@Catija I ate the last of the snickerdoodles yesterday. They were good!

@rumtscho YAY! :)

@Catija hi, a nice Friday to you!

I guess this is morning in your timezone?

Hi! Same! Morning and rainy, yes.

ugh, rainy.

Have a sleepy kitty!

OMG HOW CUTE!

And it looks like a pretty view, too.

yes, one of the main reasons I got this flat - the view.

I"m really looking forward to the pandemic being over - we just got passports for the boys and I'd love to be able to start travelling with them. I guess in some sense, the timing wasn't bad... I think travelling international with two small kids would be awful but they're starting to get closer to being reasonable people now. :P

Hehe, it would have been a headache with two small ones on a plane!

where would you go first?

My mom's back in England so we'll likely go visit there in March.

My 40th birthday! :)

ohhhh!

@Catija so much better than a piece of jewelry! Memories and experiences are priceless!

I don't think we'll be over long enough to visit mainland Europe, though. Might try to go up to Scotland for a weekend.

How long are you staying, in total?

We haven't booked it so I'm not sure. We have plenty of vacation so we may push more towards two weeks.

Considering jet lag, certainly a good idea.

Scotland is nice

I'm not sure when we're opening. My view of our government's handling isn't safe for SE :D

@Catija I must admit I don't find much sense in cramming too many places in a single vacation. Staying with your mom and a weekend in Scotland sounds plenty.

@Catija you should ping our very own expert for the beauty of Scotland and ask for advice. I once got an E.’s ten best spots list and it was marvelous!

@rumtscho My dad never thought so :D

@JourneymanGeek And what do you prefer yourself?

@Stephie :D Sounds nice!

@rumtscho tbh One place, a map and no plans.

Sounds good.

I guess I lean more towards "some plans, but not a full schedule".

For example, I went to Southern Spain for my 35th with no plans, and there I realized that there is a two-week wait to visit the Alhambra. That was a bit of a bummer.

I tend to feel a trip is "wasted" if you're not packing in as much as you can but that's more of a scarcity mindset - when you don't get to travel much, you can feel like you need to do it all because you might not get another chance someday. That said, I think there's room for flexibility if you're overtired or find a fun alternative.

But then you come back from the vacation more frazzled than when you left. :P

@Catija strangely, that describes some of my worst and some of my best vacations!

In general, I'm not a fan of the cruise industry but there's just something really nice about getting on a giant boat with everything you need for a week and having it shuttle you from one place to the next.

oh yes, organization is work.

Just having to organize one day trip per spot you get off is nice.

We did one for our honeymoon and we just had to find dive companies to take us on scuba dives - so that part was relatively easy, and the companies did the work of figuring out where we were going to dive.

As for the scarcity: there is a kernel of truth in it. You might indeed never get to see the place you are skipping. But what matters more to me is: did I really get to experience the place I am visiting? If all I do is step out of a bus, take a look around, and get back on the bus, I might as well have looked at a postcard.

oh, diving sounds fun! did you go to the Carribean?

I always wonder whether you're ever able to really experience a place you're visiting since most travellers are stuck in the "tourist" spaces rather than the real ones. :P

@Catija Just because the experience is not the same as a person living there, I wouldn't call it less real.

of course, the people there will have an entirely different view of their city. For example, today there was a sensationalist headline in an otherwise level-headed newspaper, "avoid this city!". It was about Geneva, and how it only has 50% of the kindergarten slots needed by its citizens. As a tourist, I think Geneva is a lovely place!

We went to Roatan, Cozumel and ... Belize, I think..

I don't even know these names, except Belize. They sound exotic, like an Emilio Salgari book :)

@rumtscho That's true. And it's not as if it isn't interesting. In Austin, a lot of people come to watch the bats that live under one of the bridges but lots of the locals haven't ever done it.

Roatan is in Honduras and Cozumel is in Mexico. Belize City, was where we stopped in Belize.

@Catija Indeed, I live in a touristy city, and I have only visited the castle 3-4 times in all my years here. After the first time, it was always when showing it to out-of-city guests.

Yeah, we take people to see the bats frequently enough that we don't do it ourselves.

The bats here don't live under a bridge, I see them when I return home in the dusk and see a tiny flying object whose trajectory looks dangerously close :)

Yes, our bat colony is indeed special. :)