I’ve never been much for holiday travels. I rarely came home for the holidays when I lived in California, preferring to visit in January when things were calmer. That said, I’ve really come to love my annual post-Christmas trek to Virginia Beach over the past six visits.
I started this “new tradition” in 2012. The university is closed that week, so I always have the time off. That year, i decided that Virginia beach would be a good option. I’d been threatening to do a week there in the winter ever since a mildly drama-laden trip to the area with the ex a few years earlier. I figured I could get a nice room pretty inexpensively and just hang out reading, relaxing, and looking at the ocean. I like the beach in winter–and really hate it during the summer. My regular vacations tend to be anything but relaxing; I’m pretty actively exploring most of the time with very little downtime. Plus, Virginia Beach offered a nearby urban setting were I to get bored with all that relaxation.
It seemed perfect. And it was.
I still look forward to that my holiday beach trip every year. I strike a good balance of inertia and activity, and I’ve found a few restaurants I really love (notably this one). I usually polish off a book or two and often end up seeing a movie at the Naro. And I watch Perry Mason reruns on MeTV. It’s great and gets me in the right frame of mind to start the new year at work.
It’s strange how that whole area has almost come to seem like another home base to me. It joins Toronto and Los Angeles in that elite group, though its two big brothers are sexier and more exciting.
This year, I popped back via Richmond so I could do some research there. I always enjoy being in Richmond too, and have always thought it might be an interesting place to live should the opportunity ever arise. Ironically (since it was the capital of the Confederacy and all) Richmond feels to me like the specific point where the South stops being the South and starts being the urban Northeast, with rowhouses, walkable neighborhoods, and a different cultural feel. Of course, many might disagree with me on that and suggest that its a very vanilla sort of place. Sorry…
But yeah, I like it. And evidently, I like holiday travel a lot more when it’s not cross-country and doesn’t involve airplanes.
