Have you been able to establish routines in your house? For those of us in Virginia it feels like a very long time until our stay at home order is lifted (fingers crossed) on June 10th? I’m still coming into the office most days as we continue to sort out vacation plans for those traveling in the next few months. Although we are starting to plan trips for clients for the second half of 2020, I’ll continue to share some of my favorite vacation stories for the near future.
My story this week is about how the time we rode a camel in Africa…
We had the opportunity to visit Tunisia in 2010, Hannah was just 2 1/2 at the time. Many people thought we were crazy to take her to Europe, although she had several stamps in her passport already. They said she will never remember the trip, why would you go? That’s like asking why would we read to her if she isn’t old enough to remember the story? She does have memories of that trip, and even if she didn’t the memories that it left us with are priceless.
We were on a Disney cruise that left from Barcelona, our first stop was Tunisia. We had been telling Hannah about the long airplane ride, the hotel stays and the ship. She had been on a Disney cruise the summer before and was excited about seeing the characters, but she was most excited about the promise of a camel ride. (Ok, I may have bribed her a little bit, or a lot, to be completely potty trained in order to ride the camel, but hey, it worked, and only took a week, so I’ll consider that a win!)
When we docked in Tunis we took a tour that visited the ruins in Carthage and the town of Sidi Bou Said. Hannah loved the ruins and may have napped her way through Sidi Bou Said, which in itself was a feat for this non-napper. For my husband and myself it was our first introduction to Northern Africa, we’ve been yearning to see more ever since.
By the time we made it back to the port, the camels had arrived and it was time to hop on, which is easier said than done! We all piled on and took a short stroll. When it was time to hop off the camel, Hannah was the happiest I had ever seen her! She started running around in circles squealing with excitement! She did this for several minutes, she still remembers riding that camel, but even if her only memories of that day were through our stories it was well worth the experience. The photo above was snapped just after her camel ride and remains one of my favorites to this day. It’s an expression of pure joy that I will never forget.
The rest of the cruise was wonderful as well. We went on to make several other port calls before returning to Barcelona. We visited Malta, where we got stuck for hours in Mosta because all of the buses were full. We spent a day in Rome when the ship pulled into Civitavechhia. We took the train to Pisa from La Spezia. We spent a beautiful day on the beach Corsica and visited the local market. Then, quite possibly our favorite port, Villefranche-sur-Mer in Southern France where we took the train to Monte Carlo to have coffee with an old friend, but those are stories for another time.
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