My youth was filled with privilege. And maybe it’s why I’ve never had what many call, “Wanderlust.” By the time I was 16, I’d already been to the Greek Islands with Haley Mills, Paris with Audrey Hepburn, and Egypt, Switzerland, and India with Rosalind Russell.

Was I a Hollywood director’s child, living la dolce vita in Beverly Hills? Was I a child actor and co-star?

Well, it’s true…I did grow up near Los Angeles. I spent a lot of the time watching movies and T.V. so, in a way I really DID travel with the stars. I WAS Haley Mills in Moon Spinners rescuing the very handsome Peter McEnery; I was Heidi, charming the Grandfather and Goat Peter; I was Merle Oberon, racing across the moors to Sir Lawrence Olivier in Wuthering Heights; I was Joan Fontaine as Jane Eyre pining for Mr. Rochester; and I was Eva Marie Saint crawling all over Mt. Rushmore with Cary Grant in North by Northwest. As a child with a vivid imagination, I got my traveling in early in life!

As an adult, I have been fortunate to actually travel to many of those places. But, it wasn’t till I was sitting at dinner with my husband years ago, stressed out from my corporate job and traveling all over for business, that I expressed this dream, “I want to go to an old fashioned 4th of July parade in a small town.” So, he took me to Rockport, Massachusetts (not Maine), a charming coastal village in the heart of, and where I fell in love with, New England.

We’d been there every summer since, until we moved to California’s Wine Country, very near to where Tippi Hedren (nay, Pattie) raced across Bodega Bay to that gorgeous Rod Taylor in Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds. It’s very hard to leave this beautiful place. But, I have no doubt that Susan Hutson, our new Travel Expert, will change that with her agency’s tempting vacation packages!

While having cocktails amidst a profusion of Spring blossoms, my husband recently commented that we haven’t been anywhere since we moved. Hmmm…maybe we’ll take a run down to Hollywood, where after my makeover with Michele Benza is complete, and in the words of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Blvd., I’ll be “ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille!”