front door travel: another point of view on planning and taking trips

This book chronicles how our travel came to be as good as it gets. Our approach, our methodology, and our attitude combined to make our journeys memorable for the pleasures and amenities that we enjoyed. Many travel books concentrate on showing how to plan trips using the least cost services. This book is different. I demonstrate how the willingness to spend selectively the extra dollar or two elevated our trips from the ordinary to the extraordinary. I show how being well informed about every aspect of our trips added to our successes. In addition to using examples to illustrate the general ways in which we went about our travel, I focus on our spring 2009 journey. In Part One of this book, I relate the details of planning for this trip. In Part Two, I compare what actually happened on the trip to what was planned. In addition to writing about the pleasurable aspects of our trips, I describe the problems that came up. Many travel books shy away from the problems encountered in travel. In this book, I include problems, as well as solutions.

At a very early age, my grandfather frequently took me to various places of interest in the Bay Area. For transport, we used streetcars, ferry boats, and interurban trains. By the time I was four years old I knew many transportation routes especially the streetcar routes in San Francisco. I could get around by myself. I did so once or twice much to the chagrin of my elders. At age five I had my first lunch at an attractive restaurant. My mother took me to the Persian Room of the Sir Francis Drake Hotel. I can still picture the dining room and remember my main dish, rolled filet of sole. In spite of a strong academic background and technical education, my interest always returned to travel; namely, the nicer sides of sightseeing, hotels, restaurants, and transportation. I was forever planning trips. Some actually happened. It was with my wife Marie that I was able to realize major travel. We shared many trips to destinations in Western Europe. We concluded our travel career with a string of 15 cruises.