BETWEEN US
Robert Love EDITOR IN CHIEF
One Life’s Journey
“We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.” —Anonymous
I AM NOT THE WORLD’S greatest traveler, but I’ve seen some of this world and I’m itching to see more. As a young man, I backpacked through Europe twice in the early 1970s. Those journeys exploded the worldview of a middle-class kid from the suburbs. On one trip, my buddy Todd and I hitchhiked through Germany on the autobahn. We picked up a lucky lift entering an incredibly long tunnel—through the Swiss Alps—on our way to Italy, in return for babysitting the well-behaved dachshund of our driver. In Florence, we overdosed on Renaissance art and bunked in Mussolini’s mistress’s villa, which had long before been converted into a youth hostel.
I was looking for love, but I fell into a different kind of romance on those trips, the reverie of an innocent abroad: scuffling across ancient cobblestones in my Frye motorcycle boots, inhaling history measured not in decades but in centuries.
In the years since, I haven’t done as much traveling as I imagined I would. Life is more complicated than it was zooming through the Alps with my only job as a dog sitter. But things are looking more promising in that area, for me and maybe for you too.
The author and traveling companion Todd Ryan as sketched by Ryan in the early 1970s during one of their adventures
In the AARP Travel Trends survey, older adults told us they planned to spend an average of about $6,700 on travel this year, and about 40 percent of those traveling were planning an international trip. Where to? Europe is the most sought-after destination. Indeed, I visited Paris in May, this time staying in a fancy hotel, and I had only to look across the room to my lovely wife for romance.
So, yes, hail fellow travelers! In this issue you’ll find a feature on “ancestry travel,” the art of finding your roots. It’s an excerpt from our new, special issue devoted solely to the joys of travel itself: aarp.org/travelissue.
In the digital-only Travel Issue, you’ll find destination ideas for special occasions, thoughtful advice on managing your travel dollars (is that splurge really worth it?), secrets to great experiences that only people who work in hotels and on cruise ships know, an emergency guide to avoid travel disasters and more. Each story has you, the older traveler, in mind.
Let’s get packing (we have tips for that too). Your life awaits.
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