I love to travel. I mean I *really* love to travel. Given the chance, I don’t know that I’d even have a permanent home. Or wouldn’t go there more than once or twice a year. But that said; there are some downsides to traveling. Some of them, for me, are:
1. Internet access.
Here at home I’ve got good, fast, reliable Internet access. We have a high-speed line that’s always on that we don’t share with anyone but each other. But once we step out the door we never know what we are going to find. Access varies so much from town to town and country to country it can be frustrating. Many good hotels offer wired access, (I always travel with a CAT 5 cable); but now most have gone for the cheaper option of WiFi. That’s fine, except the signal you get can really vary depending on where you are in relation to the access points and repeaters. Politics can also have a big impact. We have traveled to countries where the Internet access was blocked or heavily filtered. Even seemingly innocuous sites can be replaced with a pop-up that says “This website violates our country’s standards”. Not much you can do about that.
On ships it’s a whole other story. I feel a bit spoiled even complaining about this. I mean, you’re on a boat in the middle of the ocean and you’ve still got access to the whole world that’s almost as good as if you were on land. Ah, but that “almost”. Obviously ships use satellite connections. Bandwidth on satellite is expensive and limited. And you’re sharing it with all the other people on the ship. Even on the little boats we prefer that means 400+ other users. When we started traveling with computers it wasn’t so much of a problem. Only a few of our fellow travelers even brought a laptop along, and most didn’t use it for much more than checking their e-mail. These days everybody has their phones and tablets, and they want to use their free time Skyping or chatting with their grandbabies on Facetime. The ships usually ask that people don’t even try to stream music or videos, and some go as far as blocking Netflix and YouTube. And satellite links can be a bit flaky. Weather affects them. So does topography and your location on the planet. Since the satellites are mostly in equatorial geosynchronous orbits the signal drops off as you go farther North or South. In the fiords of Norway or Patagonia good luck getting a signal at all. It can all be a bit annoying.
2. Plumbing
I really like my plumbing. Over the years we have made it exactly as we like it. We put an oversized walk-in shower in the master bath. It’s got six wall-mounted body jets, an overhead shower head, and a hand wand to get any places those might have missed. It’s like a car wash. It’s also got good, steady water pressure. There’s a thermostatic valve that keeps the temperature steady even if the supply drops, like if someone flushes a toilet. Back when I first started to be a bit unsteady on my feet Van installed grab bars all around, so I’ve always got a handy bar to hold on to or lean on. In that shower I can get clean in a few minutes, and always feel secure. Or I can stay in there for as long as I like, since our building has a pretty much unlimited supply of hot water.
I also love our toilets. We have found ones that are just the right height for us, so they are quite comfortable. They now also have bidet attachments. I can’t say enough good things about those. I don’t know why Americans never took to the bidet. There is nothing better for getting really clean. Also, we are fortunate to have three bathrooms. I once read that one of the biggest factors in how happy people are with their homes isn’t the neighborhood or the square footage; but the ratio of bathrooms to the number of people. Well, with three bathrooms for two people, we’re pretty happy.
Alas, when we travel we never know what we’re going to find. Showers range from the basic to the beautiful to the bizarre. We’ve had tiny stalls we could hardly squeeze into. We’ve had some that were the size of whole rooms. And designers have some pretty strange ideas of what makes a good shower. They tend to love marble. Yes, it’s lovely to look at. But add a bit of water and most of it becomes as slick as ice. The same for slate flooring. One shower we had was made to look like a cave. The walls were all rough-cut stone and the floor was slate. It was about 8 feet across and 10 feet deep. There were no curtains or door. The water just splashed everywhere. With nothing to grab onto I had to have Van come and give me his arm so I could get out without slipping and falling. The designers also like glass. Which, if you’re big and unsteady is a constant worry. We have had a few where efficiency ruled. One bathroom in a very nice Russian hotel was just a small room that was totally tiled. The shower was in one corner and the toilet was in another. We wondered at first why the roll of toilet paper was not next to the toilet; but up on a high shelf. The first time we showered we found out why. With no curtain or other enclosure the whole bathroom was basically the shower stall and the sink and toilet both got wet. Anything you wanted to keep dry had to go up on the shelf, and even that wasn’t a guarantee. So if someone needed to use the toilet after someone had showered, they first had to get a towel and dry it off and then remember to grab the paper off the shelf before sitting down.
Although toilets around the world vary widely, we have mostly had the good luck to not encounter many “Asian” or squat-style ones. They can be quite the acrobatic trick for those not used to them, and especially for us big boys. They tend to be less problematic for the residents of countries where both sexes wear garments other than Western-style trousers. Even the more familiar fixtures come in a bewildering array of sizes, shapes, and configurations. Sometimes figuring out how to flush them can take several minutes. Sometimes finding one can also be a challenge. The American mania for “en suite” bathrooms is spreading; but we have stayed in some very nice older hotels in Europe where the bathroom was shared and down the hall. It seems odd to us to stay in a 5 Star hotel and share a bathroom when here in the US even rundown roadside motels all have private bathrooms. At the risk of sounding spoiled again, sharing one bathroom is a bit of an unaccustomed bother for us. And it’s all the worse when we stay with our many kind friends who mostly have only one bathroom in their homes.
3. Beds
Once again, we are spoiled. We have a big full-sized King bed. We have lots of room to spread out and roll around and not disturb each other. The bed isn’t too high or too low. And our bed is piled with pillows. We both like lots of pillows. Our bedroom is, as someone once described it, “cool, quiet, and dark as a tomb”. We don’t do anything but sleep in there. No TV, no stereo, no computers. And nothing has lights on it. The phone doesn’t light up when it rings. Our clocks have a button on top that lights them up for a few seconds when you tap it; but otherwise are dark. The window has a heavy multilayer honeycomb blind that has a light blocking foil layer. We have a couple of fans to keep the air gently circulating that also provide a nice “white noise” to block out any outside sounds. It is, for us, the perfect place to sleep.
Big beds seem to be another American taste the rest of the world doesn’t share. Many new hotels and many countries are embracing the big bed. The one we had in Dubai was bigger than ours at home. But for the most part, the rest of the world makes do with less. Usually the largest bed you will find is what we would call a “Queen”, or even a “Full”. And sometimes we have wound up squeezing into ones smaller than that. At times we have opted for two singles instead of trying to sleep on top of one another. Even those can be a challenge. More than once I’ve fallen out of a bed that was too narrow for me to even turn over in.
Pillows are usually in short supply. In land-based hotels one of the first things I do is ask for more pillows. I can usually get two extra. On the ships it’s sometimes more of a problem; although on our favorite line Seabourn I have put “Extra pillows” in my file as a permanent request. Some hotels have nice pillows; but many offer something that’s about a foot wide and thin as a maxi pad. In Europe the problem is feather pillows. Neither of us like them; but in Europe feather or down pillows are considered the height of luxury. The more expensive the hotel, the more likely you’ll find feather pillows. These days you can usually request non-allergenic pillows instead. But then you’ll probably only get two of them.
Throw in an array of flashing, blinking lights so numerous the room looks like a Christmas tree; blinds that don’t block light or in some cases don’t even close properly (I always bring a bag clip along. They work great to hold curtains shut), and the unavoidable strange sounds in an unfamiliar place and sometimes sleeping while traveling can be challenging. Fortunately we are usually so tired at the end of a long day of sightseeing or so jet lagged from flying that we can fall asleep anyway.
4. Chairs, towels, and other assorted things that just don’t “fit”
One of my favorite things is my chair. My “comfy chair” is a big Lazy Boy rocker-recliner in black leather. Over the years I have shaped it to fit me like a glove. It’s so comfortable I often nap in it. In fact, it can be a challenge to stay awake sometimes when I’m listening to an audiobook. I really like the rocking motion. I find it quite soothing. Unfortunately out in the world rocking chairs and recliners are scarce. Hotel rooms almost never have them. I can understand that. Rocking chairs take up more space than a straight chair, and recliners are expensive and would probably not hold up well to the amount of use they would get in a hotel room.
I buy the largest bath towels I can find. The “bath sheets” I get are mostly at least six feet long and three feet wide. Some of the bath towels we’ve encountered were barely more than hand towels. They can also be in short supply. One of the great things about the ships is that they service the cabin several times a day. But in most hotels the room gets serviced once a day. So once you use your towel you won’t get a new one until the next day. That can be a problem if you’ve been out running around all day and want to take a shower before dinner. You can call for more towels, but it’s best not to be too much of a pest. Few places have the wonderful thin, dry air we enjoy here in Colorado. Here when I hang a towel up it dries quickly. In many of the places we travel, and of course at sea, it’s so humid a wet towel could take days to dry.
Desks are somewhat hit or miss. Many hotel rooms these days have them; but many still don’t. Often we are left using a small table or smaller bedside nightstand. And trying to type with a laptop balanced on your knees leaves much to be desired. We both have fairly small notebooks to travel with, Asus Eee’s, which have a small footprint and don’t need mouse space since they have built-in touch pads. But still, trying to fit both of them on a tiny table that wasn’t meant to be a desk can be hard. Even when there is a desk, there’s always only one chair, so we have to take turns. There have been occasions when I couldn’t get all the posting done that I’d wanted to do, just because I didn’t have a proper workspace available.
Electrical outlets are often another problem. More and more newer hotels and ships are taking notice of the fact that these days people travel with bunches of things that need to be plugged in. But we have stayed in some otherwise very nice hotels that only had one or two outlets in the room. They usually either have the TV/refrigerator/only lamp plugged into them, or are next to the door for the maid to plug a vacuum into. Plugging in computers, tablets, phones, camera battery chargers, etc. can be a challenge. (I always take a compact power strip along and a short extension cord for those times when the only outlet is behind a dresser). And we are fortunate that neither of us uses a CPAP machine. I’ve heard tell of someone having to beg the hotel for several extension cords so he could plug his machine into an outlet in the hallway, the only one available. Fortunately it’s becoming much more common these days for rooms to have an outlet on both sides of the bed, up above the nightstand. Many newer hotels have outlets up above the desk or sideboards so you can easily plug in your phone. But in much of the world multiple outlets remain a luxury.
Please don’t get the idea that I’m complaining. When you travel you have to expect that things won’t be the same as home. That’s really the whole point of travel, isn’t it? Seeing the wonders of the world really is worth enduring any number of minor inconveniences and I’ve seldom regretted any of it. But in the end, as Dorothy said, “There’s no place like home”.
People waving to us and taking pictures of our ship as we sailed into Havana harbor
Inside a bodega in Havana
A street market in Santiago de Cuba
Sometimes you just have to make do
Band on a street corner in Santiago de Cuba
My Global Wanderings 