This story has its start 30 years ago, when Phil and I went to his sister’s wedding in Amsterdam, and followed it by accompanying Mary and Rachid on a trip to Morocco, where Rachid grew up. Between Holland and Morocco, we traveled through Brussels, Belgium with them plus their friends who also made the trip overseas for the wedding.
When we are traveling, we love to stay at places that offer breakfast, because hunting down the first meal of the day can wear you down before you’ve even started. In Brussels, we stayed at a nice but affordable hotel, and Phil struck up a conversation at breakfast with a fellow traveler.
“What do you think of this place?” the traveler asked.
Phil responded that it was great — probably a bit nicer than we were used to.
“How did you find out about it?” the man pressed. Remember, this was long before the click of a button could get you whatever you wanted.
“Well,” Phil confided, “We’re just traveling through, so my sister photocopied the relevant pages from a travel book in the library.” Feeling proud of our clever, thrifty travel technique, he brandished the beaten up pages for the traveler to see.
“That’s my book,” responded Rick Steves.
I believe they chatted a bit more and Rick was quite gracious, but since then, we have never traveled in Europe without buying a Rick Steves book to guide our trip. He makes great food, hotel, activity, and pacing recommendations. Plus, we want to be prepared if we ever run into him again!
Without our family’s recent plot twist, this would be the week that Phil and I would have been traveling in Istanbul and Athens. While we love travel, I am not disheartened in the least that our trip has been indefinitely delayed. As I recently told a friend, “You’re out of your mind if you think that I could enjoy being anywhere right now other than with my boy.” (He is doing very well, by the way, and is back at nearly full throttle.)
Though we didn’t see Rick in person last week in Istanbul, Athens, or central Pennsylvania, we are all ready to go with his purchased guide books. Maybe in the weeks to come, Ben and I can try to make some Greek and Turkish inspired meals. Until then, keep on traveling, even if your only trip right now is down memory lane.
You were just kids💕
I know! I can’t believe we were ever that young!
You are the best writer. I think you should have a show on the create channel. Something mixing food, home, travel, dealing with modern times when you’re an old soul….
Thank you so much for reading and for your support. I feel lucky to have a lot of interests and enough years under my belt to have some new (old) stories from time to time!