The best piece of travel advice. Period.

On some level, I feel like I should apologize for this post. Because really, I’m in the sort of weird, ridiculously sappy euphoria that comes from being stupid in love. And no one wants to read that. At no time has a conflict between two people over who has cuter freckles ever been interesting to a third party, unless that third party had accidentally swallowed rat poison, and found that they had simultaneously run out of ipecac.

If that is your situation, please read on.

Because for the past five days, I’ve been on vacation with my husband celebrating our first wedding anniversary. An actual vacation, and not those you-go-to-your-meeting-while-I-head-to-the-museum-alone trips that frequent our life (and don’t get me wrong, those are fun, but they don’t compare). And the 9-hour’s drive between Seattle, WA and Ashland, OR, was punctuated with exchanges like this …

–

Me: (gesturing to an oversized SUV) That vehicle is neither attractive nor necessary.

Rand: It’s the opposite of you, then.

Me: … you find me necessary?

Rand: Absolutely. If you didn’t exist, I’d invent you.

–

And more vomit-inducing nonsense like this …

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Me: How can you love me?

Rand: How could I not?

–

5 days of that. Can you even possible imagine? I have cavities from the sweetness. It was absolutely grotesque – I can’t recommend it enough. And from it emerged the best piece of travel advice I can give, besides NEVER LEAVING ANYTHING IN YOUR TRUNK, and packing extra underwear: Drop everything and run off with someone with whom you are desperately in love.

I don’t care when. I can’t how. Don’t worry about the running the dishwasher or taking out the trash, or the five hundred other things I’ve told you to do before a trip. Just go. Hop on the bus, gus, or do whatever else it takes – because they are at least 50 ways to leave (town with) your lover.

And as for my dearly irrational and wonderfully romantic friends – who’ve left powerful jobs in the attorney general’s office to run off to Germany for a few months, or picked up everything after deciding that a move to a foreign country in a perfectly reasonable step to take for love – I have this to say to you: I’m nauseated. Keep up the good work.