June2014_TRAVEL TOPIC

Part Two of Why travel? By Bruce & Trish Jones

At the end of the last article we spoke of Claude Monet’s garden which took our breath away.  This followed by a personalised tour of the country side with one of the slickest and quickest shuttle drivers in Paris ended our stay in France before the comfortable transfer to London on the train beneath the sea.  Twenty minutes under the channel and there you are.

 

London proved as ever to be its same crowded frenetic self with traffic clogged by pushbikes pulling tourists along crowded streets.  Traditional travel?  Maybe in India or Sri Lanka.  Relaxing in Kew Gardens and visiting the palace of George the 3rd, Charlotte, and their fifteen children, where he tried in vain to overcome his battle with mental illness, his great malady most likely the result of porphyria, a blood disease. 

A Celebrity Cruise is something to only marvel at, being a fifteen story floating luxury resort hosting over three thousand residents, plus crew, and its own acre of grass on the top deck, plus a glass blowing factory, a casino, a shopping mall and?  Use your imagination.  World class cuisine and entertainment with a new port of call each day takes some getting used to but we managed…just.  Scandinavian countries are so pristine and scenic, with a great sense of preserved history.  Finally Russia and St Petersburg and a peep inside the oppression of the former Soviet Union with an excellent and disillusioned Russian guide.  Tight security to enter and complimentary vodka before each meal on tour organised visits.  We hit it on Navy Week so endless crowds and queues, and their cathedrals are all we’d imagined, magnificent.  But the highlights were the palace and water gardens of Peterhof, with fountains and water features choreographed to music, the home of Peter the Great and his second wife, Catherine.  Now there was a lady.  Inspiration to garden a little harder.

After a travel experience it is sobering to contemplate the total experience and consider the costs and inconveniences of being away from home for weeks at a time.  One can buy DVDs of almost every tourist venue yet visited and consume them from the comfort of one’s armchair.  Why travel?  What you can’t buy is the person to person contact, the social exchanges of like minded travellers who enrich each meal shared, each site visited.  New friendships, new contacts, new scents, new tastes, alternate ways of thinking.  We love to travel and applaud the job that Maverick Travel put into our memorable experience.  We even took a few photos to share with family and friends, used every day as screen savers on the computer.  There’s Peterhof now…

Maverick Travel would like to thank Mr & Mrs Jones for putting pen to paper.  This was the final part in their 2-part series.  I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we did- and yes, we all need to do a little more work on our gardens!   Don’t forget at Maverick Travel you can redeem your American Express membership reward points to pay for your trip:  10,000 = $100.