Yes, when they're over and you arrive, exhausted, at your stuffy, too-familiar home. You have mere hours before your daily routine starts taking you down like quicksand.
Nearly any place is wonderful when you're on vacation. The people are nice and everything is different. Of course the people are nice: They don't get time to learn why people at home dislike you. Everything is different because you're looking through minty-fresh, touristy eyes. Even the strip malls are fascinating.
Scott Simon's essay on tourists is a good reminder that where you live is someone else's vacation spot. Hard to believe, but the precise location where you are becoming fossilized by your daily routine is in fact the very same latitude and longitude where other people are having the time of their lives.
Don't ever think you should move somewhere because it made for a good vacation.
I fell into that trap once.
As a tourist in Santa Fe, I took one look at the Scottish Rite Temple at dusk and believed New Mexico was my destiny. The pink stone and the soft curves of the building against the intense blue sky as the sun was setting were too much for my vacation-addled brain. Seven difficult years as an Albuquerque resident extended the point that Scott Simon made: Once you have to work, a fabulous vacation destination just becomes.... where you live and work.
Luckily, Albuquerque taught me a lesson. That's why I haven't moved to a small beach town south of Tarragona, Spain. While it's tempting – it was so beautiful; and all the people were so nice! – I remind myself that once I'd have to find a way to make a living (the only idea I have is to open a Jewish-style deli right off the beach), that small town would lose its vacation patina.
Albuquerque is also the reason why I haven't moved to a cabin in Sitka, Alaska. Sure, the salmon was delicious – and did I mention how nice all the people were? But I keep in mind that eating fresh salmon on vacation is one thing; gutting it every day to make a living is quite another.
The best cure for believing that one particular vacation destination is the place where you absolutely must live is to take more vacations.
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