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TRAVEL TO DREAM DESTINATIONS WITH ALL THE COMFORTS OF HOME

BRITAIN & IRELAND

Family Travel: The Time Is Now.
Here’s the World, and How to Improve It.

           Just got back yesterday from a 5-day spring break to Paris with my 12-year-old granddaughter. She chose the destination. Last year she picked London. Kids have bucket lists, too.

          When we reached our turn at US Customs & Immigration at the airport, the agent asked me where we had visited. “Paris,” I replied in my post-airplane stupor. Then he turned to Jackie: “First time in Paris?”

          “Yep.” Kids have stupors, too.

          “Do you like America better than Paris?” he pried.

          I could see on her sophisticated tweener face that Jackie smelled a trap. She knew this guy was a USA official with the keys to the door. But she’s a brave traveller and an independent American. “No. I like Paris better.”

          Then the surprise: “I like it better overseas, too.” This from the US Customs agent. “I go often. Mostly to Britain. I really like it there.”

          End of conversation. We were home, Jackie to her family, and me to my wife and business and the new baseball season.

                                                   * * * * *

          This morning I woke up rehashing the last five days in Paris. They had been fun days, a tonic for both of us aged a half-century apart, a real vacation-vacation, as Jackie, her sister, and her mom would say. We went to the Eiffel Tower three different times, Notre Dame twice, Montmartre and the Louvre once each, Eurodisney not at all. We ate breakfast in our apartment, grabbed lunch on the go, and had dinner in a different restaurant each night. We window shopped daily, and carefully bought less than $150 worth of souvenirs — the usual stuff Americans buy: a cheap snow globe advertising Paris, two cheap T-shirts advertising Paris, a cheap fashion carry-bag advertising Paris, a cheap coffee cup advertising Paris, three cheap fashion scarves (no writing or images), and a small, expensive bottle of French snake oil promising magical skin rejuvenation for my wife who drew the short straw and had to stay home.

          I went over the trip in my mind in detail as I got ready to return to work. I think I was shaving when my thoughts returned to the minor incident at US Customs at the airport on the way home. Why would this federal official confess his rather unexpected opinion to my granddaughter? Americans of a certain political bent would doubtless consider his expressed preference both improper and unpatriotic of a uniformed US Customs officer while on duty. Not me. I was surprised at the time. After a good night’s sleep, I was impressed.

          The officer was a young man, probably in his early thirties, but old enough to be a family man. He could just as easily be a bachelor. Young people today tend to marry late, if at all. And, if he has kids he might travel with them, or not. A young man who has traveled “often” to Britain might not be able to afford taking the family with him, even if he wanted to. I didn’t notice a wedding ring, but the absence of a wedding ring means little. I haven’t worn one the last thirty-five years of my 43 years of marriage. All this is speculation of course. Fantasy. But, this much I know: this young man took an interest in a 12-year-old’s reaction to overseas travel, and his interest was sincere enough that he chose to share his own — possibly controversial — opinion with a little girl to let her know that she isn’t alone in preferring her travel experiences to the usual humdrum of home.

                                                   * * * * *

          We were in Paris during spring break, an important but ill-defined vacation that has evolved since I was in college forty years ago. A slew of low-budget Hollywood films — noting the commercial successes of the much-lower-budget “Girls Gone Wild” series — has painted the holiday as specifically for collegiate undergrads needing a break from partying at their universities who agree to meet their friends to continue partying at a beach resort on the Gulf or the Caribbean. But we all know that anything aimed at a college-age market produces collateral damage among younger kids aspiring to become college-age. Today, thanks in large part to the film genre that includes “Girls Gone Wild”, “Porky’s”, and “American Pie”, even 12-year-olds are planning spring break vacations.

          Don’t get me wrong. I love vacations. I love travel. And I love the idea that my grandchildren love travel vacations, too. Lined up at the Louvre, picnicking in the park in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, passing by the Musée d’Orsay at noon, watching the street performers at Sacre Coeur, and dining at café restaurants on every night, Jackie and I were surrounded by American college kids on spring break. We saw a fair number of American high school groups, too. The young Americans filled our airplane in both directions. My granddaughter said to me at dinner one evening, “Pop-Pop, I’m coming back to Paris with my friends when I’m in college.” I hope she does.

                                                   * * * * *

          When they travel abroad, danger is the companion of young people. No, not the danger of parental nightmares. The danger I write of is the danger that your young people — like my 12-year-old granddaughter, Jackie, and the young US Customs officer we met — may come home spouting some unpatriotic heresy born of positive experiences and new ideas they experienced in a foreign culture. A 98-year-old song still warns us: “How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?”

          The “heresy” rarely comes as dogma. Mostly it comes as dialogue, and you’re invited to play. “Why don’t we have better public transportation?” “Shouldn’t we be producing more organic food?” “Why is college (or health care, or the cost to get into a museum) so expensive in America?”

          Of course, you run the same risk every time you travel abroad. We hear it from you. We say it ourselves. “Why can’t we have bakeries and fresh-baked bread in America?” “I love the cheese (or mustard, or selection of leaf lettuce, or pastries, or the gas mileage, or the duvets, or the outdoor cafés, or the local foods, or don’t get me started)

Jackie in Paris. Other cultures
teach us as they entertain us.

Photo © Home At First.

here. We should have this in America.”

          When you travel, you learn. Same for the kids. And, happily, most of the lessons are fun. They’re the real souvenirs of your trip. My granddaughter bought a snow globe in Paris that she may keep forever. But, it will serve to remind her of the trip’s most important souvenirs: that travel is positive, that other cultures can teach us while they entertain us, and that she wants to travel again.

                                                   * * * * *

          It has been a rough decade for many American families. The Great Recession has meant few — if any — family vacations since 2008, and, in the years following the September 11 attacks many families elected not to travel abroad out of concerns about terrorism. This year, finally, the American economy has begun to percolate again. Our troops have come home from Iraq and the president has announced a timetable for ending the war in Afghanistan. In recent weeks the dollar has gained value against the Euro and the British pound. Airfares to many destinations, including most in the British Isles, have not jumped as predicted. In fact, airfare sales have recently appeared that significantly reduce even high season travel to popular destinations including SCOTLAND and LONDON. Many European countries need the economic shot in the arm American visitors bring. The welcome mat is out. The cost is down. The tide of world tensions has ebbed. This is the year Americans have been waiting for. It’s time to check off one or two items on your bucket list. And on those of your kids, too.

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Ron Fahnestock
Editor

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