HOLIDAYS AND TRAVEL
Robin McDouall Jean Robertson Simon Raven Harold Champion
Tips for Tourists Going it Alone Christmas among the Athenians South Pacific ..
• •
Tips for Tourists
By ROBIN McDOUALL ALL my life I have travelled as much as I ,[-]could: here are some of the fruits of ex- perience for the tyro tourist to pick at. (The hardy and hardened traveller will have his own hints, tips and scars.) First, read regularly a good travel columnist. Present company excepted, Elizabeth Nicholas is much the best. The Satur day articles in the Times are inspirational, but You may wait some weeks to find one that inspires You. Don't believe what friends say—:-or, at least, not most of them. If they find a good place, they keep it under their hats; if they find a dud, they Will be the last to admit it. Only the people who go to Monte Carlo every year can be believed-- and they don't have to be seen.
Secondly, have a good travel agent. Cook's and the American Express are naturally the most experienced because the largest, unless you have Your pet Mr. So-and-So who will take a more personal interest in you. (But I should go to Cook's or the American EXpress for travellers' cheques : I find that, in the lesser Mediterranean islands, they have never heard of the dear National Provincial and regard their chequers with deep suspicion.) I myself go to M.S. Woolven at Cox and King% but Hickie, Borman, Grant, across the street (Charles 11) or John Ferer in Shepherd Market and Elystan Street will nanny You. (Buy your 2nd single to Brighton there, too --all grist to their mill.) I should, I suppose, say something about lug- gage. As far as air travel goes, I can only say that luggage should be expendable. I seldom make the shortest journey without finding a handle wrenched off, a great scratch on the top or a lock crashed open. Luckily one can usually get things mended in a few hours abroad: I can recommend Malta and Porto- Santo Stefano from recent experience. I am now using my pre- war leather luggage—I have to pay excess, in any case—and hope that, by the time it is entirely destroyed, I can afford some fibre-glass (expend- able) or the new Louis VW:non. If travelling by rail, travel as light as possible : foreign porters are slow, ungrateful, expensive and often dis- agreeable.
Always keep your passport up to date, particu- larly if you've been born more than five miles from the Passport Office. A general of my acquaintance—the general of my acquaintance. perhaps I should say—recently had great diffi- culty in renewing his, although he had held the Queen's commission for over thirty years, because he had been born in South Africa. As for my, sister, not only had she been born in South Africa but our parents had committed the terrible sin of having been born in India and the United States, respectively : she now has a Canadian passport. Have an international driving licence, if you want to drive a hired car, though you can drive your own car on an English licence. (In Cyprus you can—at least you could before the 'settlemene---drive on a learner's licence and hire a Turkish policeman to sit beside you.) I shall write nothing about visas or inocula- tions except to say : believe no one; ask and ask again. You don't have to have medical certifi- cates'for any of the more obvious countries, but beware of Some of the less visited. I am myself in favour of regular vaccination but that may be because I was frightened as a child by a Conan Doyle story when I was a Christian Scientist and not allowed to be vaccinated.
Some people like to travel with a portable chemist's shop. I would recommend taking soap: I never remember in which countries hotels pro- vide it and in which countries they don't. In France, certainly, no hotel of less than Ritz standing does. I take lavatory paper because I dislike that Kleenex type which has now become general but, illogically, I take Kleenex tissues thoUgh I could really blow my nose on the lava-, tory paper. I take two kinds of sleeping pill: one to send me to sleep, one to keep me asleep.
These on top of a bottle-.I said a bottle—of wine ensure your getting your money's worth. if you have a sleeper, and a sleeper's worth, if you are sitting up.
Take, if you like, some 'Quies' to stuff in your ears and an eye-shade to wear at night as Abroad doesn't know about curtains to keep the light out. Take dark glasses, if you hope to he mistaken for a film star but not to protect your eyes. Take some Golden Eye Ointment, if you are going to drive in a draughty car. Take a hat, if you are as bald as I am. Take a thermometer and you'll find that your typhoid is only a hangover, after all. Don't take suntan lotion and don't lie too long in the sun. Take a fly-cum-mosquito repellent. If You are subject to stomach upsets, ask your doc- tor for one of the sulfa drugs; or you can get Entero-Vioform without a prescription. Drink, except in Greece, bottled water, if you're nervous of tap..
You are not at all likely to get ill or to be in- jured--except if you go ski-ing- -but it is worth while insuring against the possibility. Doctors and hospitals are expensive and one is unlikely to have allowed for them in one's budget. The pre- mium is quite small. I always insure my baggage.
Although the English don't often get ill abroad, they usually get—in the English, not the American, sense--sick. This is entirely due to greed and meanness--the desire to have their money's worth. Anyone who eats an English breakfast, a four-course luncheon: tucking in well to the bread and butter, a dainty tea with lots of delicious patisserie and a rich five-course dinner deserves all he gets. I strongly advocate coffee and fruit for- breakfast; missing the pudding and having no bread at luncheon; a lie- down or a movie at 4.30; and missing one course at dinner.
Drinks: only the French, Italian and Spanish upper classes drink whisky in France, Italy or Spain-. For them it is a social solecism to drink anything else. I cry out for pastis in France, ouzo in Greece, grappa in Italy, much to the surprise of the natives. Even so, it doesn't do one much good to have them on empty stomachs-hence the mete the darling Greeks so thoughtfully offer. Middle-class French have taken to drinking Guinness, preferably on hot afternoons in July. It is surprising how much wine one can drink and with how little damage, Very young white wine, however, should be treated with some caution.
Always take a lot of books away with you: Gibbon, Frazer, Pepys, Clausewitz, even Mahan -all the books you have been meaning to read for years. You will then have to buy something locally-a Daphne du Maurier translation in France or a James Hadley Chase translation in Italy. They will be good for your Italian or French. Take Lyall's Book of Languages, a Hugo All You Want in Wherever-it-is, a dictionary and a grammar. Above all, take every guide book you can lay your hands on, old and new: Baedeker, Murray, Blue Guide, Michelin.
I forgot to say take your schnorkel, your flippers and your harpoon-gun but, if you're the kind who does, you won't need to be reminded. I didn't forget to say Take your camera-but, my God! I hope you do.
Previous page
