In the continuing travel mission, I depart tonight for Greece. I booked this a year ago with Duende Retreats, a leap of trip faith as I hadn’t traveled with them yet and was booked for Italy in October that was still to come. The Amalfi coast and Rome with my BFW didn’t disappoint and so anticipating Greece went up a notch. She was going to join me but family obligations changed that plan. Greece is another place I haven’t been.
It’s no secret I am on a mission to get as many trip wishes on my list by 65. I have written more than once in posts about this sense of urgency. Also the desire to see new places while I am still fully employed and can take advantage of my vacation days, not cutting into retirement budgets feels like good financial planning. I sure hope to be getting to cool places well beyond 65 but we don’t know do we? That’s kind of the whole point for me.
My list is getting whittle further in October. I don’t know why I save things that I do sometimes but a week ago I found a travel brochure from the Texas Exes Flying Longhorns. Their travel offerings led me to the epic trip I took earlier this year around the world. Of course I get every brochure they send out. Most I throw away without much of a glance, checking the location and date on the cover. I was pretty sure I had tapped out 2024. Those 3.5 weeks in Feb and March ate up the vacation days. Along with this Greece trip. When has that stopped me though?
In early 2020 I had booked a fall 2021 Eastern Europe cruise with the BFW to celebrate our 30th friendversary trip. I can justify any travel. Budapest and Prague were highlights. Well we all know what happened to the rest of 2020 and it affected ports in 2021. We got to do that belated friendversary trip to Italy last year. Prague Budapest and the other points would have to wait. Have seen several offerings but none quite worked. Even one that looked amazing for this October with a company called Girls Guide to the World but double checking the dates I was booked for a trip to Canada and I wasn’t giving up my first trip to Quebec City and Canada in general.
The brochure I found was for later October. Eight countries 15 days part river and part land starting in Sofia Bulgaria, seven new to me! Ending in Prague with Vienna and Budapest along the way. Could I? Should I? No single supplement is always a big draw. Check! Never been on a river cruise in Europe. check! Quite possible at 60 I could be the youngest person.
I slept on it. By the next day though I said yes to the Grand Passage on the Danube. Why not? Someday is now. I was amazed when I realised and counted that by the end of this year I will have visited 17 new to me countries. That passport I had to renew last year 2 years early, because I wouldn’t have enough blank pages for the around the world trip, I almost cried. My 50s started with divorce and uncertainty, moving yet again and starting over after only a couple of years. Here I am newly in my 60s ticking off boxes left right and center. Hunter S. Thompson said …”Buy the ticket, take the ride…” as part of a longer quote and his meaning was simply you don’t want to be a bystander in life. That is my greater mission I now know. I hope I will never be considered a bystander in life.
I don’t know what my life would have looked like if Ray hadn’t died almost 20 years ago. I would like to think we would have seen many places together, returning to Spain where we lived in the late 1980s. I also know being about 6’11” made travel not always comfortable. It’s hard to say what he would have wanted to do. I thought about this not long ago. Outside of Spain we never went to Europe together. We spent a summer in the Dominican Republic for basketball. He got to see Japan and China playing basketball first in college and then later on an older players tour. Two places I have never been. I am glad he had the opportunities he had. I of course wish we had more. I do know he loved the good passions I had, not so much when I was passionately mad! He would have loved the travel passion and if he can know it is happening, he would be a cheerleader. I choose to believe that. As I head off solo once again.
There is always a tinge of sad when I take off on a trip when I go solo but it never lasts long. The wish that there was someone special to do these amazing trips with is always there to some degree. Then I will meet up with a group or even if going alone I find awe and delight in many things, sometimes it is the quiet that brings the coolest observations. The desire to go is always bigger than the hesitation to not go when the opportunity arises. It works out as it should. Who knows what waits on the other side of a destination? That’s what I love, what possibility will I discover?
TX Travel Girl 