I love traveling. I really do. In my pre-baby years I spent four summers abroad and lived most of 2001 in London where I rented a flat on Battersea Park and spent my weekends in Paris and Venice and wherever fares were cheap that weekend. I lived to travel -- spending my entire college tuition on planes, trains and Vespa rentals. Sure I was "irresponsible" in the traditional sense but my regrets are non-existent. Those were the days...
The last time I left North America was the summer of 2003. My girlfriend and I went to Greece and it was paradise, even though I crashed my Vespa into a parked car in Naxos and was limping on a 3rd degree burn on my left calf for much of the trip.
Ever since I've been trying to get back over there. Over somewhere. With or without the kids. Unfortunately, we just can't afford it. Hell! We're still trying to save up for a Honeymoon four and a half years after getting married. (Japan 2010, fingers crossed!)
Of course if we had the choice? We'd be spending summers on African Safaris and living the rest of our lives out of suitcases, traveling the Europe via Orient Express and Greece via ferry. All four of us. And our enterouge of Louis Vuitton luggage, obviously*.
For the time being we'll have to settle for overnight stays in Newport Beach care of my lovely conference hosts who were kind enough to put our little foursome up for the night:
It was the first time we had vacationed as a family anywhere other than my parents' house and the third time Archer had ever slept in a hotel room. Needless to way we were WAY pumped. We were on a Familymoon and we were going to GO ALL OUT! So we did. We spent a full day and a half romping around as if we were on THE most exotic vacation in the history of vacations.
We dined and drank and laughed and loved and chased pigeons and ate heaps of fish tacos and gigantic sundaes overflowing with hot fudge.
We spent less than two-hundred dollars and yet? We came home feeling spoiled rotten. On the sundaes we never eat and the dinners we seldom go out to and the king-sized bed we've never slept in as a family until last night.
It may not have been the romantic getaway Hal and I have been talking about but it was EXACTLY what we needed as a family.
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*What? It could soooo happen.
