Been there, seen that

I've been thinking about future travel plans and where I’d like to go and what I’d like to see. I freely admit that I am a sight-seer. I know it is considered unsophisticated and banal and downright common to like to see sights, but that’s why they’re there, isn’t it? To be seen.

Some of my favorite tourist things are historical, like Civil War battle fields or places where Presidents from other centuries were born or lived or got shot or whatever.  Museums are good because there’s lots to see in one place.

There are some sights that are worth seeing but once you have, you're done. Mount Rushmore is one of those. You drive a long way to get there, pay to park, walk a long way to the visitors’ center, and finally you look up and – there they are – four faces carved in the side of a mountain. “Okay, what’d’ya wanna do now?”

Plymouth Rock is another one (“Yup, there it is all right.”) and so is Niagara Falls (which someone once described to me as the second greatest disappointment in the life of a new bride). “Oh, look! Water falling over a cliff.”  Got it.

Not all natural wonders bore me. The Blue Grotto, a sea cave on the cost of Capri in Italy, was very cool. Here’s how I described it at the time:

”Arriving on the Isle of Capri, we took a motor boat to the Blue Grotto, where we transferred to row boats (four people to each) to go inside the cave. You have to lay down almost in the boat to get into the narrow little mouth of the cave. When the tide is up, you can't get in at all. Inside the water is bright azure blue as if illuminated artificially, but, of course, it isn't. The guys rowing the boats sang most of the time inside the cave.”

There was also one special moment I will never forget. My friend Marcy and I ended up in different boats, and at one point when her rowboat and mine were fairly close, she looked at me, put her palms up and shrugged her shoulders as if to say “What’s the big deal?”

I called out, “Take your sunglasses off.” She did, and then she said, “Oh, wow!”