Lunch Time Dreaming

My ham and Swiss Panini is good, but the cheese is no longer as melt-y as it was before I sat on this park bench. It’s lunch time. It’s not chilly enough to need to be bundled up, but it still is not exactly what you would call warm. It’s early March. It doesn’t matter. I’m lost to all; deeply immersed in a glossy turquoise edition of Caribbean Travel and Life magazine. The cover pulled me to the feature story on page 36. “Beach, beach and more beach” it warns. I already know its going to be hard to go back into the office. <Sigh.>

I’m more than dreaming, and it’s beyond just sand on the brain. I need to figure out where to go for vacation just two months from now. (I realize; everyone should have such “problems”….). The cover photo features Turks & Caicos… a peaceful looking stretch of sand. Just my thing, though I have never been to T&Cs. In the article Barbuda’s beach looks beautiful too, but I don’t know anything about that destination either. Then I turn the page, and dare I say I am “home”. I’m not literally home (I wish!), but Grand Cayman is a place I have been to four times. Each and every visit has been wonderful. And each and every visit finds me there on that powdery stretch of 7MB sand. That’s where my challenge lies for this next trip; go someplace I know, or explore somewhere new. But where?

Destination requirements are simple; I’m a beach bum. Truly. I will go in the water, but prefer to touch the bottom most of the time. It’s less about swimming and more for cooling off. And yet I am hypnotized by the water. That color just stirs my emotions… the blue-green-sapphire-turquoise liquid… and crystal clear. The lulling, lapping of the current. The foaming hiss as the water creeps back from the shore. The shore where I can sit for the entire day (for sure if there is wait staff delivering refreshments). I could watch the color and light change from the early morning until the sky is painted with the sunset. And palm trees. There have to be palm trees.