Taking off Travel blog

My grandparents were seasoned travelers. Not only did they visit and live in several parts of the Caribbean, but they also went further afield to England and Europe. As Grandparents Day approaches, I can’t help reflecting on how different our experience of travel is today. When my grandparents traveled in the early to mid 20th century:

Travel in the Past

• not many people took planes; you had to do most long voyages by boat (and no planes meant no DVT).
• going on a trip meant looking your best, whether you were comfortable or not
• once you had your travel documents, there was little worry about security
• no matter how you traveled, you got real food – and sometimes a three course meal
• you could fit pretty much everything you needed in one small suitcase (well, I don’t know if this one is true, but when you see old films, no-one travels with the quantity of luggage we take for granted today.)

Present-Day Travel

Of course, traveling in the modern era has some advantages. For instance,

• there are lots of different routes to get to places
• you can get to pretty much anywhere in the world within a day or so, rather than a few weeks (the big advantage of traveling by plane)
• added passport security may be a pain, but it has some benefits like making abductions much more difficult
• there’s a lot more entertainment and some of it is portable
• you can get meals for every different diet instead of just taking whatever is available.

Future Travel

But what about the future? When our grandchildren look back on today, will they regard it as hopelessly out of date? With the inventions and improvements coming on stream now, our grandkids will be able to:

• travel anywhere in the world in an eco-friendly mode of transport
• get to far-flung places even quicker (especially if they bring back a replacement for the Concorde)
• avoid security holdups (because all their data will already be on file; that might be a mixed blessing)
• be even more connected when they travel, no matter where they are
• transport instantly to any destination (OK, this is a fantasy, but I still cling on to the idea of a Star Trek transporter).

What improvements would you like to see in the way we travel?

(Image: Bonner Springs Library)

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Tags: grandparents day, travel

This entry was posted on Friday, September 7th, 2012 at 6:07 am and is filed under Travel Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.