The Luggage Blog

These days, boarding a plane can be far from a moving experience. However, for me, there is nothing like those few moments just before the plane lands. Seeing a new place for the first time fills me with anticipation. Therefore, when it came time to choose a honeymoon destination this past spring, I was surprised when the choice became a difficult one. Essentially, we could go anywhere in the world, right?

Wrong! After several trips overseas, including England, France, Belgium & Italy, I fell in love with visiting unfamiliar lands, rich in history and culture. My husband wanted to avoid the typical tropical destinations of any kind and suggested visiting Australia. To make a long story short, due to several reasons; including the weak U.S dollar, the husband’s contempt for beaches and my reluctance to fly for more than 10 hours; we settled (finally) on an all-American honeymoon.

America the beautiful here we come…I mean…are! We booked six nights at The Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix. As newlyweds, we shared an amazing vacation experience, just as we had on our other long weekend trips to various U.S cities. While enjoying our stay out west, I realized that vacationing in America doesn’t get due credit….or at least from me it didn’t. Here I was thinking that any trip that didn’t involve a passport and a Frommer’s guide to [insert foreign language here] wasn’t a proper one. I’d become so captivated by Europe, that I was ignoring this vast country that I call my own. Sure I enjoyed each overseas voyage, but at some point I always encounter that moment: “I wish I were back home.” That moment where you’re flipping through your Frommer’s book and you spot a French waiter laughing at you, or when you’ve spent several minutes in a London pub trying to figure out just how many ‘quid’ you have in your hand. F. Scott Fitzgerald put it better when he wrote: “they were both overwhelmed by the sudden flatness that comes over American travelers in quiet foreign places…No voices called them from without, no fragments of their own thoughts came suddenly from the minds of others.”

Post realization, I recognize that exploring America allows me to immerse myself in a new culture without feeling too out of place or too far from home. So, the next time you’re planning a vacation consider staying on U.S soil, because somehow as an American, in America, you can be a traveler- not just a tourist….even if you do take a picture with the naked cowboy in Times Square.