When choosing a vacation destination for the first time, we are often attracted to the ‘icons’, which are promoted by tourist offices or airlines. However repeat visits are usually based on the mini-icons which we discover for ourselves.
I remember my initial visit to Paris, when the first sightseeing stop was the 307-m Eiffel Tower. The 1,710 steps to the top were rather off-putting, so I boarded a lift for the top stage to see the fabulous views over Paris which span more than 50 miles.
The Eiffel Tower is a very impressive monument to man’s engineering prowess, but it was the Louvre, with its bewildering rich array of paintings, which made we want to repeat the visit… if only to gaze once again at Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa – surprisingly smaller than expected.
In Rome, the Colosseum was our first stop to view the vast arena where gladiators fought in front of crowds of 50,000. And yes, we did throw three coins in the Trevi Fountain, so that we would return for another visit.
But my mini-icon memory is of the old house at 41 Via Boca di Leone, where Robert Browning lived and wrote, plus the shock of discovering an Italian cafeteria which made terrible cappuccino!
Athens attracts with its Acropolis and Erechtheion from the golden age of Hellas and, although the city is currently in the news for all the monetarily wrong reasons, it is still a place which does not cost an arm and a leg to visit.
My mini-icon is the metrio sweet coffee (don’t call it Turkish!) and learning a few words of Greek. ‘Ne’ meaning yes must be one of the few affirmative words in a European language which sounds negative.
Another attractive capital is Stockholm, built on 14 islands in Lake Mälaren. The icon is the Royal Palace in Gamla Stan (the old town), built from 1697 to 1750, where the king and queen of Sweden still live.
The mini-icon is an old boat, the Vasa Mon-of-War to be precise, which was fished out of the Stockholm harbour in the late 1960s, after a 350-year sleep, and has been painstakingly restored to its former glory, an incredible example of a real 17th century warship.
Further south in Europe, Hamburg’s icon is the huge seaport and its history as a ‘Free and Hanseatic City’. But it is not the ocean-going vessels which attract but rather the Alster Lake in the city centre surrounded by elegant business streets and promenades. Nowhere in Europe are the citizens so proud of their city.
If we now travel back to France and down south to Monte Carlo, part of the independent principality of Monaco, we, as expected, will view the multi-million-dollar luxury yachts as we stroll along the seafront and pass the parked Rolls-Royces and Bentleys.
But, for me, it was the sights below ground which became the mini-icons. The Observatory Grotto, next to the Jardin Exotique, reveals amazing caverns with stalagtites and stalagmites.
From stalagtites to chedis, and the city of Bangkock seems to offer an abundance of padogas, or chedis. These are multi-coloured and multi-tiered with roofs sparkling-spired and glittering with gold and are the much-photographed icons.
The mini-icon is the sail up country by high-tailed, narrow boat with the bow spray causing you to laugh with delight as you wave to the friendly villagers you speed past. Changing boat to a rice barge, you then visit snake farms (urgh) or watch fish-fighting or cock-fighting, from which I excused myself, before gently floating back to your hotel in the moonlight.
Down in South Africa, we deliberately missed Johannesburg as we were not terribly impressed on our first visit, no memorable sights, never mind icons. But we celebrated a wedding anniversary in a hotel overlooking Table
Mountain in Cape Town and the mini-icon was a trip on the Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town and the memory of the outstanding personal service on board.
For sheer iconic splendour, nothing can beat the pyramids of Egypt and the temples of Luxor and Karnak, though my flashback is of a cowboy travel agent failing to secure us train tickets back to Cairo necessitating an eight-hour, non-stop taxi journey through rural Egypt.
Next time, we will fly all the way for I have yet to see the Abu Simbal temples, saved by Unesco funding when the Aswan Dam was built in 1972.
I am crossing my fingers that the mini-icons will be positive memories.
by Jonna Simon