CULTURE
Harvard Travels
By Seymour Lanz
One of the drawbacks of going to Harvard is that the alumni association never loses track of you. One of the advantages is that, upon turning 50, that same alumni association offers you the most exotic range of expensive vacations you can take through a catalog it calls “Harvard Travels.”
“Harvard Travels” is a collection of 51 vacations the Harvard Alumni Association offers along the Silk Trail in China, the sea voyage of Odysseus through the Mediterranean Sea, the railway across Russia to Siberia and other noted journeys in world history. Your guide on these adventures is a Harvard professor proficient in the region and, as a further inducement, your accommodations will be only the best hotels along the way.
You can take these 2-3 week educational vacations for anywhere from $3,200 a person – if you want to float down the Danube River on a barge – to $19,000 for a luxury cabin on a cruise ship from St. Petersburg, Russia, to Copenhagen with ports of call in Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Sweden.
The most enticing offering in 2007 catalog is a 12-day cruise to Bosnia-Herzegovina next September that will be conducted by Peter Galbraith, the former ambassador who is largely credited with negotiating the 1995 peace accord between the warring factions in the region, with Madelyn Albright, the former U.S. Secretary of State, and William Perry, the former U.S. secretary of defense, along for the ride to offer shipboard lectures.
The cruise begins and ends in Venice, Italy. From there, it heads north on the Adriatic Sea to the remote ports of the worn-torn country that used to be known as Yugoslavia, entering Croatia through the scenic Kornati Islands, pausing in Dobrovnik (Croatia) and Kotor (Montenegro) for receptions with dignitaries before a private jet lifts the tour group off to Sarajevo. All for only $17,000 (per person, double occupancy.)
If you are more inclined toward solitude, perhaps you are better suited for the Harvard Travels tour of Argentina, Chile and Patagonia. Four days of bohemian dining, exceptional museums and “melancholic tango” in Buenos Aires gives way to catamaran sail through the Andes, a visit to a colony of Magellanic penguins in Punta Arenas and, a UNESCO biosphere at the bottom of South America in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park.
As I sat drooling over the photos, the Sunday Chicago Tribune arrived with a travel section cover story calling the park “astounding,” “challenging” and “baffling,” further proof of Harvard’s unique insight into what makes for an exotic vacation. Travel writer Alan Solomon describes a dining room overlooking an impossibly blue lake with ice caps, ever-changing mountain views, howling winds and seeing on his nature walks huge condors diving to catch rabbits amid glaciers, waterfalls and hundreds of pink flamingos bathing in brillian sunshine.
Reading through the Harvard catalog, you can’t help but be reminded of how much of college you didn’t attend. Now presumably older and wiser – and no longer paying off your student loans – this is your chance to re-up for another educational round, without the dorm food.
If I never go on a Harvard Travel, vacation, I will still leave this catalog on my living room table. The quality of the pictures, writing and content makes it an enticement to go explore someplace you’ve never been, and gives you a context in which to see it.
If you use it for nothing else, use it to find the hotels in the remote regions of the world where Harvard stays. You may not be able to afford a Harvard travel package but the museums, landmarks and itinerary here are a perfect course outline for your own independent study.
