Taking off Travel blog

Soultravelers3′s response to my recent post on Memorial Day got me to thinking about something that travelers often experience – celebrating holidays that are important to them while in a country where people don’t even know they exist. Or, even if it’s a common holiday, creating that sense of home that makes the holiday special for you.

Christmas Abroad

Many moons ago, I was spending Christmas in Barcelona, far removed from my usual haunts, with a bunch of people who weren’t going home for the holidays – a couple of Australians, a Canadian girl and me. Rather than stay in France and mope, we’d decided to do something different and head to Spain to experience the holiday there. We bought some small gifts (we were poor students), a couple bottles of wine, some chocolates, a mini Christmas tree and some tinsel to decorate our room.  Before we settled in for the holiday, we walked around the city, which was blanketed in white (my first white Christmas) and absorbed the beauty and the atmosphere. Then we went back and talked about how we celebrated the holiday in our own homes. It didn’t make us less homesick, but it felt good to share. Read more »

How are you planning to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend? Celebrated this year from May 28-31 the three day holiday has both a serious and a fun side. The serious of course is about commemorating the war dead, a practice that first started in 1868 following the Civil War. It was then known as Decoration Day. Memorial Day itself, celebrated on the last Monday in May, became a national holiday in 1971.

Flags-In at Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

For those looking to adhere to the spirit of the holiday then one of the best places to start is with a trip to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. Activities there include wreath laying, a remembrance ceremony and a concert. There is also the Flags-In ceremony which sees a flag placed in front of the gravestones of each service member buried there. The flags are placed just before the weekend and removed just after.

If you don’t happen to be near Virginia then there are lots of other memorials you can visit to commemorate the occasion. Many of these are in Washington DC but there are a few others in other parts of the country. Here’s a list of some of those memorials, courtesy of Wikipedia.

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