Travel Experience - What's this Blog is all about

As I think back to traveling on vacations while in our 40's and 50's, I would have been horrified to imagine the type of travel we prefer to take today. Back then the freedom to plan our own trips was key. I reveled in spending days upon days doing research and finding exactly where we wanted to go. And then make the arrangements including all the accommodations and figure out how we get from place to place all by ourselves. We selected the sites we wanted to visit and of course researched how to get to them all on our own. Independence was really important to us. We felt sorry for the hoards of tour groups shuffling by as they race past world wonders and antiquities not stopping long enough to fully appreciate the rare spectacles they traveled so far to see. But the thing that really got me as these herds passed by, they seemed to all have the same dead eyed zombie expression on their faces. We snobbishly vowed never to do that type of travel.

Fast forward to our 60's, specifically age 65. Vietnam was always on our travel bucket list. We had never been to Asia and was quite nervous about planning a trip from scratch in a culture so different from ours. So we decided to try the thing we vowed never to do, we booked a Southeast Asia 21-day trip that took us to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia through Seniors Discovery Tours. It was a phenomenal perfectly curated trip which I will describe in a future blog. But the one thing we had never encountered while travelling was a totally stress and worry-free experience. The tour had a super busy/intense itinerary taking us from awesome site to awesome site (with ample time to take in all the spectacles) but we didn't have to worry about finding anything, worrying if we are on the right route, or if we are going to miss our time slot. None of that was our concern! We just turned up and took it all in. Back in the day, after a maximum of 10 days, we would be ready to head home feeling a bit burned out largely because of all the travel pressure we had been under. But that didn't happen on this trip. Heading into day 21 we felt we could do at least another week.

Since that trip we've taken other tours, and not all have been as good. We've learned a bit more about what to look for in a tour and we will be sharing that in future blogs. We have also tried cruises too. That was something else we had vowed to never do. And that to our surprise was also a super fun experience. We loved all the games offered in the evenings, schmoozing at the pool. It took me back to my old camp days with a filled agenda of fun activities (we by nature are big time participators). We are still cruise rookies, so we look forward to learning more through the interactive comments in future blogs.

That should hopefully give you a taste of what we plan to accomplish on this travel experience blog. Stay tuned for much more.