This is my Mother, she’s the one on top. On Saturday she returned from a holiday trekking through the deserts of Tunisia, spending her days riding a Camel through the Sahara and her nights sleeping out under the stars. Not bad for an old age pensioner.
What’s more she even visited Matnatot, the location where they filmed Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s farm in Star Wars: A New Hope. Unfortunately the significance was a little lost on her.
In the last year my Mum has been to China, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Egypt and Tunisia. This almost beats Kerry’s parents whose recent excursions over the past few years have included the Maldives, Egypt, Hong Kong, Spain and Ireland off the top of my head. My Dad hasn’t been anywhere in a while, but this is more than made up for by the fact that he, my uncle, and their friends circumnavigated the globe in a converted double decker bus during the 60’s – financing the trip by busking (yes, like in Summer Holiday).
My sister lived in Atlanta for five years. Kerry grew up on army bases in Germany and Gibraltar and has been to more different countries than you can shake a stick at. And me? I went to Paris once on a school trip.
My only solace was that my brother was in a similar position, but last night he announced that he was packing in his job next October and flying to Asia with the intention of slowly making his way to Australia to find work. These are no mere pipe dreams either; he’s already bought his ticket.
Ok, so I have travelled the world a bit if I’m honest; especially since I met Kerry (We even got married abroad – in the tropical house of Central Park Zoo in New York). I’ve been to four different continents and even have duel nationality (British and Australian – my mum is from Oz). But somehow I still feel a little left out.
Every now and again I get an urge to pack up and go. I’m lucky in the fact my qualifications and experience mean that I could find employment in most English speaking places without too many worries about work permits. Just after Amy was born Kerry and I were seriously considering emigrating to New Zealand, but we moved back to Huddersfield instead. For a while I was also thinking about going to Sri Lanka in order to use my psychiatric nursing skills in order to help survivors of the 2004 Tsunami, but the organisation I was going to volunteer with didn’t provide support to take your family, so that was out.
In the end I know we’ll always stay put, our families are too important to us, and more significantly to Amy and Evan, for us to ever go anywhere. But you can dream can’t you.
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Yes, you can dream… I do it all the time. I’ve traveled a lot around the US, but have only been out of the country briefly to Canada and Mexico (crossing the border in your car doesn’t really count as international travel).
When my dad left my family, he spent the next 30 years living his dreams of travel. We got postcards from places like Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, and Bora Bora. I learned to hate those postcards.
Right now my dream trip is to take the family to England for a month and just soak up the history.
too cool! i saw the photos on flickr first and thought “what the hell planet is she on?” what a great experience for her! my parents haven’t been more then 300 miles from home since the trip they took to florida when i was 7. my siblings never ventured far either, which makes me wonder where i developed my love for travel.
maybe you should have another contest! who’s been the farthest from home or most countries? i’ll go make my list while you make this offical. heh, heh! tell you what–I’LL supply the gift! let me know what you think. ow, i’m all excited now…
I get the urge to travel sometimes too…but for now it’s just to Disney World. Our day to see the world will come I’m sure.
And, by the way, I was impressed by the Star Wars location too.
Disney world was considered the most exotic location in the world when I was a kid. For a start it was in the USA; the fabled land of the A-Team and Knightrider, and secondly it was a holiday that was purely child centered. These days I\’m guessing that it isn\’t quite as special to children. Disney no longer have a monopoly on quality children\’s films and the USA seems a lot nearer these days due to costs of flying reducing.
Bon Bon, that sounds like a good idea to me. I wasn\’t going to bother with a competition this month as I thought the luster had worn off somewhat. I remember seeing a website somewhere that allowed you to plot all the countries you\’ve visited on a Google map. I\’ll look into it.
Just had to look at the new picture of Evan – I’m so grateful that you have this wonderful blogsite Im enjoying it so much here in Spain – love the humour in all you write Dan – Loved the two photos of face painting also love A.Angie and George.xxx