"Here We are Folks. The Dream We All Dream: Boy vs. Girl..."

in a round-the-world series of crud...  Tell me?  
Did you write a book?

A victim today of bad timing in light of the Paris shootings,
David Brooks too has risen to the level that no editor will pull him aside and say, "Um, Dave? Not a good idea... Let's kill the piece, ok? And your expenses, of course, will still be comped...:

I was in Turkey as a temporary member of a 52-person group that was bouncing through Four Seasons hotels on a round-the-world tour. You put down roughly $120,000 a person and for 24 days you fly around the earth in a Four Seasons-branded private jet, taking off in Seattle and stopping in, among other places, Tokyo, Beijing, the Maldives, the Serengeti, St. Petersburg, Marrakesh and New York, going from Four Seasons to Four Seasons, with various outings off campus offered at every two- or three-night stop. I was joining the tour for days 15 through 21, which would take me from Istanbul to St. Petersburg to Marrakesh, after which I would return to New York. If Magellan had had his own 757 and a global archipelago of sumptuous breakfast buffets, his trip would have been something like this.

My job was to report back on the merits and demerits of such pampered high-end travel.
...
If you’ve got money, one of the best ways to spend it is on things that will save you time. But sometimes money allows you to see too many things, too quickly. Sometimes if you seize all the opportunities your money affords, you may end up skimming over life and nothing is deep enough to leave a mark.

There is a piece of travel literature wisdom, of uncertain attribution, that reads,

"He who has seen one cathedral 10 times has seen something; he who has seen 10 cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all."

If you’re in a major city for 48 hours, is it best to sample the highlights, or drill down? I really enjoyed tagging along with this gang for part of their journey. But some of the most memorable moments came from breaking away, wandering alone through the astonishing streets of St. Petersburg, one of the world’s great cities.
...
And, yet, I must confess, other sweet small moments came when I just said what the heck and enjoyed the self-indulgence. The caviar in Russia was really nice. So was the beautiful hotel pool in Morocco, the sweet staff at every stop and the little cubes of Turkish delight. And yes, over the course of the three days at the Four Seasons in Istanbul, I did drink both bottles of champagne.

Of course, we all have a responsibility to reduce inequality in our society. But maybe not every day.

Years ago, were he lucky, Alexandra Petri might have been that editor.

Today, she's got a column of her own.

Boom.

Sixth, there’s an old saying that says, “When you see one cathedral one time, you have seen a cathedral. When you see eight cathedrals six times, you have had forty-eight cathedral experiences. When you haven’t seen a cathedral at all, you probably drank too much champagne, got separated from the tour, and wandered off down a side street, and then we had to come retrieve you and bring you to your hotel or we would have been legally at fault.” I forget why this is relevant.

Seven, when we went to Rome, the tour guide gave a tour, but I think that if it had been left to me I would have given a better tour. He kept stating the dates when things were built and who built them, when what I want when I go on a tour is a real emotional connection like something you would experience in an E. M. Forster novel.

Eighth, I drank six bottles of champagne, and no one stopped me. That was both too much champagne and not enough. Someone ought to have stopped me, I feel.
-----------
*(I’m sorry, David Brooks. I just could not resist. How do you write a mildly negative review of a vacation that costs more than a house without exhibiting all the worst excesses of the One Percent disdainfully plucking a pea from underneath a mattress? Unfortunately, this ran in The New York Times, not The 1% Quarterly, so everyone else could also see what you were complaining about.) [EDITOR WE PROBABLY DON’T REALLY NEED THIS, UP TO YOU! PLEASE DELETE IF NOT]