“What I did on my summer vacation”

Posted on September 6, 2026 by doradueck

I mostly liked school and never minded going back in September. The sight of new notebooks, paper, pens, and pencils still makes me wistful.

Did anyone, though, like the assignment to write about what they did on summer vacation? Probably not.

But let’s say I’m young again, in class, and it’s been assigned. Here’s my report:

I went to Newfoundland. I saw lots of rocks and boats and water like the ocean and lakes and flowers and some little birds called puffins. I saw lighthouses and coloured houses. I saw where the Vikings had lived and lots of other things.

I made some new friends. One time I pulled out my chair to sit at the table and there was a cup and saucer on it. Me and my friends all laughed.

When I was at home, which was the rest of the summer, I read a bunch of books and did some puzzles. One day I went to Victoria to see an exhibit about Egypt. I also collected and decorated shells and pieces of shell I found at the beach. And I read The Odyssey and saw the movie about it on an Imax screen which made everything very big and noisy.

I think my summer was pretty good. It was fun.

That’s my school report. What did you do on your summer vacation?

The lovely welcome of a hotel room

Posted on September 16, 2025 by doradueck

A highlight this month has been a tour of Ireland. Each day of the tour I selected four photos out of many and wrote a short paragraph on Facebook, and that seems enough for now in terms of description; amateur travelogues are not actually that compelling. (Remember those long and boring slide shows we used to endure when someone from family or friends had done the requisite pilgrimage to Europe?)

Suffice it to say that Ireland is a beautiful country with a complex and fascinating history, and that my short tour will inform me in various ways going forward. I enjoyed it very much.

However, I do have the self-imposed resolution to post here at least once a month, and in fulfilment of that vow and retrospective of my trip, I’ve been thinking about hotel rooms. A tour takes one into a “new” hotel room on many a night, though there are a few times when the stay is two nights, and the need to not pack up in the morning a definite bonus.

When I enter a hotel room on a tour, I seem to promptly forget the previous room. I decided to take photos of the rooms this time, just to remember them a little. It’s not that hotel rooms in a middle-of-the-road tour differ much; they’re usually rated at a 3 or 4 (I think I’ve only stayed in a 5 star room once), and those we stayed in were more or less the same — you know, bed, bathroom, closet, coffee maker, TV. Perfectly clean, pillows generally thick and abundant, sheets and duvets white and crisp (and far too tightly secured under the mattress). Still, there was always a bit of excitement in me each afternoon or evening when we reached our hotel destination, a curiosity about the room, a glad sensation of letting myself down into its welcoming and undemanding hospitality. Here it was. For me to use. To sleep in, to retreat in, to return, if only briefly and partially, to a sense of domesticity and home-ishness in the midst of the travelling that takes one away from home to unfamiliar places.

I liked the rooms I stayed in. One was memorable for its little window nook with two chairs and windows on three sides. Another turned out to be a family room, with an additional bunk bed; I almost wished to gather some urchins off the street to have a bit of that kind of company! The Titanic Hotel had rivets on the door!

A hotel room may announce itself with its decorative flourishes but it doesn’t speak with any kind of intimate personality such as the rooms of our homes do. It doesn’t talk back, in other words, just invites us in, and without judgment lets us take our shoes off and put up our tired feet.

The last layer

Posted on October 31, 2023 by doradueck

The travel I spoke of in my previous post is done and I’m safely back and getting over the jet lag and happily into the final layer of my adventure. The first layer is the anticipation, preparation, occasional worry, and perhaps (at least in this case) some research. The second and thickest layer is the experience itself. And then, home again, comes the opportunity to think back, to reflect, to remember, to realize how rich it was and at the same time, in terms of the limits of two weeks, how inevitably partial. Nevertheless, although I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, I felt by tour’s end that it had more than fulfilled my hopes.

My son asked me for a highlight. I floundered a bit, because the best answer at that moment seemed “Everything!” but I pulled a sample by telling him about the free afternoon in Tbilisi when M. and S. joined me in my quest to find the particular view on Rustaveli Avenue featured in one of my grandfather’s postcards. The card is labelled “La place de Golowine avec le temple de la gloire.” I had learned that the street was named Golovin Avenue after Russian commander Yevgeny Golovin in 1841, but re-named Rustaveli Avenue, after the poet Shota Rustaveli, in 1918, when Georgia declared independence from Tsarist Russia. As for the Temple of Glory, whose pillars and steps one sees, that used to be the Russian military history museum but is now the National Gallery. Thanks to M’s infallible sense of direction, we found our way out of the warren of small streets in Old Town where our group had lunched to Rustaveli, Tbilisi’s most prominent avenue, and we got this comparison shot. In the postcard, the avenue’s slight curve is obvious, but it’s there in the photo too, visible between the trees.

My quest done, M’s desire was for a sit-down with hot chocolate, which we accomplished by walking back into Old Town.That was lovely, and might have been enough — our legs and feet were tired and urging us back to our hotel — but S. longed to see Holy Trinity Cathedral, which hadn’t been on our Tbilisi itinerary. M. and I said we’d join her. Google Maps made it sound easier than it was, but we managed the walk, altogether driving my IPhone step-count up to nearly 24,000 that day. But it was all definitely worth it.