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We’ve booked our flights home this December for Christmas and New Year’s. In addition to our trip back to San Francisco, we’ve also booked flights to Maui. I am more than excited. Ever since our honeymoon in Maui five years ago, it has been on the top of our list as the best vacation we’ve ever taken. I’d have to say, even with the travel around Europe we’ve done since then, Maui is still at the top of our list. While city breaks are exciting and makes one feel all cosmopolitan at whatnot, they can actually be kind of exhausting and sometimes a letdown. No one ever likes to say that about their European vacation, but it’s just one of the facts of travel: it isn’t always fun and exciting.

One thing you might find after moving to the UK (or just travelling Europe) is that a lot of places are talked up a great deal, leaving you feeling disappointed or let down after you’ve visited. I had this feeling after Paris, in fact. Paris is to Americans what Princess Leia is to nerds–we just can’t stop fantasizing about it, particularly since the fantasy has no basis in reality. We pay more attention to the sounds and images. It’s pretty, for sure, but…that’s not living.

I went to Paris three times because I insisted on falling in love with it. It never happened. Then Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Amsterdam…all amazing places to visit but I wouldn’t really care to go back to any of them.

At the moment, if I had to be choose one place I’d want to go back it would be the Caribbean or Hawaii. There is nothing that compares to being outside, floating in a tube in the ocean, doing nothing. And when the question, “What should we do today?” arises, the answer is usually something like, “Eat. Drink. Snorkel. Lay down.”

I cannot wait for Christmas.

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