Monday Meanderings: Three Travel Memories

Long after the purchased souvenirs are forgotten, the memories ~  those tidbits tucked away in the heart and mind ~ keep our travels alive.

Today’s post is part of a ‘blogosphere relay’ sponsored by Low Cost Holidays. Our invitation to join the team by writing about three favorite travel memories came from Marcia at Inside Journeys.

Sounded simple at first, but whoa! Think about your own travels . . .ever tried narrowing them to three favorites?  Here goes:

The First Trip


My parents didn't travel so neither did this only child; well, we did made an annual 300-mile-road trip to overnight at my grandmother’s house once, maybe twice, a year.

So it wasn’t until October 1979 when I was 26 that I took my first ‘real’ trip. I flew from Seattle to Honolulu to rendezvous with a girlfriend, then working for a newspaper in Guam.

Ours wasn’t a high end resort stay – my half of the hotel room was $27 a night, we got around by using the (still excellent) public bus system and our big splurge was attending the luau at The Royal Hawaiian Hotel.  It was a blast!

(We didn’t know each other then, but Joel was about the same time visiting this island paradise with one of his buddies,staying in similar economy accommodations, I might add.)

I’ll never forget my first glimpse of Diamond Head, the sound of palm fronds rustling in the breeze, the sand, the sun, and the sea.  I decided that if Hawaii was that fantastic, there just might be other wonders out there in the world to discover. . .

Greece

I’d been dreaming of those windmills of Greece since at age 9 I saw the Walt Disney movie set in Greece, “The Moon Spinners” starring Hayley Mills and Eli Wallach.  But back then, the thought of ever seeing Greece was as remote for me as heading to the moon. 

Four years ago I finally saw those real-life windmills on Mykonos, the setting as magical as the movie had portrayed it.

What we discovered on that trip as we rode ferries through the Cycladic Islands: – Syros, Naxos, Paros and Mykonos -- was that we wanted more. More islands,
more time there,
more discoveries.

We continued our travels in Greece expanding our explorations and becoming more captivated with each visit.



The Cruise Without Clothes

We were known as “The Seattle people without clothes” on that Silversea cruise in 2004, a round-trip from Venice with stops in Croatia, Montenegro and Greece.

Unlike the way I’ve packed since that trip (with a change of clothes in the carry-on), we had only what we’d worn on the plane. (Photo: my ‘travel look’ leaving Venice and for several days thereafter.)

Being assured by British Air that the suitcase was on its way we didn’t worry about buying replacements.  

It was. It arrived in Venice . . .an hour after we sailed. It then went back to London, and visited Paris and Athens before arriving in Corfu on the fifth day of our eight-day cruise.  But believing it would be at the ‘next port’ we limited replacement clothes to a pair of sandals and a canvas skirt for me and a shirt for Joel.

Despite being 'clothes-less from Seattle' that cruise remains one of our favorite trips. It had fabulous ports of call and supportive and sympathetic fellow cruisers who offered to loan us clothes and then applauded us when we finally appeared on our wind-swept deck as we sailed from Corfu looking like we did in this photo.


With that I am passing the blogger relay baton to Daniel at The World of Deej. You can follow the relay on Twitter at #TeamBLUE or #BloggerRelay.



What are your travel memories? Care to share them? Leave a comment below or on our Facebook TravelnWrite page.