The seductive power of travel brochures and of those beguiling full-page newspaper adverts is strong in springtime. The Rhine maidens sing their siren songs when I see pictures of rivercruising vessels gliding past hills crowned with fairy tale castles.

Who but those limited by infirmity or a preference for either Disney World or Vegas would not feel the urge to book on one of those trips to Vienna and Budapest via Cologne, Coblenz, Regensburg and Linz? The Rockies, even the Grand Canyon, can wait until my passport records yet another visit to the Continent. And the euro-zone needs all the $$CDN it can get.

It is, of course, prudent to follow the asterisks down to the small print at the bottom of any tourist pitch. The phrase ‘some conditions apply’ signals caution. So do the words ‘based on’ or ‘not available in conjunction with’. Other caveats are ‘additional deposits may be required’ and ‘port and sundry other taxes not included’. Those extras can mean big bucks.

It is tempting to hope, like Mr Flaherty, that the battle against the national deficit will be aided by an uninterrupted global economic recovery. He does, indeed, foresee some necessary austerities ahead but not such as will burden the middle class unduly and, if his government were to have a majority in the Commons, certainly not the moneyed class. As the advertisements warn, there are many things that are ‘subject to change without notice’.

Meanwhile, we all have debts to pay down. There are our university students who face living costs and rising fees and who deserve inter-generational help while their parents struggle with mortgages and the threat of unemployment. And there is David Dodge’s exhortation that we should all be saving more. The travel agents, too, use the word ‘save’ but in their case it is always followed by the words ‘up to’ and more asterisks.

As to the cities mentioned above en route to Vienna, Köln (Cologne), Koblenz (Coblenz) and Regensburg are reminders that the Romans never got much beyond river forts at the western border of ‘Germania’.

Cologne was a military ‘colonia’ (outpost) on the Rhine and Coblentz (a corruption of the word Latin word for ‘confluence’) stands where the Rhine meets the Moselle (Mosel) River.

Regensburg (Ratisbon), on the site of a Roman fortress at the junction of the Danube and Regen Rivers, was the scene of an 1809 Napoleonic battle in which the Emperor himself was wounded. Linz, on the brown Danube in Austria, was Adolf Hitler’s hometown. So much for historical minutiae.

Secondary schools offer short holiday trips to British and continental destinations. They must, of course, be superficial first visits. The youngsters tend to be towerists – the Tower of London, the Eiffel Tower, Pisa’s Leaning Tower – rather than tourists.

Traditionally, the Grand Tour of Europe lasted for several months and was part of the post-university rite of passage for young gentlemen of means. Education theorists held that ‘reading’ (i.e. ‘book learning’) should be completed by the supplementary stimuli provided by travel and association with people of culture abroad. The travellers returned with crates of guide books, pictures and sculpture.

The itinerary led them from English to French or Belgian channel ports and thence to Paris, Switzerland and down into Italy. Seeing Venice, Florence and Rome was de rigeur. The return to England was up through Germany and the Low Countries. Eventually young upper class women also made the trip, as did the older women one meets in E.M. Forster’s 1908 novel, and the 1985 film, “A Room with a View”.

I myself have followed at different times most of the Grand Tour route.

Disappointingly, Salzburg, Vienna, Budapest and Athens are still places unvisited. My daughter Adrienne has brought back mementos from Greece and the islands and I fancy a future sojourn in a white, sun drenched house overlooking the wine dark sea and close by a friendly taverna where modest amounts of retsina and somewhat less of ouzo can be enjoyed.

With improved transportation, a modern Grand Tour would include Greece and the Holy Land. I have avoided the latter for two reasons. One is the violence that flares there unexpectedly because of the intransigence of both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders. It seems especially inappropriate that a secular Jewish regime should cite Scriptural authority for expanding its illegal land claims.

The other reason is that one feels there is no such thing as a ‘holy place’ unless it is occupied by holy people. Some would say with Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Catholic poet, that “The (whole) world is charged with the grandeur of God”.

But all, he added, “is seared by trade, wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell”. Sadly, that seems to be particularly true of the places that once were idealised by the pictures in Bible story books and in John Milton’s “storied windows, richly dight, casting a dim, religious light”.

Independent travelling has its advantages. One has learned, however, the value of booking with a group on conducted trips. There was a time when Lois and I preferred, after the long air flight, to hire a car, make our own reservations and avoid the regimentation of having to place our luggage outside a hotel room door at 7 a.m. or of exiting a crowded bus to trudge through historic ruins or quaint city squares after that guide in a yellow coat or the one with the red umbrella.

One year, upon the enthusiastic recommendation of a colleague, we booked a trip through the Loire Valley with Globus Escorted Vacations. From then on we were ‘sold’ on that way to travel. The imagined ‘herding’ proved to be courteous and efficient guidance and the accommodations were of a quality that would have been difficult to find otherwise.

After one’s youth hostel years, wanderlust includes the desire for courteous service and comfortable accommodations. While some seek inspiration in home and garden shows at this time of year, I turn to glossy travel catalogues in which the pictures revive so many memories and awaken anticipation of other journeys that may never happen.