What I Love About Facebook Is The Travel Memories

..and what I love about Medium is I can write about them

What I love about Facebook is it keeps track of my memories, especially my travelling memories. I saw this photo this morning saying it was taken 11 years ago. I had to think about where I had taken this photo. Then it came back to me.

What I love about Medium is that I can tell the remembered story in words.

2011

I took the photo from the train to Santa’s Grotto on the top of Rochers De Naye. I was staying in a lovely hostel, Riviera Lodge, with my family — sister, niece and eldest daughter as part of our 4-and-a-half-month trip of a lifetime. We had a beautiful room overlooking Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) in Vevey.

We decided to take the trip up the mountain to see snow in the Alps. As you can see we were sorely disappointed. There’s not always snow in the mountains in Switzerland in early December.

2014

On this day three years later, I was again in Switzerland — what are the chances — at a little village called Vals soaking in the therapeutic waters of the Therme with my youngest daughter on our 5-week spa hopping trip around Europe. Still no snow!

2015

On this day a year later, I rode to the top of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai unaccompanied by any of my family.

2018

Three years later I was at the International Airport again, not as a passenger, but to welcome my traveller son home for a holiday after eight years of travelling overseas — Vietnam, China and North Korea — as a tour operator. Oh, how I wanted to travel again! The International Airport does it to me every time.

2019

So, in September, against all advice, I set off on my own to eastern Europe — Bratislava, Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and St Petersburg and Moscow for 6 weeks before meeting some Scrabble friends in England. I then met with my eldest daughter to tour Iceland and Morocco.

But on December 1, I was actually solo again in Barcelona which Facebook reminded me of. Stacey had flown from Tangier to Toulouse to catch up with some friends and I headed to Barcelona on my own to recover. Those memories are not so pleasant.

I think back to how fortunate I have been in my later life to have seen these amazing places. I am planning another trip next year but it’s been incredibly difficult to get a flight I can afford to anywhere in Europe. I normally have my flight booked twelve months ahead.

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