What are your top 10 travel destinations?
I have finally accepted the unsexy truth that every travel brochure, Instagram reel, and mid-century movie tried to hide: the place itself is mostly irrelevant. It can be a five-star suite overlooking the Mediterranean or a shitty hotel. What actually registers is whether the person you love is standing next to you when you go through the door.
I love traveling with my man. Even just staying in hotels in our own hometowns. Not the soft, pastel version of “love” that sells couples’ retreats. The real kind—where any new experience becomes sharper because he is there. New food, new streets, new chaos. I watch his face light up when something unexpected hits, and that look alone makes the entire trip worth it. The destination can be mediocre; his excitement is not. It is the only metric that still works.
But safety has to sit at the table now. I want to show him pieces of France—the France that still lives in my head from old Audrey Hepburn films, all cigarette smoke, black dresses, and effortless glamour. That version is mostly gone. It is all homeless immigrants now. What is left is more complicated, more tense, and less willing to play along with the fantasy. The French Riviera still holds the top spot in my ranking, mostly out of stubborn nostalgia and residual beauty, (plus lounging pool/ beach side so that we can look sexy in our swimsuits trumps all), but even there the calculus has changed. You do not get to pretend the old postcard still exists without checking the fine print.
There is the part I hate admitting out loud: my own body and the limits it brings. Accessibility is not a buzzword when you are the one calculating elevators, distances, fatigue, and whether a charming cobblestone street or sandy beach is about to become a personal obstacle course. I refuse to turn into the logistical problem of the trip. I do not want him carrying extra weight—literal or emotional—because I insisted on a destination that looks better in photographs than it functions in real life. Being a burden is not romantic. It is just exhausting for everyone involved.
So the plan keeps getting rewritten. Fewer grand gestures, more honest ones. Fewer places chosen for their reputation, more chosen for the simple fact that we can actually move through them without one of us pretending everything is fine. The map still matters a little. The company matters a lot more. And the quiet calculation of “can we both enjoy this without someone suffering in silence” matters most of all.
I will still go almost anywhere with him. I just will not pretend the world is the same postcard it used to be, or that my body is an afterthought. The excitement in his eyes is still worth the ticket [that he buys]. Everything else has to earn its place.
Maybe we could travel by luxury cruise ship? The idea of experiencing the French Riviera, island-hopping in the Maldives, exploring Italy, and even discovering parts of our own country—Alaska, Hawaii, South Carolina, and Florida, where no cruise is needed—excites me more than anything.
Kat’s Musings 