The best part of going on a holiday is ....
preparing to go on a holiday. Have you ever noticed you receive much more pleasure from the preparations than from the actual holiday? An example: my friend and I made the promise to someday go to Japan together when we were in high school. Afterwards, that someday changed to after we both graduated from college. Graduate studies, slow writing theses et cetera, and still no plans for our Japan trip.
During one of our dinner get-togethers, she mentioned that her mother did not believe we would ever step foot on Japanese soil. I quickly corrected her: Yes, I still wanted to go with her to Japan, when would we start planning? A few weeks later we met up to properly discuss plans and low and behold: we booked our flight that day. Of course our plane would not leave of another 6 months, but the feeling of excitement was contagious. We set up a shared facebook-page, shared interesting hotel-listings, photo's of things we wanted to visit and for the next few months, every day a second - minute or more was spend on fantasizing about our trip. This feeling of excitement and anticipation is so addictive; my later holiday-planning also took place over several weeks or months.
As an extra bonus, we both fantasized so much, the first time in Japan, it all felt a bit unreal. Were we still dreaming? In the train from the Airport to Tokyo Station, it still felt unreal. We felt like fish in a fish bowl who could look at the world outside but not really be a part of it. Thank God that feeling left us pretty quickly and the whole trip was an awesome experience (can you tell I want to go back?)
