My mother loved to travel, her excursions taking her around the globe. Wherever she landed, she collected friends, many inviting her to stay in their homes. She reciprocated, and our house became a waystation for visitors from around the planet. Colorful dress, assorted languages, and multi-cultural traditions paraded before my eyes, ears, and sensorium.
My father proffered invitations as well. As a world-renowned geophysicist, president of their global organization and editor of their society’s magazine, scientists from places as exotic as India, Iran, and China often joined us for dinner. I sat spellbound by their wide-ranging topics, usually scientific from oceanography to geothermal, although politics and even religion were never off limits.
My parents belonged to an organization called Servas, an international hospitality agency that provided resting places for foreign visitors. Even with three children, my parents would make room for guests, host them to a meal and a bed, and provide them with gifts for their travels. The callers ranged in status and age, with as many college students as retirees. When I was old enough to drive, I’d take the visitors on a tour of the city, fascinated by their tales of amazing adventures. I remember one young Australian couple on a year-long walkabout. They described China’s Great Wall, the Giant’s Causeway of Ireland, and the Taj Mahal of India, sites I promised myself I’d see someday.
My brother Michael inherited the family’s love of travel. When I was an adolescent, he took me to a summer camp where only French was spoken. Another summer, when we were teenagers, he drove me and my brother on an around-the-country-tour, putting in over two-thousand miles in six-weeks. We visited twenty western states, including such highlights as the Grand Canyon, the San Diego zoo, and Mount Rushmore. As an adult, he became the world’s expert on teaching foreign countries how to run their censuses, leading him to visit over a hundred countries, collecting souvenirs that made his house into an amazing cultural museum.
My first big trip came just after my internship, age 25. On a four-week tour, I traveled the length and breadth of Israel, from the Golan Heights to Sharm-El-Sheikh, Tel Aviv to the Red Sea. Lasting impressions included the centuries-old velvet and gold trimmed synagogues of Safed, the mystical dark tomb of Abraham, and the quiet stone pathways of old Jerusalem. It cemented within me the joy of travel, of experiencing different cultures and learning the history and ways of other paths.
Three years later I finished my residency and devoted the next year to working as an itinerant emergency room physician. Living cheaply, I stashed away $25,000. Storing my possessions so I’d be expense free, I set off with my new wife on an 8-month honeymoon, covering 20 eastern U.S. states and 20 European countries. We called ourselves “The Bourgeois Backpackers,” sometimes staying at homes of friends of my parents, or otherwise discovering lodging at a local Bed and Breakfast. One of my favorites was a little apartment in Albufeira, the Mediterranean coast of Portugal. High on the cliffs overlooking the beach, we feasted on steamed snails and fresh cantaloupe.
For the past eight years, I’ve lived with the French Girlfriend, a devoted traveler herself. Isabelle’s parents took her across western Europe, with yearly visits to Switzerland and Germany. She left her Paris home as a teenager, supporting herself as she traveled by taking work as an au pair, barmaid, or housekeeper. She’d been in America over twenty years when we met in Biloxi. On our first conversation, we laughed to discover we each spoke five languages. We’ve journeyed together ever since. Hot air ballooning over the wine fields of Burgundy. Buying a huge Tiki in Bora Bora. Sharing a medical mission in Haiti. Touring the Normandy cemetery where we reveled in our mutual appreciation of history.
I’ve been to nearly fifty countries during my travels, including safaris in Kenya, shipboard through the Galapagos Islands, and a boat tour on the Yangtze River. I’ve seen all three of the sites mentioned by the Australian couple, and many, many more. Yet I realize there’s so much more in the world to visit! For example, the FG and I have a Mekong River tour scheduled for 2023.
The travel bug doesn’t bite everyone. Yet for those of us who love to explore, it can be a need that’s quenched only with the thrill of discovering a new place. Somewhere with amazing history. Spicy foods. Rhythmic music. Enchanting beauty. Incredible culture.
Yet, there’s more to life than travel. I have responsibilities: a job, friends, a Pekinese. This week on the plane back from Puerto Rico, I leaned over and kissed Isabelle’s cheek. Nestling next to her ear, I murmured, “The best part of any trip is coming home.”