The last time I was outside of the state of Florida was the first week of January, 2020. That's the longest at any point in my entire life I'm sure that I haven't left the state that I'm in. (Even though the state of me is always changing... see what I did there?) In January we rented a VRBO on the Atlantic side, right on the beach, which was amazing, if a little isolated. The pandemic ramp has gone a lot slower than I expected, even following the science as best we can. Once Diana and I were fully vaccinated in April, we started to go out more locally, to local restaurants, and of course theme parks. With Simon still ineligible, we've tried to stick to outdoor stuff, so the parks have been workable for that. In July we even did a couple of nights in a Disney hotel, to enjoy the pools (and poolside bar), along with the Skyliner. But we still haven't really gone anywhere.
We're already booked for the inaugural sailing of the Disney Wish in June, so we'll leave the country at least for that one. Excited for the new ship, but also generally excited to restart what I call "lazy travel." The short cruises that we've done are gloriously brainless trips that require almost no effort on our part. We drive an hour to the port, people bring us food, we don't have to worry about feeding or entertaining Simon, and the views are pretty awesome in between the ocean rocking us to sleep. No Internet. That's our happy place.
But we had planned more serious adventure travel prior to things shutting down. Last year we were planning to cruise to Alaska again without Simon, bookended by some Vancouver time while he attended "cousin camp" in Seattle. It would have been our longest vacation without child to date and we would have been unconstrained. Like, we could've done the adult-only train trip into Yukon, or hung out with Canadians in downtown Vancouver. Still pretty bitter about not getting to do that.
This year we planned to go to Europe. I'm not sure what that specifically was going to be, but I hate that I still haven't been there. That may have involved a cruise as well, so we could do some country sampling in preparation for return visits to extended stays in one or more of those nations (Iceland, Norway, Russia, etc., the northern routes). It may have involved some circulating around the English countryside as well, so Diana could show me where she spent a semester of college.
I also would like to return to Hawaii, and since I'm on that side of the world, maybe see New Zealand.
I honestly don't know how much of this is realistic when factoring in Simon, but I'm definitely ready to go. His passport renewal is even in-process. At work, they normally make us use all of our time off, but again this year, with the pandemic lingering, I can carry over another week, which I am absolutely doing. Team Puzzoni needs to get out of Flori-duh.
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