Every traveller knows one. You might be one. The person who sends the steak back twice, requests a different hotel room because the view isn’t quite right, and has opinions about thread count that they’re not afraid to share with the concierge at volume.
But is it always a fair label? Are Divas difficult? Demanding? Or are they a woman who refuses to travel on somebody else’s terms? We discuss.
Fanny Trollope: The Woman Who Hated America (and wrote a bestseller all about it)
In 1827, Frances “Fanny” Trollope was nearly broke, pushing 50, and raising five children plus a husband going mad on his own mercury cures. So naturally she decided to sail to America to join a utopian commune in Tennessee. What could possibly go wrong? Ah, the best laid intentions of the geographic cure…but Tennessee in 1828 wasn’t exactly Dollywood and Beale Street. And Cincinnati, Ohio wasn’t much better. By 1831, Fanny was over the American experience and moved back to England, writing a caustic book of her travels which earned her the name “Old Madam Vinegar”. It was a smash hit. Fanny’s money problems were solved and she provided the template for the travel writer who complains about everything for which Mark Twain got the credit.
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Woman Who Built Her Own Theme Park
There are those who say “Half the fun of travel is the journey.” The Empress Dowager Cixi, the de facto ruler of China from 1861 to 1908, was not one of those people. Good news for her, she didn’t have to go far to see the world. Instead, she spent a dynasty’s fortune to re-build the world in her back yard. Landscapes. Temples. Famous vistas. They were all part of the Summer Palaces, elaborate gardens built, renovated, and re-built by members of the Qing imperial clan. Unfortunately, events would force this reluctant traveler to leave her theme park world behind and go into exile into the real world for a few years. She was not amused.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth: The Woman Who Simply Did Not Care WHAT you thought
Teddy Roosevelt’s eldest daughter was sent on a diplomatic tour of Asia in 1905, probably because her father needed a break. His most famous quote about her: “I can be president of the United States, or I can attend to Alice, but I cannot possibly do both.” She jumped fully clothed into the ship’s swimming pool, learned the hula in Hawaii, and in Korea, slid down a banister at the royal court. She carried a pet snake named Emily Spinach in her handbag. Her favourite saying, later stitched onto a cushion in her Washington home: “If you haven’t got anything nice to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
And Then There’s Us
Sarah also shares a few of her own experiences with diva-behavior from her years of running a luxury travel company.
Got a diva story? A travel companion who made everyone’s life a misery? A moment when you yourself were the difficult one? Send it in. We might feature it in a future episode.
