If you can get your mind off the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, if you can stop checking your 401(K), which seems to have taken off for the dark side of the moon, if you can turn off the cable news channels and do a quick personal inventory, noting that your arms, legs and enough of your mind are still functioning, then you are ready for the balm of summer.
I had always thought that summer culture was epitomized by the French fleeing Paris during August. But the summer migration that renews, whether it is to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, or to Botswana, is just as important to Americans.
People need to get away. Staycation is an oxymoron, like airline food.
Americans live for summer and nothing will keep them from the beaches, lakes, mountains and resorts of their bounteous native land. But an increasing number go abroad.
Beware. We might not be as welcome in that great bistro in Montmartre where we often supped, or on the delightful beach in Crete where we once sunned. There are just too many tourists trying to do the same things all over Europe, and more are planning to go.
Americans are part of a new phenomenon, known as overtourism. We were the first mass tourists in the world, but we have since been joined by people of other nationalities, many of whom think they must see Venice, visit the Acropolis, and walk Britain’s Lake District. Not in high summer you won’t, and if you do, you will pay high fees and face various gentle disincentives.
The problem is that more and more people can afford to travel, and they do.
In his 1961 musical “Sail Away,” Noel Coward wrote, “Why do the wrong people travel?” If Coward were alive today, he might write, “Why do so many people travel?”
Curious Germans and inquiring Americans have long since been joined by regiments of Japanese picture-taking tourists. Now the Chinese, too, feel they must gaze upon the Mona Lisa, and the Indians want to see the Highland cattle of Scotland, affectionately referred to as “hairy coos.”
The solution: Go early or go late, if Europe is your destination. There is much to enjoy in what the professionals of the travel industry call the “shoulder season,” which is from about now until late June — and from September to October. Some places like Dubrovnik and Venice are unable to accommodate mass tourism in the summer, and have prevented cruise ships from docking.
About cruising: My wife, Linda Gasparello, and I used to build our vacations around horseback riding, taking our boots and hats with us wherever we went in the world. Then, reluctantly, we took our first cruise. We had misgivings about cruise ships, thinking of them as floating holiday camps. In fact, cruising is a way of taking the hotel with you.
Our first cruise, not long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was from Greece through the Bosporus and into the Black Sea, and it was magnificent. We went to places we would never have seen if left to ourselves, like Yalta, Odesa, and Constanta, and we had great tours in all of them. We were enchanted from the moment we stepped on board in Athens to our disembarkation in Venice. Also, I was able to visit Istanbul for the first time.
Another memorable cruise was around Cape Horn from Argentina to Chile with plenty of stops in some of the most delightful and unusual towns such as Punta Arenas, Ushuaia and Puerto Montt. To be cruising the treacherous body of water at the bottom of the world, where so many mariners perished, in a luxury liner, is to marvel at technology and your own good luck.
Our most delightful cruise, perhaps, was last year when we took Cunard’s stately Queen Mary 2 across the Atlantic from New York to Southampton. This cruise reached levels that were near ecstasy for us.
The crossing entertainment featured conductor Anthony Inglis with members of the UK’s National Symphony Orchestra. Inglis assembled a passenger choir — complete with auditions and rehearsals — which gave two rousing concerts.
In the interests of harmony, I stayed in the audience, but my wife made it into the chorus and was elated that her long-unused gifts as a soprano were still there.
You have to love a man who travels with an orchestra. That, as they say, is class. And to think that we were once snobbish about cruising.
We learned that Inglis will conduct the NSO on the Sept. 5 to 12 QM2 crossing from New York to Southampton. This was music to our ears.
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