23 February 2004

A Proper Vacation

There IS sunshine today and snow on the ground this morning…a rare occurrence on both counts in this part of the world in winter.  Thank heaven I spent 3 hours at Thomas Cook’s travel agency yesterday or I would be depressed.

When I returned from Florida two weeks into January.  I could see that Jay needed sunshine in the worst way.  He had all of the symptoms that come from spending the winter too far north, and having an office under the dark stairway.  The dead giveaway were the dark circles under his eyes, and the pale look on his face that reminded me of a mole that hasn’t seen the light of day his whole life.

Immediately I started lobbying for a “proper” vacation to a sunny place.  He didn’t look convinced but agreed that Egypt would be interesting.  After about five hours of planning for this trip of a lifetime I could see from Jay’s hesitation that there was no way we were going to see the pyramids.  So I switched tactics and spent about three more hours putting together a trip on the train through Paris and the overnight train to Rome.  Trains in Europe are marvelous but putting together a trip using them instead of a car or plane is really frustrating because travel agents don’t use trains.  That means you have to find the individual routes on your own, and look up maps, timetables and tons of other information just to plan the travel part.  Then there is the question of where to stay. 

Again Jay’s hesitation began.  I was “gutted” and beginning to feel the winter blues myself.

At this point I took all of the information I had collected and handed it to Jay saying, “You need sunlight but I just can’t keep spending all of this time on planning trips so you can pooh-pooh my ideas.  Thomas Cook is open today (Sunday) so why don’t you go down there and see what you can find?”  He immediately put on his coat and left the house.

After about an hour I began to think that possibly he had just left the house for a walk, and not to research a proper vacation.  When the door banged I looked up to see Jay had found his time at the travel agent to be as frustrating as visiting the French embassy for a work permit.

He threw down a beautiful booklet on Tunisia but announced it didn’t look like a good spot to visit.  Then he disappeared under the stairs to look up vacation ideas on the Internet.  As I was getting ready for bed Jay announced he had an idea.  We should take the train to New Castle, board an overnight ferry and cross the North Sea to Sweden.  We could stay overnight, board the ferry (24 hours each way), and then take the train back to Ipswich from New Castle.

I heard my voice say, “Ok”.  I swear it had to be someone else taking over my body because the next morning all I could think of was how much we were going to puke during that 24 hours on the boat.  AND we would spend 5 days in almost total darkness, traveling to places where there was nothing to see.  This taught me to never let a person with the winter blues be in charge of my idea of a vacation.

Ok, so maybe I had been wrong to hand over such an important job.  I begged forgiveness, but I put my foot down by sending an email all the way from my office upstairs to Jay’s computer under the steps explaining that he really did need sunshine.  By this time I had read the Tunisia booklet and discovered that besides the fact that we would stay in a resort at the beach (how tough can that be?) we could walk to lots of interesting places, visit the Grand Mosque, and attend a folklore event with belly dancers and eat native food.  I also threw in at the end of the post that Cat and I were totally willing to go without him but that we would be devastated if he stayed home.

After Jay came back from the stables that morning I listened (from the sanctuary of my upstairs office) for him to go under the stairs.  I hoped he would read my post with an open mind.  After all, he was suffering from the winter blues, and not inclined to want to come out from his mole hole.

At dinner that night we each discussed the Rome trip, the boat to Sweden and Tunisia.  Jay said of the three options he preferred Tunisia.  Cat immediately called for a vote before he could change his mind. 

The American Express is charged for seven nights and airfare to Tunisia.  The TIMES RECORDER has agreed to let me write a daily report about our adventures.  The bags are practically packed.  I still need someone to feed the cats.  Sunshine here we come…parler French?  Bon Voyage.