A sign of growing old is that you start to notice signs of growing old. This mournful thought zimmer-framed its way across my crumbling brain this afternoon, shortly after a conversation with a tour rep in the Gatwick departure lounge. Not just any tour rep. My tour rep. Yes, it’s come to this.
Here’s our excuse. We started to organise our Cuba holiday a few months ago. I pencilled in a cheap flight, and M began to research where we might go. We sketched out an itinerary that would take in most of the island’s must-sees and must-dos, and begun the usual tortuous process of looking into candidate hotels and transport options. While doing this we came across a company offering a 14 day holiday covering pretty much the same ground that we were after. The hotels look good and the flight was the identical one we’d earmarked. All travel within the country is included of course. but what swung it was that it came out around the same price that we reckoned it would cost if we did it on our own. This is rarely the case, and is one of the reasons we usually prefer to go it alone.
So we swallowed some pride and sacrificed our dignity on the altar of an organised tour. It means we lose the flexibility of staying longer (or cutting and running) in any particular place. It means we can’t add a detour at the last minute on the basis of an unexpected recommendation. But we’ve decided that we actually quite like the prospect of not having to track down buses that don’t leave from the place they’re supposed to (because it’s the last Monday of the month). This trip won’t contain that hellish scene where the guest house proprietor shakes his head awkwardly as he leafs through the old notebook dangling from a piece of string on the back of the front door. "Sorry, we do not have reservation for you… when did you arrange this?" We’ve chosen to remove some of the uncertainty and the unpredictability that traditionally feature in our trips.
They say it’s a sign of growing old.
