How I Got Started Booking My Own Travel

In 2002 the company I had been working for for 22 years went through a merger and laid me off. They were very generous and offered me a 90 day notice. Halfway through this period I landed a new job and they were also very generous in letting me work out my 90 days so I could get a nice severance pkg.

My wife had always wanted to go to Maine so I decided to take her there for a short notice vacation before starting my new job. I went in to see a local travel agent and I told her I wanted to go to Maine. She promptly says you should go to Boston. Now I know Boston is a nice place to visit but during 22 years of marriage I don’t ever remember my wife expressing a desire to visit Boston. I told the lady, no we want to go to Maine, can you help me go to Maine. She said Boston is a very nice place to visit and you should reconsider. I again stated my desire for some assistance in traveling to Maine. To this she said, Why don’t you fly into Boston, spend a day or 2 there and then you can drive up to Maine. To this I told her, “ That might be a plan, let me go home, run it by my wife and I’ll come back to see you in a couple of days”.

I got up, went home and promptly got on the internet, did some research and booked my own trip to Maine. When I started looking on the internet I was at first convinced I would not be able to book everything and I would have to find a different travel agent. But I was able to figure it out and book flights, rent a car and book a couple of nice Bed & Breakfasts. So now my days of using a travel agent are probably over. I won’t say I will never use one because you never know future circumstances but I don’t plan to. I remember that Sean Connery’s next James Bond movie after he stated he would never make another James Bond movie was titled “Never say Never”. Please don’t take this as a recommendation to not use Travel Agents. Most travel agents do a great job, but for me I discovered I really enjoy the research part of finding places to go and how to get there. And evidently this one agent had an agenda  to book trips to Boston.

Since then I have booked several trips and most have been for domestic travel. We have driven Highway 1 in California from San Deigo to Napa Valley. We explored a good bit of the Central Rockies area in Colorado, went to Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula and to Hawaii. We ventured out to the country to Curacao, a great little Caribbean Island to visit. In 2013 I was fortunate to go on a company trip to Barcelona Spain for a week. Rosita had been trying to get me to go to Europe and mainly to Italy for Thirty years and I always found a way to avoid going. In my younger days I was not a fan of flying and I think this was the main reason for my hesitance in going. Now I’m ok with flying and have even been known to enjoy some flights. So now I am hooked on Europe and have been back twice. More about how I travel on my agenda in later articles.

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