Cindy’s World-‘I Am Happiest on the Road, Suitcase in Hand’

I love to travel. I have visited over 13 different countries and 21 different U.S. states. I am happiest on the road, suitcase in hand, headed anywhere away from home.
The problem with traveling is I seem to spend a great deal of my time lost, sleep deprived or both.
My worst experience with being lost and sleepless occurred in my 20s on a trip to Holland. I was living in Boston at the time and took a flight into London, where I had a layover, arriving around 8:30 p.m. local time. The night prior to my departure I was unable to sleep from excitement, and that night in London, after traveling all day, I stayed in a bed and breakfast on unquestionably the worst mattress in the city.
The following day, now 48 hours without sleep and totally incoherent, I went to Gatwick Airport only to realize I was supposed to have gone to Heathrow. It took me nearly an hour to get back to the right airport, another several hours to get on the next available flight, another 2-½ to get to the airport in Rotterdam and then I had to take a bus to Rotterdam Central Station to get on a train to Amsterdam Central Station.
All this time I went without sleeping, but I wasn’t done yet. I managed to catch the last bus of the night to the neighborhood where my accommodations were located, then walked for 20 minutes in the dark to the B & B, where I was promptly chewed out by the elderly owner who had been waiting up for me. It turned out, however, that she may have just been anxious for a little company, because afterwards she offered me a cup of tea and talked at length in a heavy Dutch accent I couldn’t understand until I fell asleep in the chair.
Now that I think about it, many of my most adventurous travel experiences have occurred in Holland. On another visit I arrived in Amsterdam on Easter weekend without a room for the night. The whole country was overflowing with tourists and I quickly found there were neither rooms available in the city, nor in fact, the entire country.
Luckily, or not, a honeymooning couple from Israel in the same predicament invited me to join them and sleep in their rental car. It was a better option than the hard train station bench I was considering, though I can’t say I slept that night, either.
Getting lost is par for the course when traveling, it’s just part of the adventure.
After college I backpacked around Europe and spent a lot of time asking for directions. Twice I was so lost I resorted to hitchhiking to get to my destination. That’s right, I hitchhiked! Not that I’d recommend that choice to anyone, but in those days I was quite the free spirit.
Many people go on trips and demand that their accommodations and experiences match up to a certain standard. I, too, love the luxury resort experience. There’s nothing like a little pampering at the spa, an evening of fine dining and some live theater. Some of my best experiences, however, have been at the average place meeting every-day people.
My kids and I have started a tradition of tent camping each year at Halloween with several other families near where we live. We are not experienced campers and do not have a lot of fancy camping accoutrements. We just go with the flow and have a heck of a lot of fun doing it. It’s dirty, it’s cold at night and it’s definitely not high end, but it’s a blast.
For me travel is all about experiencing a slice of life somewhere completely different than the place I call home. When I had my children, I knew instilling a love of travel was on my priority list of gifts I wanted to give them.
I hope my children will reach adulthood having traveled enough to understand what a large and amazing planet it is that we live on. I hope they will have had fun, but I also hope from seeing other places their views and perspectives of the world, its many people and cultures, will be broad and open-minded, compassionate and accepting.
I hope they will take a love of travel with them and pass it on to their kids.
I also hope they will get to where they are going easily and safely, and be able to sleep once they get there.
Kluger writes from Dennisville