Di is our acting host for Truthful Tuesday, originally created by PC GuyIV who is currently taking a break from hosting it.

The question this week is about one of my favourite subjects, travel.

If you could have the holiday of a lifetime, where would you go?

I have spent may hours over the years dreaming about the holiday of a lifetime. I’m lucky because David and I did do our big trip through China and Russia in 1990. That was one bucket list trip we were able to tick off. I still have a long wishlist though and I know that it is unlikely that I will do much of it now. I’m getting older and the world seems a more uncertain place than when I was in my thirties.

Next year I will be 67, that is the age that eligible people in Australia can access the age pension. I can also access some superannuation money. I could have got it after turning sixty but decided to wait. So next year I plan to make what may be my last big overseas trip. But where will I go?

There are two things that I am currently considering. One would involve travelling through The Netherlands, France, Germany and Switzerland. When I was growing up I used to read stories about girls travelling to different places and I was always fascinated by the descriptions of European cities and towns. Two of my favourite stories were “The Vine Clad Hill” and “Black Forest Summer” both by Mabel Esher Allen. I would love to visit some of the places mentioned in those books. I would also like to take a Rhine cruise, so my trip would be to take trains from Paris to Bellinzona like Phillippa did in “The Vine Clad Hill” and then do some more train travel in Switzerland perhaps travelling on the Glacier Express or the Bernina Express. Then I’d make my way back to Basel and join a Rhine cruise to Amsterdam. I’d get to see a bit of the Black Forest on the way, maybe Freiburg where Asta, Thea and Van , the characters from “Black Forest Summer” stayed. I would see the castles on the Rhine and I’ve always wanted to go to Amsterdam. If I could do it in time to see the tulips that would be even better but I can’t do that next year because Naomi will be away at that time. One of us has to be home for the pets.

My other wishlist trip is Scandinavia, specifically Norway. I’d like to cruise the fjords and I’d love to do it in the cooler months and see the northern lights. Currently I’m researching what sort of cruise I could do. If you travel in the summer months you can experience the midnight sun but I think that the Aurora Borealis would be way cooler.

Hopefully I will be able to afford to do one of these trips. It will be expensive because I will be a solo traveller but that’s OK.

Of course I would love to visit the UK again, but I have been there twice so I might have to sacrifice that to do these more adventurous trips. I would have loved to visit Canada and the USA too and ride on The Rocky Mountaineer, the California Zephyr, The Coast Starlight and other great trains I’ve learned about but I’m sorry to say that 2024 is not the year that I’d want to visit the USA. I don’t think I would feel safe.

Of course if I had the elusive lottery win I could do all of the above but while I once would have been happy to be away from home for three months now I don’t feel I want to be gone for that long. three to four weeks would be enough.