Jamaica, Mon.

Usually, when I cash in on my precious vacation days, I take serious trips.  Australia. Spain.  Ireland. Morocco.  While I have loved and appreciated every single trip I have ever taken, there IS a difference between a trip and a vacation.  A trip, while wonderful, is usually of the sight-seeing variety.  There are museums to visit, landmarks to photograph, tours to take, statues and buildings and churches to notice.  To me, one of the signs of a great trip is to return tired, exhausted from all of the daily adventures and seeing of the sights.

And then there are vacations of another variety.

Different from trips in that you probably don't change hotel rooms nor do you have a long list of "must-sees" that you have read about in guidebooks prior to your trip.  In fact, you probably didn't even buy a guidebook before this type of vacation.  There's no real itinerary beyond arrive, drop bags, relax.

For quite some time now I've been saying that I really wanted to take a vacation where my biggest and only concern was what color the little umbrella would be in the next frozen drink that I ordered.

And so I flew to Jamaica last week.

A group of friends and I rented the most perfect house, right along the water.  With our own private pool.  And a house staff to cook for us.  And clean for us.  It was unreal. 

For seven days I didn't lift a finger beyond the times I needed to flip the pages of the magazines or book I was reading.  The weather was perfect, the entire experience one of the most relaxing vacations I have ever taken. 

Amazing, how quickly my friends and I fell into an easy daily rhythm of life on an island. 

There were some mornings when we headed straight to the beach after breakfast, others where we opted to start the morning with a dip in the pool.  It didn't exactly matter which activity we started with because the afternoon was always free for whichever one we hadn't done that morning.

We did yoga one evening. 

We watched a lot of sunsets.

 We drank a good amount of pina coladas and Red Stripe.  We took afternoon naps in the shade.

 What a luxury a week of free time can be!  I felt particularly indulgent and almost giddy over the fact that I had days and days set aside to just read.  I devoured all of my neglected fashion magazines that had been piling up for months.  I read an entire book, in a handful of days, interrupted from my reading not by real life but instead only by pleasant activities like swimming or drinking or eating or playing card games or indulging in the above mentioned naps.

We could hear the ocean from our bedrooms and each night as I drifted off to sleep, I thanked my lucky stars that I said YES to this proposed vacation way back in December, long before any of us Bostonians knew the winter and record-breaking snow that lay in store for us throughout January, February, and early March.

Of course, there was never any doubt in my mind that this trip would be fun.  These pals of mine and I would find fun no matter where we wound up. Hell, we could make a cardboard box fun.

Jamaica is more fun than a cardboard box.

Last night, as I was unpacking my suitcase and putting away all of the warm weather clothes - flip flops! maxi dresses! bathing suits! - I'd been able to wear just hours earlier, I was feeling rather glum.  There's nothing worse than the end of a great vacation and the inevitable return to reality.  As I was tucking my suitcase away in the closet, I noticed a little bit of sand in the bottom of my bag, surely from those sandals I'd tossed in on the morning we left Jamaica. 
  

 

 I believe there is a rule about this sort of thing.  If you bring sand back from an island you are required, by vacation law, to someday make your way back to that very same island and return it.  The sooner the better, naturally.