My travel partner for the last two weeks, my 34 year old grandson Ian, has left me for other pursuits.

After spending the last two weeks in Slovenia, Bosnia and Croatia with 24 other people (myself included) more than twice his age, I can’t understand why he might choose to be elsewhere.  Seriously, the Rick Steves tour is over and having Ian as a roomie and as a member of the traveling group was wonderful.

Now, Ian is off to London for a week with his mom, Cynthia, and then to NYC to spend some time with his girlfriend.  All this before he returns to Hawaii.

At the same time, my daughter Kelsey and my grandson Henry, all 4 years of him, have joined me in Dubrovnik, Croatia.

The three of us are about to embark on our own one week adventure to the countries of Montenegro and Albania.

It will be interesting to compare traveling with this younger grandson and traveling with Ian.  What I can tell you already is that I am getting very used to two types of questions.

One, why…?   No matter what it is, what we see, what someone says, the question from Henry is why.  Why?  Why?  Why?

The second question that I am hearing as we drive our rental car across the border of Croatia into Montenegro is “when will we get there?”

For some reason the answers that Kelsey and I have provided so far to the second question are not satisfactory to Henry.  The reason we know this is that he continues to ask the question of “when we will get there?”

the answers that we have tried so far include…

soon, not too long, in 30 minutes, in 32 minutes, we will let you know as soon as…, shortly, any minute, in a little while, we are very close, etc.

For some reason none of these answers work.

We have also tried answering Henry’s question of “when will we get there” with a question.  For example, Henry, look out the window and see the cow.  Or, Henry, look at that mountain over there.  Or, what kind of ice cream do you want when we stop.

Bottom line, this trip will be a learning experience for not just the 4 year old.