World Travellers
Growing up as a young boy in Virginia I had wanderlust to visit places I read about in books or pondered on my globe. In a family of five children a station wagon trip to camp on Hatteras Island, NC was the extent of my travel. However, my mother showed me on my globe where I was born in France and that seemed so exotic and so far away as I looked at all the blue ocean in between.
Dee and I were fortunate in my Army career to live across the USA and in Europe for nine years and that just wet our appetite for more travel. We have traveled extensively in retirement and most recently finished our second circumnavigation of the world on Holland America’ s m / s Amsterdam. We chose this second trip because the itinerary included many Asian countries missed our first time around when we sailed largely in the southern hemisphere. Dee also wanted to retrace some of her father’ s travel as a career Navy man and especially to visit Nagasaki, Japan, where her father spent time nearby as a prisoner of war after being captured at Corregidor, Philippines.
We embarked at Fort Lauderdale for 111 days to circumnavigate the world for 30171 nautical miles to 40 ports of call and passing through the Panama and Suez canals. We were accompanied by our Fort Walton Yacht Club burgee, which flew in exotic places like zip lining in Costa Rica, the Great Wall of China, the Korean DMZ, a Chinese junk in Hong Kong and on a camel’ s back in Wadi Rum, Jordan. Whenever we put it on display, it drew attention with the Indian chief. The world knows Hollywood movies and westerns with Indians, so our burgee design was familiar yet exotic to foreigners.
The best reason for travelling with a ship as transportation is that you only unpack once and your hotel-like accommodations travel with you. While dining out in exotic places is fun, we knew that if the meals were too exotic, a good meal awaited us on the ship. We were lucky to enjoy a center of the ship cabin with a generous veranda. And, we enjoy the effortless living on the ship where you are pampered and entertained daily.
We had two land excursions away from the ship: one in Beijing, China by bus and the second in Spain where we took a high speed( about 200mph) train from Barcelona to Madrid before returning to the ship in Cadiz a few days later.
Highlights for us on the trip were the Great Wall of China where it snowed, Vietnam where I served in 1970-71, and Spain where we visited Toledo on our Madrid side trip. The most fun thing we did was a sleigh ride down a mountainous steep city street in Funchal, Maderia. The most exotic place we visited was Marrakech where the central plaza had magicians, acrobats, snake charmers, performing monkeys, donkey carts, coopers making barrels, metal workers making copper pans, and cobblers making shoes. Marrakech’ s plaza is an impromptu circus that is magical. Its marketplace, the souk, is a maze of narrow alleys where you can find silks, slippers, leather goods, spices, jewelry, carpets, objects of art, and just about anything you can think of that a craftsmen or artist can make.
The best part about such an adventure are the many memories you take home and a deep appreciation for being American and living in the best country in the world. We had a wonderful time, but we missed very much our family at the Fort Walton Yacht Club. We were happy to return home where we are already planning our next big trip abroad. See photos on our trip log at mickeydee2017. blogspot. com.
~ P / C Micky La Garde
10