeks. So accomodations are cheaper if you stay in one place for a month, than staying a shorter time. As a result accomodations for a two week trip in which you visit three places for a few days is much more expensive per day than a month long stay. You have more choice of Airbnb’s if you select early.

3. DESTINATIONS. In my recent travels I have found almost every place equally interesting and stimulating with a great deal to be learned in each place. As a result I would now like to spend a month in Virampur, Varanasi, Mussoorie, Helsinki, Tallin, Riga, Paris, London, Essouria, Istanbul, Naoussa, Winsen, Aschaffenburg, Haarlem, Berlin Barcelona and these are just the places I’ve been to lately. After Montevideo, Sicily and Tuscany which I’m visiting next these places will be added to the list. The point I am making is that almost anywhere for a month will be very stimulating. So don’t be picky, find where you can fly to cheaply where the airbnb’s are inexpensive and go there. Daily expenses for groceries and transportation are low everywhere.

4. LENGTH OF STAY. Most people can only go for two weeks and because of the cost of the trip want to make the most of those two weeks and see as many places as possible and they want to do it in the summer when the prices of everything are highest. If you only get two weeks off a year then the best way to lower costs is to go in the temperate off-season and to be totally flexible about where you go.

But if you have a flexible schedule and six weeks off a year or are retired, then the one month in one place chosen with flexibility is, at least for this 85 year old, best. It lets me slow down and explore more and rest up often and travel to many more places because of the money I’ve saved and to really get to know the places. A month in one (or two places for a month each) cuts travel costs a bit and yet you aren’t gone very long. I follow this with a month or two or three back home, reliving the last trip and dreaming of the next one, before I am off again.

5. PRACTICAL MATTERS.

Luggage. Only pack a carry on bag with two sets of easy to wash dark clothing, medicines in small containers, digital equipment (allowing you to take your digital world with you) one set of shoes and one set of layers to keep you warm. (To save space you can wear half of these clothes on the flight with pockets stuffed with digital stuff.) You can buy anything else you need on the way. The advantage of this is that your air fare will be lower, your bags won’t be lost, you can much more easily wheel your stuff around. Wear your clothes for several days at a time (no on will notice that you are always wearing the same thing) and just swish your clothes around a little when you wash them. Don’t take anything you might use, only take what you will use daily.

Health. This is a worry for 85 year olds. You can buy health insurance but it is very expensive. I rely on my plan F AARP Medicare supplement plan paying 80% of my medical expenses when overseas. I did have a huge dental bill on this last trip, $4000, but the same work done in the United States—two implants, three crowns, an extraction—would have cost three times as much in Asheville. Health care is cheaper almost anywhere in the world than it is here at home. In India I can afford health care without insurance.

Ignorance. The less you know about a place before you visit the more fun you will probably have. So don’t fret. And of course you have access through Kindle country guides and a wealth of information on the Internet about anywhere you are visiting. You can make reservations and buy train tickets on line, often pay for local transportation on line, find your way around by using GPS, be guided through a city by Google maps which tell you where to walk, where to catch the bus, when to take the subway. Travel has never been so easy. Google will even translate for you. Do find out in advance how to be connected most cheaply to the Internet. Using Facetime you can make as many free calls anywhere as you want.

6. WHAT TO DO. Usually when people travel they look at buildings: the Acropolis, the Vatican, the Eiffel Tower, London Bridge, the Taj Mahal. I think this is this is because we need a way to fill our time, a goal, and this is where everyone will direct you to. But in my experience the following are the things, almost in order, of what make a good trip.

THINGS THAT MAKE A GOOD TRIP

1. I think the most important thing that makes a trip a good one is if I am doing just what I feel like doing regardless of what other people indicate is the most significant thing to do. This is a little harder to do if I am in a group of 2, 3 or 4 with differing interests or different ages. In this case as a group, we have to sense what everyone shares the same interests or is flexible enough to do what anyone wants to do. But it is probably the first thing a group going together should talk about.

On the other hand, for me, a trip is more fun if I am traveling with another or several compatible people and accomodations become cheaper because of splitting the cost.

2. Walking around and observing everyday life is what gives me the most pleasure. It is just tremendous fun to walk down the Rue des Martyrs (or any street) in Paris, or to walk through the narrow streets of Varanasi (or any Indian city), or to ride a bicycle on the bike lanes of Haarlem (on any European city). Book your Airbnb in the old city of any city you visit and walk around, finding your way home by GPS. Just being immersed in a culture is stimulating and you will be doing this wherever you are or whatever you are visiting. The reason walking around and looking closely is so stimulating is be everything is different from home, even if slightly different. Everything you see is slightly dislocating. If other people do things so differently, why do we do what we do? The greatest gift of the dislocation caused by travel is that you see your own culture, the American way, for the first time. We go overseas to learn about ourselves.

3. Meeting people. In a tour group you meet the people in a group, which is fun, but when traveling alone you will run into outgoing people of all nationalities with whom you can have discussions. We are just lucky that English is a world language so we can talk with a great number of people. I just learned today that 99% of Montevideons (my next stop) speak English. The reason I again want to visit Naoussa so much is because of the friendship I made with Efi, the Airbnb landlady, and Wolfgang, a visitor from Germany who was also there because of Efi.

4. Family and friends. On the last trip I was with relatives and friends in place after place. Henny, a German neice, and her family were the reason that visiting Haarlem was so marvelous. Elke, my wife Kathe’s childhood friend, and her family make Winsen, Germany a wonderful place for me to visit. We had a marvelous time becasue of them.

5. Local events or accidental experiences. More fun for me in Greece than the Parthenon was the stop that Susie and I made when driving around the island of Naxos when looking for a place to eat and ending up at an ordinary outside dining area where five retired friends were eating and talking. We got drawn into the conversation at the end of which a 90 year old man danced once around the table and then down the road singing as he went. It was great fun. Or another time, driving out in a bleak landscape on Paros we wanted a drink and thought we saw a little cafe which turned out to be a bunch of friends brewing some outrageous drink they were going to take to a party of friends that night and offering us some.

Last night I was in Marshall where on Saturday they are going to have a Mermaid Parade in which everyone comes dressed as mermaids or pirates and sprays each other with water guns. No one coming to visit the United States from overseas is coming to the USA to watch the Mermaid and Pirate Parade in little Marshall on the French Broad river but anyone who might happen on it from China or Germany will remember it more fondly than their visit to the Washington Monument. On my trip to New York two weeks ago it was the Brooklyn Bridge Flea market that I remember with most pleasure along with staying with friends.

So wherever your inexpensive flight and cheap Airbnb take you, it will be the Saturday farmer’s market, streets filled with Parisian strikers, a local amusement park, a wedding that you are allowed to sit in on that will be the thing that you remember. And if you stay for a month in a place these are the kinds of things you are more likely to find. One thing Susie and I have learned is if you see an open door, don’t ask, just go in and see what is there and you will probably meet someone as you do it. If you are intruding just act the dumb tourist and leave.

6. Walk or bicycle or take a bus. Ride bicycles through vineyards or on the bike paths everywhere, walk through the parks or along the beach or through the mountains. Absorbing the beauty of a place costs little and is great fun.

g. Try out new things whenever offered. Eat things you never dreamed you would eat, dance when everyone is dancing whether you know how to dance their way or not, join in when invited. Open yourself out to a new place without embarrassment and the locals will (usually) cheer you on.

7. Be a tourist. Don’t apologize for being a tourist or hide the fact. You are not going to fit in. Often other tourists from all over the world are very interesting and want to connect. But if a place, such as the Sacre Coeur in Paris, is swarming with tourists and you want to get away, even at the height of the tourist season, I’ve discovered that you can walk two hundred yards around Montmartre and there won’t be a tourist in sight. The same was true of the central square in Prague or outside the Gaudi designed Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona where everyone was taking selfies, you only had to walk three blocks, and you would be by yourself again. It is only the famous tourist sites even at the height of the tourist season, that are crowded with tourists and close by, where you might find a few tourists, they can be fun to be with. If you stay away from the famous buildings that tourists have come to Europe to see, even in the high tourist season, Paris can be great fun.

8. And lastly, as a reason for traveling, there are those tourist sites that are the stated reason that people visit Europe. They are interesting and when you can squeeze in close to them (I remember looking at the Mona Lisa, much smaller than expected, over a field of arms with cell phones held high) they can be worth seeing. But these tourist sites come eighth on my list of the fun that you can have traveling. The other reasons for traveling, which I rate higher, you can find wherever you go in big cities or small. And note, it is the famous tourist cities that are so expensive, while smaller places are much cheaper. So don’t worry too much about finding the right place or even the right time and get the most out of your trip wherever and whenever you go.