Travel All Over the World? No thanks.

 

While so many people will be taking off for foreign lands this year, count me out.

I have been to every state but Alaska, but my travels abroad are sporadic. I was never a foreign correspondent. What’s the matter with overseas travel?  Well, let’s look at my past experiences:

—On a typically windy May day in Iceland, a gust knocked me over and I fell onto my nose on a sidewalk. “I hate this country!” I yelled to anyone who could hear. No wonder the rest of the trip never got any better.

—I left a sheet with all of my passwords in a hotel drawer in Spain. I guess the maid didn’t know what it was and threw it out. (I hope.). It worried me the rest of the trip.

—I thought I would go nuts sitting still on a flight from San Francisco to London. And the jet lag once I got there was incredible. How do people fly to Australia?

—I thought I ordered a hamburger in French and got fried chicken instead in Paris.

—In most romance languages I could understand “enter” and “exit” on a subway, but not in Germany, where I was completely baffled.

—On a tour of Mexico City, the guide thought we would feel more comfortable eating at Denny’s. I flew all that way to eat at Denny’s? Maybe the guide was right: the turista I got later was from somewhere else.

—I don’t like the taste of octopus or squid in Spain.

—I flew back from Havana terribly sick. Why does that happen so much when I travel?

—Worst of all, we miscalculated the time in Chile, forgetting that 20:00 is not 10 p.m. but 8 p.m. We missed our airline’s last flight ever from Santiago on New Year’s Eve. Pickett had to use her best Spanish, learned from a year in Spain, to beg the airline authorities to let us and baby Sara take another airline home.

—I’ll make an exception for cruises. You get on a luxury boat where people mostly speak your language, and you stop at islands for just a few hours. Barbados, Bahamas, Aruba, Grenada, they are all a blur, and that’s fine with me. (My favorite movie title was “If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium.” The title told the whole story of the movie.)

—This year, New York is as exotic as we are going to get. I understand the people speak English there. Or pretty close.

 

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Some Random Notes:

Why do we need a national champion in college football? I liked it better when four or five teams could claim the title after winning a bowl game. They could argue about it on TV all winter.

 

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I think cable TV’s days are numbered, but it doesn’t mean I am cancelling mine. A streaming service from ESPN will draw away a lot of sports fans.

 

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Just discovered a wonderful Asian restaurant, the oddly named Rustic Barn, west of Danville near U.S. 58. If you order food spicy, like I do, you really get it that way. (It was hard to find on GPS though.)

 

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I love Christmas, but if I heard “Here Comes Santa Claus” one more time, I think I would have gone off the rails. A hit Christmas song is a sure ticket to immortality: Burl Ives, Eartha Kitt, Brenda Lee and Spike Jones.