The invisible traveler

By Diane Daniel, Globe Correspondent, 05/19/02

		Sensible traveler  Destinations  Where they went  Travel gear  Student travel

Traveling is a three-part process for Karen Richards: the planning, the going ("the shortest part," she says), and the memories.

Richards, 56, of Boston, wasn't about to cut corners in any of those categories when she decided to "borrow" the children of two friends for a trip to the Netherlands. Then, "their mothers insisted on tagging along," she said laughing.

The lineup for the tulip-season visit was Richards, Jorie Beth Heilman, 9, and her mother, Nancy Shepard, 49, who live in Lexington; and Christina Cucurullo, 9, with her mother, Stephanie Cucurullo, 37, of Somerville. The three husbands stayed home.

Still, it often seemed they had a sixth traveler along, "Mrs. Smiddy," whom the girls met in the planning phase. Anne Smiddy, 72, of Lexington, is a friend of Richards's mother-in-law and is from the Netherlands. Richards thought it would be nice for the girls to talk with her for a short time.

Instead, Mrs. Smiddy "put on a whole tea and gave the girls journals, and she wrote a bunch of Dutch words in them." She also enthralled the girls and Richards with stories of her childhood.

"All through the trip it was if Mrs. Smiddy was an invisible member" of the group, Richards said. "The girls kept saying, 'Oh, Mrs. Smiddy told us about that,' or "That's how Mrs. Smiddy said it would be.' It's part of what made the whole trip so rich."

The girls also watched videos about the Netherlands and read fiction and nonfiction, including "The Diary of Anne Frank," whose house they visited in Amsterdam.

It was Richards's seventh trip there ("I love tulips") but the girls' first time out of the country. No one seemed to mind that the sun shone for only about two hours during their six-day stay over April school vacation, Richards said.

For the first four nights, they stayed in the old village of Voorburg, just outside The Hague. "I wanted some place very Dutch, where there wouldn't be a lot of tourists," Richards said. She chose the luxurious Restaurant Hotel Savelberg, a 14-room estate owned by a chef. "Unlike being in Amsterdam, the girls could go out and walk the market on their own. Instead of it feeling like you were looking at everything in a tourist way, they felt like two girls actually in a foreign country."

One night the girls stayed in their room feasting on local pizza while the grown-ups feasted on a seven-course dinner downstairs. "Remember, this is near The Hague, the World Court, the headquarters for the country. There were people with tiaras and tuxedoed waiters."

Ten years ago, Richards sold her stamp and paper company, Inkadinkado, where Shepard and Cucurullo had been employees. Using her creative know-how, Richards encouraged the girls to keep tickets, receipts, menus, anything that would remind them of their trip, to put in scrapbooks she supplied them with.

When the fivesome visited the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, Richards was surprised that the girls enjoyed viewing the tulips - 6 million bulbs on more than 70 acres. There they also were able to try out some of their favorite foods - hot chocolate and mini-Dutch pancakes, called poffertjes. "The girls took the pledge that they'd try new foods," including shrimp, which they wouldn't touch back home.

One nice part of the trip was seeing the girls growing up, Richards said. "They had their own suitcases and passports. They very much felt that they weren't the kids, they were the co-travelers. But what really amazed me is how many five-way conversations we had, and also how silly we got. The girls were being 30-year-olds and we adults were being 9 years old. And sometimes we were just in another country, all being girls."

Send suggestions to ddaniel@globe.com.