Good to Go

From sojourns in world capitals to exotic, little-visited locales to a festival in the Berkshires,
Trust Study Tours can result in once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

BY MICHAEL PRETZER

Grace Gary is reaching for a good answer. For the past 16 years, Gary, an architectural historian in Aspen, Colo., has accompanied about 20 National Trust Study Tours to places as far flung as Normandy and Natchez, Miss., and she’s just been asked to name her favorite tour. “Politically, I should say ‘the next one,’” she says, mindful of her allegiance to a source of travel and intellectual stimulation.

“The next one” just might prove the best yet. In mid-October, she’ll lead a group of 45 Trust members across northern Italy. They’ll commence in Venice, cruise up the Po on the river barge River Cloud II as far as Cremona, move overland to Milan, and finish at Lake Como. There, in the lake district, they’ll stay at the 16th-century Villa d’Este, which was purchased in 1815 by Caroline of Brunswick, the princess of Wales, and is now a fine hotel.

Ah, yes, autumn in the north of Italy. And yet Sicily is still fresh in Gary’s memory. That was in April 2001, when she led a tour through “a living museum of Western art and architecture,” as Trust literature describes the Mediterranean island. Hmm, she says. “Maybe my favorite trip is the most recent one.”

Dwight Young, another veteran Trust study leader (lecturer), professes none of Gary’s qualms. Not only is Young willing to name his personal favorite trip, but he’ll also pin it down to an exact spot and vista: Easter Island and “those brooding, enigmatic sculpted heads looming on the hillsides.” The South Pacific sun was bright, and the wind was whipping on the day a local guide escorted Young and his group to a cliff. “Down a million feet to our right was the Pacific Ocean, waves crashing against the base of the cliff. Down nearly a million feet to our left was a pond of vivid green water that had collected at the bottom of the crater created by a volcano,” he says. If allowed to relive part of his life, Young says he’d include those moments.

John Meffert has words for such an experience: “the time when the traveler is truly in sync with the place.” A Trust study leader for the past four years, Meffert, of Charleston, S.C., recalls one midsummer’s eve along the Baltic Sea when a group he led watched Finns light bonfires to usher in the summer solstice. The group didn’t need a lot of explanation or information to feel the ancient character of the event, Meffert explains. “Just by being there, we were able to soak it in.”

Thousands of National Trust members have had such moments since the Trust offered its first Study Tour more than 30 years ago and nurtured its program into the nation’s third largest sponsor of such trips. Generally, between 2,000 and 2,200 individuals take Study Tours with the Trust each year, but the number fell to about 1,700 last year. “Travel was at a near standstill

in September and October,” says Ida Singelenberg, the Trust’s Study Tours director. “And while enrollment in the program has picked up again, it’s not at its previous level.”

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon haven’t affected travel exactly the way some experts predicted. Trust members, for example, haven’t shunned international travel, Singelenberg says: “Our domestic programs are strong, but there’s no increased interest in remaining close to home.” Indeed, this year’s best-

subscribed Study Tours destinations include China, Japan, South Africa, England, and Holland and Belgium. Trust members didn’t seem to be traveling a lot less this past spring, but they were putting off travel decisions until the last minute. “Late registration is a trend that will most likely be with us for the foreseeable future,” Singelenberg says.

Hundreds of packaged educational tours are offered each year by hundreds of organizations and tour operators. “Anybody can put together a trip that includes a visit to the Louvre, 10 minutes at the Eiffel Tower, and a bus ride to Versailles,” says Young, a 25-year Trust employee (and a columnist for this magazine) who has accompanied about 15 tours as a Trust representative or study leader. “The Trust, on the other hand, tailors its itineraries to its members’ interests. We provide experiences that aren’t available to individual travelers and include destinations accessible only to the Trust.”

Naturally, preservation dominates the Trust Study Tours exclusives. On a trip Young led to 300-year-old St. Petersburg, “we met with the top preservation officer,” Young says, “and he detailed the challenges of keeping the city, one of the most beautiful in the world, from falling apart.” On another occasion in Venice, a group got a behind-the-scenes look at the resurrection of La Fenice, the 1792 opera house destroyed by arson in January 1996.

Thanks to the Trust’s worldwide recognition, moreover, Study Tours travelers have had the opportunity to meet such notables as Nelson Mandela, Mrs. Anwar Sadat, and acclaimed Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. It’s not unusual for groups to be invited into private homes: in Italy, for example, the estates of the Principessa Corsini and the Ferragamo families. Embassies sometimes open their doors, and ambassadors occasionally invite Trust members to their residences.

The first Trust study tour was in 1970, when James Biddle, the Trust’s president (1968-1980), chartered the Delta Queen, a river steamboat later designated a historic landmark, so that he and 150 members could explore the Mississippi. The Trust repeated the tour in 1971, then began adding trips. (Delta Queen Trust cruises continue; this fall’s excursion will stop in the ports of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Vicksburg, and Memphis.) In the 1990s, the Study Tours program expanded rapidly, from 42 trips in 1994 to double that number in 1998. “The growth came in response to the market,” explains Singelenberg, who became the program’s director during this period. “The economy was good, and people wanted to travel.”

Trust Study Tours have always appealed to the “well-heeled traveler,” she says, “the individual who wants educational enrichment, creature comforts, and the opportunity to travel with other people who have interests in preservation, architecture, history, and culture.” That kind of travel was taken to a very high level in 1997 when 55 members flew around the world in three and a half weeks aboard a private jet. They touched down at great cities and exotic locales, from Paris and Prague to Katmandu and Easter Island. Since then, the Trust has offered other trips in private jets. This fall’s History’s Lost Cities excursion puts down in Oman, Nepal, Tibet, Burma, China, and Cambodia; next year’s Rediscover the New World study tour will include stops in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, and Argentina.

Some trips are less than luxurious. “We once went to Mali, where there’s little tourism infrastructure,” Singelenberg says. “The educational value was superb, and we stayed in cleanish hotels.”

Music is an objective of some trips: a summer study tour to Salzburg for the music festival, for example, and trips to France and Italy with opera performances on the agenda. Closer to home, there are trips to festivals in Bend, Ore., Newport, R.I., and the Massachusetts Berkshires. Study Tours to music festivals typically include visits to historic house museums and galleries in the area and a chance to meet the performers. “We see behind the scenes,” Singelenberg says.

To stay ahead of the competition in today’s heated study tour market, the Trust continues to refine its offerings. While not neglecting the upper end of the travel market, the Trust Study Tours is increasing the selection of midpriced,

single-stay, one-week trips to destinations such as Greece, Sorrento, and Wales. The number of family-oriented trips is also going up, this summer to Montana (following the route of Lewis and Clark), Alaska, Paris, and Greece. Next year, there’ll be a study tour to Nottingham, Robin Hood country in England.

Almost two thirds of those who travel once with the Trust sign up to travel again. Maybe it’s the selection of destinations, or the intellectual stimulation and entertainment provided by study leaders. Perhaps travelers want the opportunity to meet others who are preservation minded. Or Trust members could be looking for a few moments to remember for a lifetime.

Michael Pretzer is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

Read more from our current issue online, look for the July/August 2002 issue of Preservation on newsstands, or e-mail David Montiel to purchase a copy.