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BEST AND WORST TRAVELS
BEST AND WORST TRAVELS
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Ramon Carver says, "I’m writing for folks who enjoy reading about my good fortune and misfortunes (i.e.: 'Ethel, this is Billy Joe, and I want you to know the food and hotels were awful, and we didn’t like the people or the places! Ole Martina got sick as a dog and threw up one night in the cafeteria, and it rained, Lord, it rained, it was a terrible, terrible trip – but we sure did make good time!'
"Great expectations when traveling are usually the source of my greatest disappointments. I’m like the guy in a New Yorker cartoon studying a brochure telling his travel agent: 'I am so looking forward to this. I can’t wait to be disappointed.'
"Actually, I go nuts when someone or something disappoints, and I rejoice when it exceeds expectations. But always, if I can wring a laugh out of a misadventure, I wring it. And I confront my expectations head on.
"How does one set up and adjust reasonable travel expectations? The old-fashioned ways: Acquire Information, Get a pot full of money, and Cross your fingers!
"Everybody’s attracted to the idea of trips to far away places with strange sounding names as well as places close at hand. That’s how we all begin our travels for pleasure – with an assumption that a place might be a great destination. But how do we determine if a trip will be right for us? Candid travel agents are the best sources. Who else ya gonna trust? Billy Joe, noted above?
"The easiest way to get informed is to listen to interesting traveler’s stories or read somebody’s personal travel journals. Armchair travel. Doesn’t really matter how old the journals are because it’s the traveler’s experiences you’re after, not particulars. All particulars are out-of-date from the moment they’re penned.
Commercial travel publications cultivate fantasy, not candor. Prospective clients, that is, readers of magazines and tour books, search for authoritative sources of information, but beware: Publishers (Travel Czars) are in business to market the industry. It’s the promise of comfort and luxury that sells travel like the promise of sex sells somebody's idea of good sex.
"On the upside, they offer directions and maps and useful cultural and historical information to accompany spectacular photography (There is no frigate like a great photograph). But they generally fail to note that their stuff is months old by the time it hits the shelves. In July of this year (any year), one can buy hardback travel books with next year’s dates on the cover containing lists of 'Best' restaurants, lodgings, etc., even businesses that have gone out of business.
"'BTDT.' Everybody knows what that means: 'Been There, Done That and bought the T-shirt!' Another double-edged maxim is true, 'You have to get there to be there, and you have to go there to have been there!' That's the only way of honestly sharing adventures/misadventures first hand: Standing at the ovens at Dachau, cruising the Canals in Burgogne that Thomas Jefferson enjoyed, hiking atop the rim of the crater of Vesuvius, staring back at the Sphinx while riding a camel, climbing steep steps up and down the Great Wall, you discover there are far more than 1,000 places to visit before you die."
"Great expectations when traveling are usually the source of my greatest disappointments. I’m like the guy in a New Yorker cartoon studying a brochure telling his travel agent: 'I am so looking forward to this. I can’t wait to be disappointed.'
"Actually, I go nuts when someone or something disappoints, and I rejoice when it exceeds expectations. But always, if I can wring a laugh out of a misadventure, I wring it. And I confront my expectations head on.
"How does one set up and adjust reasonable travel expectations? The old-fashioned ways: Acquire Information, Get a pot full of money, and Cross your fingers!
"Everybody’s attracted to the idea of trips to far away places with strange sounding names as well as places close at hand. That’s how we all begin our travels for pleasure – with an assumption that a place might be a great destination. But how do we determine if a trip will be right for us? Candid travel agents are the best sources. Who else ya gonna trust? Billy Joe, noted above?
"The easiest way to get informed is to listen to interesting traveler’s stories or read somebody’s personal travel journals. Armchair travel. Doesn’t really matter how old the journals are because it’s the traveler’s experiences you’re after, not particulars. All particulars are out-of-date from the moment they’re penned.
Commercial travel publications cultivate fantasy, not candor. Prospective clients, that is, readers of magazines and tour books, search for authoritative sources of information, but beware: Publishers (Travel Czars) are in business to market the industry. It’s the promise of comfort and luxury that sells travel like the promise of sex sells somebody's idea of good sex.
"On the upside, they offer directions and maps and useful cultural and historical information to accompany spectacular photography (There is no frigate like a great photograph). But they generally fail to note that their stuff is months old by the time it hits the shelves. In July of this year (any year), one can buy hardback travel books with next year’s dates on the cover containing lists of 'Best' restaurants, lodgings, etc., even businesses that have gone out of business.
"'BTDT.' Everybody knows what that means: 'Been There, Done That and bought the T-shirt!' Another double-edged maxim is true, 'You have to get there to be there, and you have to go there to have been there!' That's the only way of honestly sharing adventures/misadventures first hand: Standing at the ovens at Dachau, cruising the Canals in Burgogne that Thomas Jefferson enjoyed, hiking atop the rim of the crater of Vesuvius, staring back at the Sphinx while riding a camel, climbing steep steps up and down the Great Wall, you discover there are far more than 1,000 places to visit before you die."
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