Saturday, January 19, 2013

365 Inspirations—19: Planning a Trip

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I always get inspired when I plan a trip! Maybe I should have been a travel agent. I love traveling, but I also love planning trips. I'm usually the one who organizes the travel arrangements in the family. My husband and I have spent a great deal of our 17 or so years together traveling. We've been to India, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Tibet, Hong Kong, Nepal and Canada together and to many other countries on our own. In the USA, we've traveled to Hawaii, Arizona, New York, Maryland, Nevada,  Utah, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, Oregon, California and to many other states that I can't think of right now. He's seen much of the USA, but his first trip to America was in 2000.

We got married in Korea and had a traditional Korean wedding and went to a Japanese hot spring resort for our honeymoon and then we had another wedding ceremony in Washington State at a friends house on the water. We took a boat across Lake Washington to a friend's condo and left the next morning for a second honeymoon in Kauai, Hawaii. My aunt and uncle offered their place to us as a wedding gift. I felt lucky to have both eastern and western weddings and honeymoons. I loved planning those trips.

For my husband's 40th birthday in December, we went to Las Vegas and met two friends from California there. We also took a side trip to Zion National Park. Our friends planned most of the trip. It was actually nice to have someone else do the planning for once, even though I love it. I finally got to just go along for the ride!

In March, my husband is leading a yoga retreat in Hilo, Hawaii. We have done many yoga retreats together and even combined our talents at yoga and writing retreats at various locations in both the USA and abroad. We hope to do more of those! I'm probably going to add an extra page to this blog with information about our retreats. They are usually very well attended.

We just booked our flight for Kona today. The yoga retreat is for seven days in Hilo and I will also do a book reading/signing at a bookstore in Kona for my book Lessons from the Monk I Married that came out in April last year. From April to June, 2012 my husband and I went on both an east and west coast tour for my book and had a great time!

Do you like planning trips? Do you have plans to go anywhere soon?

6 comments:

  1. I would love to go to Hilo!! SO exciting. I look forward to seeing pics :)

    To answer your question, I do enjoy planning trips. The planning phase is so exciting! I am already in the planning stages of a trip to Cape San Blas Florida in June :)

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    1. Thanks Keith. Your trip to Florida sounds fun! Hope you share pics of that one too!

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  2. You have traveled a lot! That's wonderful that you and your husband have seen so much of the world. I've traveled within the U.S., but I've never been out of the country. There are places far away that I yearn to go. But sometimes just day trips in Virginia can satisfy my yearning to see new things. I do hope that in the future I can venture outside the U.S.

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    1. Yes, I agree with you. Sometimes just venturing around Washington State is enough to cure the travel bug ^_^! Lately, I've been attracted to WARM places like the Southwest and Hawaii. Must be the cold weather.

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  3. I love to plan trips! For me, that part is almost as exciting as the trip itself. The internet makes it easy and I spend lots of time Googling information about things to see, things to do, the history of the place, etc. so I go very well prepared. My next trip is a very short, 3-day one up to Paris to meet friends. With the help of the internet, I've booked a hotel...very quirky and cheap by Paris standards that overlooks the Seine and Notre Dame. And I've arranged a private, 4-hour photo lesson with a great street photographer! Wish I had the money to do this all the time!

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    1. Hi Evelyn-This sounds so AMAZING! Someday I'll have to get over and visit you in France! It's definitely on our list!!!!

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