Did I Just Cheat on Italy? Part one...

It wasn't really planned. It just sort of happened...or at least that's what I told myself.

After years of traveling for both business and pleasure, my husband and I finally racked up enough frequent flyer miles to book a trip outside the country; at the same time. That had never happened before, one or both of our flights were always on our dime . And it would seem like the obvious choice that we would jump on the horn to Delta Airlines and arrange what we had been faithfully doing for the last ten years; a trip to Italy. As a matter of fact, we traveled to Italy so often that when I responded to my mother's inquiry of "where are you going on vacation this year?" with Italy, she would roll her eyes and say "ugh, again?". But there are no limits to my love of Italy. There were regions still to be discovered and our favorite places, like Rome and Palermo magically offered up surprises and new experiences with every visit. So why did we plunk those miles down on a trip to Spain?

Strangely, it had nothing at all to do with Italy, which is kind of like saying "baby, it's not you, it's me". For years, our neice has been extolling the virtues of Spain, having studied there for two semesters and travelled the entire country. She knew that the wine and tapas culture of Spain was a perfect fit for us, but we had previously been in such a passionate affair with Italy, that we couldn't concieve of a plane ride that delivered us to anywhere but back to her loving arms. Honestly, I blame it on Japan (needle scratch). Yes, Japan.

In September of 2017, my husband took a two week business trip to Japan. Accompanying him on this trip was a hulking a six foot six, bald headed, goateed giant of a computer programmer named Dale, who had never left the country before. Always one to immerse in the local culture and do his travel homework, my husband took it as his duty to introduce Dale to the sights sounds and tastes of Japan. In many ways, this posed new challenges to be solved and broke him of the comfort and complacency that we felt when travelling to Italy. Shortly after that trip, he started to tiptoe into research about Spain.

It all began very innocently. A YouTube video here, a dinner at a local Spanish restaurant there. We even took another trip to Italy in Spring of '18, which provided the mileage boost that we needed to get the free tickets. Before we knew it, we were on the seven hour flight to Madrid.

Sitting here, one month post-trip, all I can think about is how and when we can go back. I am completely torn between two lovers and definitely feeling like a fool. To be continued...