Travel Fantasy: Where Do You Want to Go?

I am going to Costa Rica in September. My first post-COVID trip. Super excited :)

I can’t wait to travel again. Hopefully somewhere on a beach.

My dream travel post pandemic would be traveling from Scandinavia where I’m from to California with my family. We would rent at house near the beaches of Malibu for a month taking small trips to SF, Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach, hiking in the canyons near L.A, looking at the views from Griffith Conservatory, strolling on Santa Monica Pier.. I could go on forever.
My actual traveling plans this summer I we can travel, will be taking our car going to the South of France which we usually do in the summer. Can’t wait. But am afraid it won’t happen thus year either..

I really want to go back to a particular hotel in Miami Beach. We (my husband, children and i) spend the day going to the beach and swimming pool and that’s it. That’s my dream. It was very cold in London and we’ve been under lockdown since December (I think – it’s been so long). Sunshine and swimming would be the perfect antidote.

We live in Larchmont and spend a lot of time in Mamaroneck! If you need another park to explore Manor Park in Larchmont is also great! Beautiful water views and amazing houses to daydream about.

The book, the Happiness Project says just that. She talked about her daughter planning her own birthday and the time she spends pouring over cake options at baskin robins. Part of the joy is the fantasizing!

I want to go home. I live in overseas with my husband. We welcomed our baby boy in July. I am desperate to go home but thinking too much about it is just sad and like you said… feels like tempting fate. So we will stay here and wait. We will FaceTime and text and share way too many photos and every once and while allow ourselves to daydream about the day he will meet his family.

We live in the Bronx and drive-up to the Mamaroneck playground/beach regularly. It’s one of my five year olds favorite playgrounds lately. Check out the Rye Beach Boardwalk and Orchard Beach (playground, boardwalk, trails). There’s something so magical about the beach in winter for us. Solitary and magnificent.

For my birthday in January we usually go to Mexico (lolsob) which is an incredible reprieve after spending our family holidays in Michigan every year. This year we drove the 90 miles from our home in DC to Richmond, VA and stayed in a hotel, ordered takeout from local joints and walked around (masked!) to the big city cemetery. Watching whatever random movie was on the hotel HBO and looking out a window to a DIFFERENT scene was almost as restorative as a trip to Mexico.

Not a pretend but a real destination I never thought would happen but my friend will be getting married in Australia (where her fiance is from) so I am hoping to go there for that and extend my stay for a few weeks to really explore. The crazy thing is her wedding will be her first time going there since her initial plans to go there were disrupted due to the pandemic.

But pretend vacation, I really want to go clubbing in Berlin. I am not usually a clubbing person, more a stay home and go to bed early person, but this pandemic has had me dreaming of dancing the night away!

I’m so frustrated by my best friend who has been traveling during this pandemic. Her first trip was from Austin to Denver in July for a few days and she just informed me that she is going to NYC for a few days for fun. She explained the first trip as wanting to ‘get back to a normal feeling.’ I’m just so frustrated bc I want to say that she is being irresponsible and hurtful to the nation, and that if she is travelling then she shouldn’t complain about the quarantine since she is literally not quarantining….but don’t want to sound preachy/rude.

My husband and I managed a last minute trip to the UK, pre-pandemic. I would fly immediately back to England, to Bassenthwaite, in the Lake District, to the Ravenstone Manor Hotel. I want to drink British beer and eat fish and chips again in the lounge, in front of a roaring fire, while we laugh about the harrowing drive on skinny roads through the mountains, anticipate the next day’s trip to Scotland, and chat with the innkeeper about Liverpool’s win the night prior. Life seemed so simple and fulfilling that evening, and I can’t wait to live it again!

I’ve got it all planned out. First, I go to lush verdant Vermont to visit my parents and my brother and sister-in-law. I make trips to the cheese market with my parents, I go for a run in the woods on the mountain they live on, I bring bear spray because bears, and we all have a little too much wine by the fire pit in the evenings.
Then! I go to Rome to visit my boyfriend. We listen to the church bells while lazing in bed in the morning, walk the cobblestone streets, plan our lives around meals, I pause for an awkwardly long amount of time while I process what people say to me in Italian because studying in isolation has been a slog, and the rest of the time is spent kissing.
Buon viaggio a tutti!

My post Covid travel fantasy is to visit Naples and Ischia–inspired by Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend quartet. Then I would bullet train over to Venice and walk the streets of Donna Leone’s wonderful character, Commissario Brunetti. Following Venice, I’d wander around Florence until I was sated with art and culture and the musical Italian language. Not to mention the food…

Top 3 would be Italy, New Zealand or The Pacific Northwest. I could spend my life traveling if budget allowed!

I’d go to my parents’ place in South Korea!

On a side note about the happiness reset, I took a walk around my neighborhood one morning without my young kids. It was the first time in awhile….and I felt like I was on vacation. :D

I’m from Mamaroneck. Check out Manor Park next time in Larchmont – it’s an Olmstead park and a pretty magical spot!

I am not sharing my ideal spot – it’s a wonder and I don’t want it ruined by a horde of tourists – even very cool ones lol.

But it is green and lush with gentle cool breezes, glorious nature all around, and a tiny but sophisticated populous living simply – just my cup of tea.

My daughter is turning 12 this May. We were truly fortunate that we went to London for two glorious weeks during what feels like the last summer. She had just turned 10 and it was her first trip abroad. London has always been a special place for me—it was my first trip abroad when I was 10 and I lived just outside London during my junior year in college (close enough that I had a favorite room at the V&A where I would go to study and read when my housemates were driving me crazy). I loved being able to share that city with her. We had been planning to go to Rome this past Christmas (my mom’s favorite city and the one she has been dreaming of sharing with my daughter). Obviously, that trip didn’t happen. Now we are dreaming of a week away from our house to quarantine at a different house. And still holding out hope that we’ll be able to be in Rome for Christmas some day…

My family is looking to rent a house (safely) for a week this summer, perhaps near a beach or with a pool in the Northeast. If anyone has a great vacation rental website, I’d love some suggestions (or fun locations to go safely to enjoy the outdoors!)

I have also been thinking a lot about this, and it is truly hard for me to say that not being able to travel has been really, really hard. It is tough to admit because of the judgments you face. It goes without saying that I’m grateful for my family’s health and financial stability – I’m always grateful for those things, pandemic or not. As a European living in Canada, I sometimes find that North American’s undervalue travel (just look at our standard vacation times!). I have family in Europe that has managed to travel safely last year and I’m happy for them. Travel is not just about chugging beers on a beach and “doing it for the ‘gram”; it is a passion and a lifeline, it is loving and missing the people in Morocco, it is deeply connecting with your Sri Lankan colleagues after a trip, it is coming home and finding your new favourite Korean restaurant that makes the KFC (Korean Fried Chicken) you’ve been craving since your visit to Seoul, it is connecting with Namibian’s at a communal table and sharing stories that you will remember and pass on, it is putting your trust into a stranger in the middle of the Jordanian desert, it is coming home and speaking of your experiences and the wonders in the hopes of helping people become more accepting of others that are different from themselves.

I wish people would stop the judgment surrounding travel. It has turned so acrimonious. I believe there is room to be a concerned citizen, one that stays home and wears a mask to protect others and be someone who wants to fight for travel to return quickly and safely. I for one, am both.

Somewhere with a pool. I’m thinking a private villa in Tenerife…

Copenhagen and Auckland are both high on the list for me. I also just read “Wintering” and am desperate to go see the Northern Lights in Norway and try swimming in the frigid seas off Finland for a mental reset…and I hate the cold!! I travel to sub-Saharan Africa a lot for work and I miss it so much. I would love to be on Zanzibar, or drinking coffee in a Nairobi cafe, or sipping wine in South African wine country, or standing in the spray of Victoria Falls.

I would immediately run to visit my boyfriend in India. Anyone else struggling in a LDR separated by border closures with no end in sight?

I would love to visit my son in Berkeley California. He moved there in July and this has been the longest I have gone without seeing him. He has been telling us about places he will take us when we can visit. I can hardly wait.