A corporate restructuring allowed me to take early retirement in the summer of 1999.  I gave myself one year to decide if I wanted to return to work.  My husband was still working but had a flexible schedule. Therefore, I used this year to travel as much as possible to see if retirement would suit me. 

I was ready to start my year of travel, but where to go, for how long. Should I travel with a group or independently?  

That July, just as my job was coming to an end, my sister-in-law Silvana, asked us to meet her in Hossegor, France (on the Atlantic Coast), for a week, to celebrate her 40^th birthday.  The where and how long were pre-determined.  I booked our flight and began the first of many 1999-2000 trips.  This was mainly a family trip, but I it enabled me to be in an unfamiliar area (to me) of France.  A special bonus of being in that part of France, was meeting, for the first time, a cousin in Bordeaux, who I had only recently learned had survived the holocaust in Belgium. Adele, was given false identity and was protected by her neighbors.  Her parents hid in a small room for 2 years, and unlike Anne Frank, they survived. 

A couple of months later, we went to visit family in Michigan. With our new-found freedom to travel, we decided to drive and stop in Stratford, Canada for the Shakespeare festival on our way to the family party.  What a delight to have had the time for a leisurely trip. Incidentally, Stratford was lovely.

It had also been a while since I had visited family in Israel. Therefore, I began to plan an extended visit. Since we had the time, and our tickets allowed a free stopover in Prague, the where was again chosen for me.   

I returned to Prague in 2005 and will detail more about the city in a future post.  But first, I want to recount an important lesson that I learned on this trip; location matters. Our hotel was pleasant and inexpensive, but it was a good 30-minute walk from most of the attractions and not near public transportation. A more central location would have enabled us to have the freedom of returning to our hotel multiple times during the day, take a nap, and refresh.  We decided that in future trips, we would pay more for better locations.  

Although the primary reason for the Israel trip was to visit family, I decided to extend it to include a Sinai group trip.  Our group of six travelers had an Israeli guide, an Egyptian guide and Bedouin driver.  I was the only woman.  The most exciting part of the trip was climbing Mt. Sinai and watching the sun set from on top.  The climb up the mountain was difficult especially the last bit on 1,000-year-old Byzantine steps.  After we watched the sun go down from the top, we walked back down using flashlights.  There were about 100 people all going down together, holding flashlights, which made for a very impressive sight. The other memorable part of the trip was camping in the Sinai national park, hiking the colored canyon and eating the best grilled fish ever.  

I thoroughly enjoyed being in the desert, bumping along in a jeep, seeing new places and camping and hiking. I learned a lot on this trip as well. Being new to group trips, I did not request a packing list ahead of time, nor thought it through.   Luckily we had winter coats packed for Prague, because it was cold on Mt. Sinai.  Also, I would have loved to have had my hiking shoes and stick for the climb if I had realized how long or high we would be climbing. In addition, my sleep sheets would have made sleeping in borrowed sleeping bags more hygienic.

I was already hooked on travel and when I returned, I began to plan more trips.

The where again fell into my lap – my cousin’s daughter was getting married in Melbourne Australia in February 2000. It seemed to be a perfect opportunity to go to meet my family in that part of the world.  I read up on Australia and New Zealand and decided that after the wedding, we would concentrate on New Zealand instead of Australia.  How Long?  There was so much to see, therefore, we decided to stretch our time to 4 weeks including the wedding week in Melbourne.  This trip required more planning than prior trips because I was totally unfamiliar with New Zealand and there were many choices.  I found a company, “Down Under” that specializes in Australia and New Zealand.  They helped to arrange hotels, car rental and a 4-day Milford Track hike.  I will write about the Milford Track hike in the next post.

For the last trip of our year of decision, we joined our friends, Barbara and Harvey Hellering on an Amsterdam to Bruges River cruise.  We added a few days in Amsterdam before the trip and a few days in Bruges and Brussels at the end of the trip.  This was the first time that we had traveled with another couple and enjoyed it very much.  While in Amsterdam, Jerry and I often separated from the Hellerings during the day, but met them for dinner and had a lot of fun recounting the day’s adventures over the meal.  The cruise was very relaxing but we felt that there was too much emphasis on the meals rather than on the charming towns like Ghent and Bruges where we stopped along the way.  Often we had too little time to actually tour those towns.  Another learning experience – check the trip’s focus.  Still, it was a terrific experience. 

The year I had given myself was over.  I was not at all tired of traveling or anxious to go back into the corporate world.  I decided to retire and focus on traveling.

I learned a great deal from each succeeding trip and I will give advice as I relate my special trips in the following posts.