Describe your most memorable vacation.
With all the money that I earn and barring the fact that I’m extremely ambitious, I have two goals :
- Buy a big beautiful house and make it my home filled with love and laughter from the happiest souls residing in it
- Travel the world with my husband (and return to our loving home)
“Vacation mode on” is something I look forward to posting on my Instagram, all year round and I’ve been privileged to have spent some of the most memorable travel vacays with my bitter half (I’m the better one). But if I’ve to choose one, it has to be our trip to France.
December 2018 – winter in France. This was special in so many ways. It was our honeymoon, the first foreign travel for both of us and the best – our first experience of planning together a longish vacay in foreign land. And there were several other firsts awaiting us.
From getting our passports stamped to boarding the international flight to Paris and then getting lost at the Charles De Gaulle airport soon after touch down. We went round and round, and up and down the airport, unable to figure out where to collect our luggage from. Pure frenzy! Once done with that, we boarded a train which would take us out of the airport and to a station nearest to our hotel. A beautiful, well dressed woman stood at the train compartment gate smiling and greeting the passengers. Well, it felt nice. Till when the train took off, and the same woman started going around with a placard in hand requesting passengers for money! We were, well, aghast maybe! “She’s a beggar!!????” was followed by an exchange of shocked whispers. She had the prettiest smile, her jacket seemed warmer compared to ours and good shoes too. We don’t know, we’ll never know.
Our first evening in Paris, we walked around the lanes of the city, exploring the Christmas market, dodging the hawkers and ignoring their incessant callouts for making purchases. Till finally, we reached a point from where we got the perfect view of the gorgeously lit up Eiffel Tower, from the other side of the Seine river. The perfect view of the “La dame de fer” called for the perfect kiss of the newly married couple. Cliche much!
Every day we would wake up in the wee hours and get ready for another day of adventure. To have breakfast or not used to be the most difficult question. An omlette costed 14 to 16 euros and it seemed too much shelling out ~1200 INR for an omlette. So we’d settle in for croissants and melt-in-the-mouth crepes. Then, walking hand in hand for miles together to figure out the cheapest mode of transport (coz broke but wanna travel the world). And after a day full of exploring the tiniest nooks and corners of neat French towns, every night we snuggled in bed with beers and cheers and chatter about the day till we passed out.
It was all so beautiful and surreal, like living a dream. But the most memorable happened on our first day in Nice, city on the French Riviera. We spent the afternoon walking along the Promenade des Anglais, soaking in the soft sun and uniterrupted views of the azure Mediterranean sea. When it seemed like we’d burnt enough calories (from all the cheese and chocolate we’d been consuming) we settled down for a drink in a tiny restaurant along the beach. The sun was setting and the last few rays made the Mediterranean glitter. The temperature kept dropping but the delicious French wine and our brewing love kept us warm. That moment, those visuals, the heady wine, the comfortable silence, the light in our eyes, the warmth in our hearts, the promise of togetherness, that’s my most memorable vacation.
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