Discovering The Mature Lifestyle
New Hope couple travels the country by motorcycle. Page 4
Travel
November 19, 2015
November Issue
BY SUE WEBBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER Marti Sanville of St. Louis Park never had a passport until she was 40, but she’s been making up for it ever since. After making a trip to visit her daughter, who was studying in France, Sanville has taken about 15 major trips. “My best trip was one of the first I took in the early 1990s, to the Yucatan Peninsula,” she said. She recalls traveling across the rain forest, and up the Caribbean coast and discovering that sleeping in a hammock was one of the options. “It was really cool,” Sanville said. Since retiring in 2009, she has made 10 foreign trips, including Canada and Mexico. She usually takes a major trip once a year. “I take two if I find something totally irresistible,” Sanville said. “I go for two or three weeks, whenever I see a deal. It’s been fun.” She’d wanted to visit Egypt since she learned about the pyramids as a fifth-grader. She finally made the trip in 2011. “It was after [former Egyptian President] Mubarak was out,” she said. “Tourism was down about 95 percent,” Sanville said. “There were no lines anywhere. The street vendors were out in full force. All the buses had police assigned to accompany them and provide assistance if necessary. It was a plainclothes policeman who was very nice and not at all intimidating. He wasn’t a military-type security guard.” Everywhere she went, Sanville said, “People yelled out, ‘We love America. We love Obama’.” While in Egypt, she bought a painting done by an elephant. “He paints better than I do,” she quipped. She went to Peru in 2012, and she’s been to Africa and
A trip to Egypt in 2011 offered Marti Sanville an opportunity to ride on a camel. (Submitted photo) China, too. “The Middle East would be fascinating, but not right now,” she said. “I was in Thailand a couple of years ago,” Sanville said.
“It was the first time I’d been in Asia. It’s a beautiful country.” SANVILLE - TO PAGE 3