Travel Brochures

In the course of catching up on my mail yesterday, I found three travel brochures from the Tulane Alumni Association, all for trips this coming fall. “We’re not going on any of these, huh?” I asked my husband, I thought rhetorically. 

“Let me see,” he said. 

The tours are all in Europe, which is someplace we will be in the fall anyway, visiting our ex-patriate son. One is a tour of the Italian Lake District, one a cruise from France to Corsica, Italy, Greece and Turkey, and one a tour of the French Alps. I get these brochures from my alumni association on a regular basis, since they operate under the assumption that my degree from Tulane has made me rich. Interestingly enough, all the tours cost around the same amount. A lot.

“If the market goes up another 3 or 4 percent,” he says, “We can go.” 

The last time we went on an alumni tour, through LSU, not Tulane*, the stock market took a nose dive shortly after we paid our non-refundable deposit and crashed further, to its lowest point, while we were crossing the Drake passage. Even if it goes up another ten percent between now and March 26th, the day by which we need to make reservations to get the early discount, there is nothing to say it will stay that way. I don’t point this out to him, however. The man is offering to take me on a romantic trip of some kind. I’m not usually the kind of wife to bat my lashes and mutter “Whatever you say, dear”, but when I do, it’s at times like these.

I’m kind of leaning toward the “Village Life in the Italian Lake District”. It covers a smaller area, which means we will see it in more depth. I enjoyed our ten day tour of the British Isles last year, but we did spend a lot of time en route compared to time spent in the places we were visiting. That worked out well for me and my broken foot, but the odds are I’m not going to break anything else between now and then. Besides, if I am going to be around Mediterranean, as opposed to British, cooking, I need to get out and burn off some calories.

Since all of this is contingent on an improbable further increase in the Dow Jones, I guess I shouldn’t get my hopes up. I’m hanging on to the brochures, though. If nothing else, they have pretty pictures.

*Ours is a mixed marriage.