When I say I got the travel bug from my parents, what I actually mean to say is that it was really my mother. My father was a horror on trips and I got the travel bug from my parents — having my first experience of overseas travel at the age of 10. We were off to France for a month — me, my parents and two brothers.

My father truly made most vacations a nightmare. He didn’t like being out of his element. But he did like recounting where they had been — a sort of bragging rights type of deal.

My mother, though. She was a traveler. She loved exploring a new country by car. My father at the wheel, God help her. Those were nomadic trips, stopping where whimsy took us. These were the days in the early-to-mid 1970s when advance reservations were not crucial.

Or were they? I can picture my mot

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