Planes, Trains and Orthotics: A Middle-Age Woman's Guide to Travel

Bob and I are again visiting our neighbor to the north (Canada) to experience both the charm and optimal fall foliage of beautiful Quebec City.  It is a wonderful place to go for the aging traveler: It’s beautiful, you’re in another country but not too far from home, another language is spoken and all of your chargers fit into the electrical outlets so you don’t have to worry about adaptors! Our traveling partners, Mark and Judy, met us there to enjoy four days in this lovely city. Of course, we have to get there first… The grueling work (and aggravation) it often takes to board a plane now a-days, can be tough on our aging bodies. We have decided, after one too-many times of being herded into seemingly never-ending security lines and removing our luggages’ liquids, shoes, belts and laptops while going through Security and then worrying that we’ve picked up everything, to take the “LFTK” (“Less for the Kids”) approach to travel and just pay for TSA Pre Check and “Clear.” While it i...

 I wasn’t going to write a blog about my sister’s and my long-weekend junket to Seattle to attend a baby shower, but there were so many memorable moments, I thought I needed to document at least a few.   The shower was for my sister’s son and his wife and was to be held at the home of my nephew’s in-laws, located in the first Washington town over the Canada/ US border.  Our plan was to fly into Vancouver, make the short ride over the border and arrive in Blaine, WA, where the shower was to be held the next day.  It all sounded great when we were making the plans but the actual execution was far more difficult than we ever imagined. Before I go any further, I have to mention that we were flying United Airlines, and I have a United credit card, which entitles me to go into the lounge with one guest.  As we sat in the lounge in Newark Airport, we realized that there would be no food (except for a tiny bag of pretzels or one slightly stale Stroopwafel) on the six ho...

As I previously stated, we came to Newfoundland because of the musical, “Come from Away,” and the biggest draw for us was to visit “Gander,” the town and the people that inspired such a wonderful show. We were so excited to immerse ourselves into the place where this wonderful story took place, clearly showing that there were still kind and generous people left in the world.  We drove more than three hours and immediately realized that Gander was a bit of a bust.  We did go to the North Atlantic Aviation Museum, which included a 10 minute emotional piece (at least I was teary-eyed) by Diane Sawyer on the generosity of the Gander people during this trying time. Other than that, it could have been a town in any American community with a Walmart, a McDonald’s and a “Mary Brown’s,” the Canadian version of Popeye’s. It was early afternoon, and we now had to figure out what to do for the rest of the day.   After more than three hours in the car, K-Dazzle suggested to Judy that ...

After leaving our shorts and tee shirts behind in New Jersey, Mary, Bob and I flew via Toronto, to St. John’s, the capital of Newfoundland. We knew that it would be much colder here and were armed with sweaters, gloves and hats (At least those of us with Type A personalities).  While inside the airport, we called an Uber, opened the airport door (No electronic doors here—this airport is no JFK) and as the cold wind smacked the three of us in our faces, we all yelled at the same time, “OH MY GOD!” We jumped into the Uber as fast as was possible for three middle aged people, and met our first friendly Newfoundlander, who happened to be from the Sudan.  Before he even put on his seatbelt, Bob asked him how he got to Newfoundland from Sudan and he said, “Well, I first came to Toronto,” which hardly cleared up that question for us. As the wind whipped around our car, we then asked if this was normal weather for this time of year and he said—much to our chagrin—that this was really ...

Right from the beginning, I have to confess that Newfoundland was never on my travel bucket list.  In fact, up until a few years ago, while I knew that it was a Canadian province, I couldn’t have pointed it out on a map of Canada. For all I knew, it could have been located right next to the western province of Saskatchewan, which I also do not think I could identify with any certainty.  But geography aside, none of that seemed to matter after seeing the Broadway musical,  “Come from Away.” Soon after seeing the show twice and reading the book, “The Day The World Came to Town,” I got out a map of Canada.  If you haven’t seen it, the musical is based on the events taking place in Gander, Newfoundland, during the week immediately following the September 11th attacks, when planes carrying about 6,500 passengers were ordered to land at the very large Gander International Airport and stay there until the skies were safe again.  While the circumstances were unimaginabl...

 The problem with being slightly beyond middle-age and in relatively good health, is that you think you can do a lot more than you really can…particularly if you are a man.  Case in point, kissing the Blarney Stone. Legend has it that if you kiss the stone, you will become filled with both eloquence and confidence. For those who have never experienced “this privilege,” I can tell you that Rick Steves described the event as having hundreds of people each day leaving  “spit and lipstick” all over it. As if that wouldn’t be enough for anyone with half a brain to be dissuaded from moving forward, the calisthenics that have to take place to achieve the goal includes lying on your back, hanging upside down, holding on to two bars while suspended in thin air. Twenty years ago, Bob and I both did it, clearly not having read Rick Steves take on it.  But we were a lot agile back then and the “A” word (arthritis) only applied to our parents’ medical woes, not ours. Those days o...