Traveller’s Tales: Just Say WOW

What travel experiences have left you speechless?

We were awestruck last year while touring St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Art Museum, which used to be Peter the Great’s Winter Palace. We just kept saying ‘wow’. During my studies of the 1917 Russian Revolution, I watched film footage of Red soldiers fiercely storming up the staircase pictured here. To walk up those same steps myself? Definitely a ‘wow’ moment. And then there was the art.

Ibn Battuta, our inspirational quote author, left home at age 21 to complete a pilgrimage to Mecca. He loved travel so much that he didn’t come back for 29 years. When he returned he wrote A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, and became one of the most influential storytellers of his day.

Battuta’s contention that travellers turn into storytellers is certainly true in our case. We return from our journeys with plenty of tales to tell, and good thing most people have an insatiable appetite for a good story! I know I do.

So here’s ours.

Haystack Rock, on Oregon’s Cannon Beach, is one of those ‘wow’ sights like the Eiffel Tower. I can stare at that rock all day, and walk the vast beach from end to end for hours. We usually book an oceanfront room at the Hallmark Inn, one of the closest lodgings to the Rock, and we took the picture with the quote on it from our room’s balcony last time we were there.

When we walked out on the beach that day, Bill traced our grandchildren’s names in the sand, and I took a picture for each child. A very grandparent-like thing to do, I know, but it felt like we were celebrating our family with that towering old rock right there with us.

And I’ll always remember that.