Kathy Schmitt: hobbies, interests, and travel
What is your favorite book to recommend to other people?
Oh, my favorite book to recommend to other people. Well, they would never read Gone with the Wind because it’s too long. But my favorite book that I would recommend is still too long, and it’s Hawaii by James Michener.
That is my all-time favorite book. I love the movie too. There’s only one little section of the book, but that’s the movie. Yeah, that would be a book I would recommend.
What was it like going to Egypt after wanting to go there your whole life?
Oh, it was a trip of a lifetime. I had no idea that I was going to love it that much. I did it for 2 weeks. When I called up to make arrangements, it was this man. I had taken a course of Temple night school on Egypt history twice, and he ran a travel agency. He’s the one that got me interested to give him a call. He ran this travel thing and I called him.
The only problem I was having is I didn’t have a roommate and really didn’t want to pay the single supplement. He said, oh, I can find you a roommate. You’re going to meet her before we leave, because I have an Egyptian friend in Trenton that’s having a dinner party 2 weeks before we go.
I went and my roommate was adorable. She was only in her late twenties and all the Egyptian boys went nuts over her, and she was dark skinned. I had to really kind of be her chaperone, and that was kind of fun. We stayed at lovely hotels. I saw pretty much everything I wanted to see there.
We did everything in Cairo with the museum and all that. And we had a lot of free time to do dinners. We would have exotic foods like fried bat and stuff like that. Pigeon stew didn’t suit me, but I did love a lot of their falafels and that kind of stuff. But we went to a McDonald’s, it was all done in Arabic, the writing on the little place mats, and it was all Egyptian food. We thought that was great.
We did Cairo, too. Then we flew down to Aswan and then we flew down another 250 miles where they moved Abu Simbel, which is the big Ramses things with the 4 big statues sitting in front of it. We went down there and we toured that. I have a little trinket from there that I kind of had to bargain for. The guy didn’t want to sell it to me. It was hand-carved wood. Things were cheap in Egypt.
Then we flew back to Cairo and had 3-day trip on a boat that was big enough to be 2 or 3 decks, but it was only about 75 people there. And we had 3 days, and they would dock and we’d get off and go see things like mosques, ancient ruins, and castles. So we would visit along the way, but we had a great time. That was well worth it. And also, I was glad I did it when I did it. It was pretty strenuous.
What was the worst overseas trip that you ever went on?
The worst overseas trip? Okay. Let me see. I’ve only been overseas a few times. The first one was Ireland. Loved it. Second one was Paris. Loved it. Third one I believe was Belgium. I went with Mary and Matt and his mother, and we roomed together. I loved Belgium and did fine with that.
You know, London, probably London. I wasn’t crazy about London. I don’t know why, because we enjoyed what we saw. We went to a show, Phantom of the Opera. London wasn’t my favorite, but I still liked it.
Sure. Cities have like a feel to them and you can really like vibe with one of them. It just, London just wasn’t your thing.
And the people were nice. We went to the Tower of London and we did all that. We had a double ticket. They gave us a free thing to go to Sherlock Holmes’s house, and we didn’t realize it, but we were eating dinner over that way.
A place I never thought I would have gone as a wax museum. It was wonderful. I would do that in New York. And I took Darby when she was 18 months old and I was babysitting her in New York. I have the most adorable pictures of her and all the famous people. Yeah. I think wax museums are very fun. I didn’t realize how much fun they were.
So, I mean, I still liked London, but, and we went out to Bath and Stonehenge and Salisbury. People make pilgrimages to the big cathedral with the knight; the name is leaving me, but it’s a famous place.
When you go on historical tours of people’s houses, do you have a favorite one that you ever did?
Oh, that’s a good question. I liked visiting the Presidents’ houses. I liked visiting up in New Hampshire, where they had the beach. We went up for a long weekend, my girlfriend and I, and I didn’t realize that that was such a famous port. Smith was so famous. John Ford Jonesville to ships there toward where he lived.
There were several interesting houses, but the nice thing was this strawberry farm. It was old as the hills, and it had different houses you could tour or for different eras. And I liked the 1950s, and the 1920s. It was really neat. I guess I can’t say Newport wasn’t thrilling because I toured almost every house, but Newport in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where they are along the coast.
That was one of my favorite trips. I took time traveling alone. They have all the mansions along the river. Like there’s gotta be 6 or 8 of them. And the Vanderbilts, I guess they’re the most spectacular. The other spectacular one was a Vanderbilt one down in North Carolina. That’s the biggest house in the country, but I guess Newport, Rhode Island.
What was the best library you ever went to?
Oh, the best library. Well, it’s interesting to answer this because I love libraries. I always find something kinky or unique about them and makes me want to go back. But the most interesting library I ever went to was the Penn one at Van Pelt. It was the one at Market and 34th, around there, but I spent a lot of time in the library. At the time I went, it wasn’t filling up like it is now.
I went in Van Pelt one day and I was taking Literature. The teacher had given us this poem. And I said, I can’t interpret poems. I don’t know what they mean. So anyway, I just was tooling around on a library, looking up poetry. And I found the poem and it had a critique and a synopsis of what it really meant.
I thought, this can’t be happening. So I got the book out, wrote down everything. It was for a test or a paper. So I handed in the paper, it’s my interpretation. I call it cheating. You know, and I got the paper back and the teacher’s note said, I just learned something from your paper.
I said thank God. And I cheated. It’s my one and only cheat. But I was not good. And you know what? I don’t know if it was or not, because I found the interpretation that I couldn’t figure out.
So maybe you discovered something and got to teach the teachers.
I love the Van Pelt library.