In 1976, after returning from a Trafalgar trip around Europe with her Mom, Becki wrote to her aunt: “I’m already planning my next trip.” In the end, it didn’t come for another 56 years. But it was worth the wait. This is her story of her first experience of travel outside the US, and the family tradition it sparked – and that she recently continued with her two grandsons, taking them on the same Trafalgar tour of Europe she took at 16.
We’ll let Becki take it from here…
Leaving the USA for the first time
It was 1976 and I’d just graduated from high school, and my mom announced she was taking me on a trip to Europe to celebrate. Really, she just planned where she wanted to go and I got to go along. When my two brothers graduated, they each got the same trip – so she went three times.
It was my first trip where I had to use a passport. Mom and Dad liked to travel, but it was always in the car with no air conditioning in the summer. I had seen almost all 50 states by the time I took this trip, but it was still a new horizon.
Mom and I flew Air India from New York to London. Looking back on the scrapbook I made from the trip, I remembered we had a full a three–course meal on the plane. The stewardesses were dressed in saris; they were so beautiful.
Digging out my scrapbook has been really interesting – I hadn’t looked at it for years. I couldn’t believe that the 1976 trip I took with mom cost just $1,000, including airfare!
The trip was around three weeks starting in London, and after we finished in England we flew over the channel. I wrote in my little blog that we didn’t even have time to finish our cups of tea, it was so fast. Mom had learned how to fly small planes during the war, so she was thrilled with the pilot.
Then it was onto Amsterdam and through the Netherlands, Austria, Monaco, Switzerland, Germany, France, and Spain, ending in Paris before we went home.
I was an avid photographer, but my own camera was a box camera. It was clunky and I didn’t want to be seen with it, so I borrowed my dad’s slide camera. He only showed me how to work it two days before we left.
I had a feeling my pictures weren’t going to turn out, and I was right. I put the film in wrong, so all I have is the four pictures that our fellow travelers sent to us after the trip. Luckily we sent lots of postcards back home and my dad saved them for us – they also keep a record of what we were thinking at different parts of the journey.
It really was a great trip. I wrote to my aunt: “I’m already planning my next one.” But of course, my next trip didn’t come for 56 years.
56 Years Later
After 56 years, my own mortality was the spur. To anyone who wants to travel but hasn’t yet, I say when you reach that point, you need to do it. You’re not given a whole lifetime that you know of.
My husband was a reporter and we’d planned to travel together after he retired early, but he had problems with his circulation. He had a couple of operations so we agreed we’d travel after he was all fixed and able to walk.” But he only lasted six months, so we never got our big trips in.
I started planning to travel after that, because I saw that life is very short – and I’m certainly not at the beginning of it anymore. If I’m going to go traveling, I’d better get out there and do it.
Before the pandemic I went to Lisbon with my daughter–in–law, and that’s what made me think about taking my grandsons on a trip, just like mom did. My oldest grandson graduated during the pandemic – we had the Trafalgar trip scheduled, but of course, we couldn’t go. By the time I felt safe to travel again my second grandson had also graduated, so I took them both in 2024.
I asked Logan, the eldest, “Where do you want to go?” He said, “Grandma, I’ve not been anywhere. I’ll go anywhere you choose.” So I followed in my mom’s footsteps, and chose Trafalgar because the European Whirl went to almost exactly the same places that we had gone to in 1976. But I didn’t risk taking a film camera this time.
I feel a lot safer using guided trips to travel. I speak English and a tiny bit of Spanish, so I’m worried about going places where I don’t know the language. And, gosh, it’s so nice to have somebody plan it for you.
A New Perspective
Traveling with young people brings you a fresh view of how exciting and interesting everything is. You can get a bit jaded as you get older, so I love taking them anywhere.
On the Europe trip with the boys, I’d remark that things weren’t as crowded when I last visited. But this time in Rome it was so hot that our Travel Director declined to let us go into the Roman Forum because it was a ‘heat bowl’.
With mom we had a Dutch driver named Sita, and I remember the ladies in the back of the bus yelling, “More air, Sita! More air!” The air conditioning wasn’t very good – luckily the buses on the boys’ trip were much better.
There is one thing I wish I hadn’t done. My mother had taken me to the Folies Bergère in Paris. It’s a famous show, so I didn’t think anything about it when I signed up for tickets – but taking your grandsons to see bare–breasted women dancing is, in hindsight, probably not a great idea. Walking in I suddenly realized: “Oh my gosh, what are you thinking, woman?” I was truly embarrassed. I didn’t know how I was going to tell their parents about it, but the boys were fine. They weren’t even red-faced.
I was so happy they were able to come on the trip and gain a better world perspective. Living in Indiana, in the middle of the United States, we can think that’s all there is. I wanted them to understand that there are lots of different cultures and lots of different ways to live, and they’re all open to you if you want to explore them. That was my main goal – to open their eyes to the whole world instead of just our little part.
I think if they have the means, they will carry on the tradition. There’s a difference in them since the trip; they talk about it all the time and want to explore more. That Christmas, I put all my photographs in a book and gave them one each. They leaf through them and say, “Remember this? Remember that?”
I think mom would be so pleased that her tradition is still going. I saw the United States with her and my dad, and they really believed in travel – there’s just something about it that opens you up. If you don’t go out and see things for yourself, it doesn’t feel as real.
I want to encourage people to take the leap and schedule a trip with their loved ones. It’ll help you gain a deeper appreciation of the amazing world we live in, as well as learning more about the people we love.