Where, When, Why

From my hotel room in Paris, I was fascinated with the River Seine.  It zig-zagged across the city with a bridge cutting across every bend.  I was traveling with my parents and younger brother.  We saw the city from another high vantage, the Eifel Tower, painted stark black.  I stared at the giant rose window in the Notre Dame Cathedral long enough to never forget it.  That was 65 years ago.  Dad was in the U.S. Army, stationed in Bremerhaven, Germany.

We took trains all over Bavaria in Germany, Switzerland, France and Holland.  The tulips in Holland stretched as far as you could see.  The train to a restaurant atop a Swiss mountain was slow and the weather was snowy and freezing.  There was a table in King Ludwig's castle in Bavaria that could disappear into a lower level because he didn't like servants.

Perhaps those days enkindled in me my passion for travel.  I have several weeks left to work as a nurse in a large teaching hospital before I retire.  I've been planning BIG trips for months!

I love to drive around the countryside so my first trip will be driving south from Lexington, Kentucky, to visit relatives in Florida.  Then I'll head over to Texas!

When we were raising our children, we couldn't afford many over-night trips. All our family were out-of-town.  So when I rocked my young children - sometimes two or three at a time - we would go on fantasy trips.  "Oh, let's go visit Grandma and Grandpa in California."  Rock, rock, rock.  The chair went faster at times, slower at times but always stopped for red lights.  We had great fun!

I have more rocking-chair trips planned when I'm not driving.  My collection of National Geographics goes back to the '60's and my parents' go back to the '40's with several odd grandparent issues in the '20's.

Starting with the oldest issue, I plan to read the entire collection cover-to-cover.  Last Christmas one daughter and son-in-law gave me a tabletop Globe of the World.  I want to know how the countries with the strange names I don't recognize came into being  In this blog,  I'll report my adventures.  I'm hoping that my blog readers will share news about the wonderful places they've experienced.

Oh - my cover photo was posted because my two favorite things are children and beaches.  It is in front of the Sullivan Island Lighthouse, South Carolina.  The baby is my youngest grandchild, Xavier Isaacs.