We have this rules about never leaving a fellow traveler in a bar or disco or night club behind, we always go together and leave together no matter how cute this guy you just met is. We also have the we are all on vacation rule which means everyone can do and enjoy whatever he or she pleases even if it involves reading all day in the air conditioned room, or playing videogames instead of going sightseeing, we have to understand each one of us needs to unwind in a different way and we all need our private space to enjoy our trip, so we grant each other that space and we act all polite and friendly even if we wanted some company for that spa massage we wanted to try. I have discovered I like to travel to museums on my own; I like to write and describe what I see.
http://traveler.nationalgeographic.com/
Puerto Vallarta's Sunset
Nowadays I’ve got my own Royal holiday membership and I since I’m not married and have no children, I take off whenever my budget and my work allow me to. Sometimes I travel with my brother’s family like on my Puerto Vallarta’s trip, but most of the time I travel with friends who are like me single and working, we have a group of friends, men and women who love to travel and plan imaginary trips just as I do, so we get together and plan a trip and we grab the first opportunity we get to make it come true, sometimes we are 5 or even 6 people traveling together which obviously complicates things a little bit more than when we are just 2 or 3 fellow travelers, so we have some rules and we try to keep them although I must confess we sometimes also break them it all depends on our mood.
My excitement over a trip always started with the announcement of the selected travel destination, and even if the traveling date was too far away we talked about the place we were about to visit and my mother and father would look up all the information about our destination they could get their hands into, (this was before the internet was in every home), historic events, ancient cultures, language, type of government, and all sorts of what we thought were useless data. We were most interested in finding out what fun activities we would find there and if they would allow us to be free to experiment at least inside the hotel. We visited Orlando of Course and went wild since we were told we were going. The trip excitement was relived when we developed the films our parents took and saw the pictures all together, laughing and recalling all kinds of funny travel experiences.
http://www.orlandoinfo.com/
We would meet the local kids and talk to them in a make believe foreign language and they would look at us in a strange way and sometimes they would join our expeditions and sometimes they would just go on their way. I remember those imaginary vacation trips fondly and when we started growing too old for them we promised we will sometime travel through the entire world for real, in real boats, planes and trains. My family’s economy started improving and my parents bought a Royal Holiday membership on a family trip to Cancun México. After that we enjoyed traveling as a Family and we were sometimes even allowed to bring friends along. On these trips my mother taught me how to know the local culture by talking to strangers about their daily lives and she taught me to appreciate the world’s diversity and to be amazed and intrigue by it.
Paris
Before I talk to you about my trip experiences in other parts of this glorious world, let me tell you about my own personal reason to love traveling so much. Growing up we didn’t have much money, and the idea of traveling for my parents was going to either side grandmother’s house for a couple of days and do nothing but watch grownups talk and watch TV. Back then grandmothers didn’t have cable and TV was grown up shows boring and lame to me and my siblings. We enjoyed those few occasional trips because they were a change of scenery, and we all appreciated our parents being too busy with other grownups to be nagging us about shores, they sometimes let us go out on our own and we would play we were visiting faraway lands and discovering new adventures in exotic places. We would make believe we traveled by plane, or boat or train and visit far and distant countries.
http://www.royal-holiday.com/
We took the plane to The US with great disappointment, we wanted to stay more time and enjoy and visit more of London’s great places, but Our Royal Holiday Club week was over and we had to get back to work, I sometimes think I just work to pay for the vacation trips I love so much. Upon arrival all the tiredness and feet pain kicked in and we would have so much enjoyed having another vacation to recover from all that London trip walking. But it was not possible so we had to get up on Monday and go to work, with sore feet and leg muscles. I thought of keeping up with the week’s training and keep walking every day but it didn’t last, and next time I go on a city trip, my feet would protest again for all the sudden walking that is being imposed to them.
http://www.club.royal-holiday.com/index.php?fuseaction=home.resort&id=72
Plane Home from London
After all these London posts, you probably have a good idea of how our vacation trip to this great city was. We did it all we laugh played, walked, learned, and we specially had lots of fun visiting this amazing piece of the world. The English people although they are famous for being unemotional, and cold, are really quiet welcoming with tourists and they are kind and fun to talk to. We got to meet some great people who over the years and many many emails in between I think will become close friends. We exchange email addresses and saw the apprentice in the English version with Sir Charles as Donald Trump, hey those English apprentice cry a lot more than our American contestants. We did a little of all the wonderful things we planned and enjoyed every day of our seven day stay, and now I have relieved all our London adventures by posting my memories in this blog.
http://www.visitlondon.com/
Westminster Abbey
The coronation of Queens Victoria in 1838 and Queen Elizabeth in 1937 and Queen Elizabeth II on 1953 were celebrated in this magnificent Abbey, and the Queen Mother’s funeral in 2002 also took place here, this great church is known to many people through all the televised events broadcast from here, the wedding of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson in 1986 (lady Di and Prince Charles wedding in 1981 was held in St. Paul’s Cathedral). Although Churchill is not buried here there is a commemorative memorial stone in his name. And the abbey has a lot of history by its own, how it was built, who built what and when, and what great and famous people are connected with it. The audio guides don’t leave anything out. It is like taking a history class in the very place that the events happened. A must on your next vacation trip to London.
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/
The Allen House Hotel our Royal Holiday membership booked for us has a wonderful location it is in Allen Street and in Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, just two blocks away from the High Street Kensington Station, that connected us to all the other tube stations from which we practically saw all of London’s attractions. As I already told you the underground or tube is a great way to move all across London. If you didn’t know as I didn’t when I first went to London, This city is divided into 33 small villages or boroughs, each one with its unique government, suburbs, history and identity. All of them connected by the public transportation and the tube. The Londoners, when asked where they live they answer in Kensington, or Greenwich, or Croydon, or whatever borough they live on. Our Hotel was in the inner west side of the City.
www.tfl.gov.uk/tube
London' Gardens
I know I have talked about the English gardens and how well taken care of they are, but I did enjoy them so much and took so many pictures of them flowering tulips and all kinds of colorful flowers. This post has to be for the beautiful London Gardens that make my aching feet worthwhile, you can’t really enjoy flowers and trees from a car or bus, you need to walk through them to really appreciate the smell , the colors, and all the joy that flowers bring. I can imagine that in London’s changing weather, colorful flowers are really a great way to gather joy. If you want to buy some fresh flowers for your home they are really expensive, so the outdoor city gardens really cheer the brits up. As I found out there is a trust that takes care of all those great public colorful beautiful gardens.
http://www.londongardenstrust.org/
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