Behind the Photo - It's Never Too Late
- nicolereigelman
- Dec 1, 2021
- 2 min read
My mom grew up in the 1960s, the third of 12 kids, and the only girl. Growing up travel was uncommon. There were some family road trips (an economical choice for a large family) but those started after she left home. Aside from a trip to Europe with the Catholic Youth Organization as a teenager, my mom’s travel - let alone international travel - was limited. Until 2011.
Over time my mom had developed a fascination with Great Britain. Why? No easy answer. A mix of history, Winston Churchill, and BBC America.
To satisfy her curiosity, my mom and I took a pre-Christmas trip to England in 2011. She and I had started taking trips together in 2001, when I was in graduate school and living in Chicago. We made sure to set aside time every year for a trip together, whether for a week or a weekend.
England was a great trip. I had been to London for a long weekend in 2000, while I studied in Belgium for a semester, but there is only so much you can see in a weekend when you’re traveling in a group of 10 American students with limited finances, and when tracking down landmarks from Hugh Grant movies is important. In contrast, in 10 days, my mom and I toured the Globe Theatre, the Tower of London, Churchill’s War Rooms, Westminster Abbey, watched the changing of the Guard, and walked along the Tower Bridge. We also visited Stonehenge and Shakespeare’s home in Stratford-Upon-Avon and the Queen’s castle in Windsor. You get it. It was busy. And we saw it all while enjoying daily conversations with our B&B hosts, using public transit, and trying out local dining establishments- with mixed results.
It was on this first trip that my mom started pushing her comfort zone. It started with a humble but significant choice to order fish and chips, despite a lifelong aversion to fish.
After this trip, my mom was hooked. In her late 50s she had discovered that she loved to travel.
See more photos from our trip to Great Britain on Flickr.
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