Hey, remember holidays?

I was online last night planning out a ski trip we’re taking in a few weeks, and I suddenly realised that it has been SUCH a long time since we’ve been away on a holiday. Usually we’re lucky enough to go away several times a year at least – somewhere warm for some winter sunshine, somewhere beachy in New Zealand over summer, someplace close and interesting for a long weekend or two – and, of course, for the last few years we’ve had a holiday home to escape to frequently for short, but special, weekends away.

And now…well, now there’s a pandemic. And nobody is going anywhere that involves international travel. And our holiday home became a permanent home. And suddenly it’s been over six months since our last holiday, over a year since we travelled internationally, and even over a year since we last got on an airplane. It is extremely weird.

I do totally understand how very lucky we were to have such frequent holidays – please know that I realise my privilege in this! And also that many people don’t go away for well over a year even when there is not a pandemic. I’m also not complaining. The uncertainty blows me away for sure – the fact that none of us know how long this might go on for – but seriously, does anyone really want to venture too far from home right now? I think that technically, we could travel internationally right now – if we went to a country that still has open borders, and if we could get a flight somehow given that most flights are not operating currently, and if we could get travel insurance, and if we were prepared to pay for the costs of our managed isolation upon returning to New Zealand – but I don’t want to at all. In fact, I honestly haven’t really even thought about it until last night. And that is one of the weirdest things of all! I have preternaturally itchy feet and Hayden and I used to travel regularly for work – not frequently, but definitely a lot more than we do now. Amelie had taken ten flights before her first birthday. We went to Queenstown last year, and Australia the year before that, for no reason other than I saw cheap tickets and jumped on them. And it honestly just blows my mind how much life has changed.

Do you miss travelling? And does lack of international travel mean that you’re going on fewer holidays, or just heading away to closer places instead? I think this is the weirdest part of the pandemic for me – not the actual lack of travelling, but the fact that I hadn’t even really noticed the lack of travelling until now, six months after the pandemic became a major issue for New Zealand. What’s been the weirdest part for you (so far)?