Travel: A Needed Boost

I’ve said this before, mostly because it is so very true — traveling lifts the mind and spirit! Right now, we are in Vienna after traveling a couple of nights ago from the Slovak Republic. Before that we had been in Budapest. Just wow, wow, wow! Talk about lifting one’s spirit. Our trip is doing that for me big time!

Even after all that flying around, we still have two more countries to visit — Austria and Germany. I’ve been to these countries before and just love the culture and the variety of people, buildings, and landscape we encounter along the way. I’ve now been to 94 countries and loved all of them.

You may wonder why I travel so much and why I’ve been to so many countries. Well, for one, I really love it. The reason for that, and another reason that I keep doing it, is because our minds really crave new and different things. There are a lot of ways to introduce novelty in your life, but going to new places and meeting new people is one of the best.

All this travel makes me want to do more and more things with my life and it is so mind expanding. Sometimes I take my kids and grandkids. They love all the new experiences and I get even more out of it because I get to share it with them.

Now, we have been to Europe many times, so maybe it doesn’t sound like such a new experience. However, this time was quite different for us, and I think I like it even better. Why? Because this time we took a cruise ship called the Viking. They do so much for their passengers. They arrange all the land tours at the various stops, and they serve a great food and drinks. They are also always there to answer any questions that passengers may have.

Having the cruise staff take care of all the details really took the pressure off our minds and reduced the stress on our bodies. If you haven’t taken a cruise, you might want to look into the cruise lines available and all the places they travel. Yes, we will sure do this cruise thing again and again.

Whether you choose to take a cruise ship, a plane ride, or a road trip, I highly recommend that you do more traveling, especially now that we can travel so much more than we had been in the past couple of years. It’ll be good for your mind and your spirit.

Worthy Destinations

Cuba has been on my bucket list of countries to visit for some time now and, finally, I made it. We boarded a Norwegian Cruise ship and enjoyed a great visit to that little country and its incredible history. I’ve always loved travel and visiting Cuba makes my count of new countries visited 92. We now are heading back to Florida with one short stop on an island that I’ve never heard of called Great Stirrup Cay.

I was pleasantly surprised how friendly and safe Cuba was. It is a very poor country, but the people seem to be very happy and content. Our guide told us that the average salary in Cuba is only $70 dollars a month. In Havana, we saw some old castles with their huge encompassing walls and moats and were told of all the battles that took place and the attempts of pirates to take over the city.

Our guide was a very nice and pretty 32-year-old lady. Her English was perfect, and her knowledge of Cuba and its history was incredible. She told us how she had tried for years to go to America. She has some family living in Florida, and she had served time in the Cuban military, and yet she still could not get permission to visit the USA. It struck me how lucky we are to live in the great country of America and how good we have it. I think most of us take our great freedom and opportunities for granted.

Traveling to new places and visiting new cultures is so mind expanding. It’s too bad that everyone in the world can’t visit dozens of different countries because if they could I think the world would have fewer wars and global problems as people would see and understand that most of us are so much alike. If we were all able to see that most people are nice, friendly and don’t want to hurt others, perhaps we’d have few, if any, wars.

I challenge you, my readers, to travel to new places as much as you are able and I’m pretty darn sure you will be glad you did. You will experience a mind expansion and appreciate other cultures even though they may be very different than yours.

Well, we’ve stopped now, and they have begun shuttling people from this huge cruise ship to the cute little island in their little shuttle boats, so I had better get to the deck and jump aboard!