anywhere, together

Next month, I’ll go on the second trip with my mom this year, this time to Ashford Castle in Ireland to report a story for Condé Nast Traveler. I still can’t believe that these are things that are happening to me! Truly pinch-me moments!!! It was always the dream of my life to write and to travel, and to do them together is beyond anything I could have imagined for myself.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, is better than sharing these moments with people I love.

I wrote an essay about the joy of traveling with the people you love for the first edition of Brandon Berkson’s Hotels Above Par newspaper, where it was wonderfully edited by Dan Howarth. I’m sharing it below.

I grew up as a Hampton Inn kid, not a Hamptons one.

We were a road trip family—something I loathed because it felt like all my classmates were going to exotic places like the Turks & Caicos, or at least Florida, while our family was driving across the country to Idaho every summer.

When my classmates came home with sunburns and Mickey Mouse ears, I had pictures of the Nebraska Corn Palace and memories of being jammed onto a rollaway bed next to my parents and brothers.

But that said, I’ll never forget the first time we stayed in a DoubleTree on one of those road trips. The Hampton Inn was completely booked up. Upon arrival, we each got two warm chocolate chip cookies. I jumped up and down with delight and hid my cookies in my sweatshirt to treasure and eat later, smearing chocolate all inside my sleeve. I couldn’t believe it. How could a hotel get better than that?

But it did.

As I grew up, I took every opportunity to travel that came my way. I joined the Spanish club to go on the language exchange trip in high school. In college, studying abroad in Spain and India, doing a yoga retreat in Costa Rica, meditating for ten days in Thailand, and even working at an orphanage in Romania with my grandparents because they said we’d stop through Budapest on the way home. I would have done anything to travel—I didn’t care who I was going with, or if I was going alone. I just wanted to go.

Those trips were about seeing as much of the world as I could, even if that meant booking a flight and staying in a €13 hostel in the Red Light District in Amsterdam by myself for the weekend. (Not an experience I would particularly recommend.) I spent my semester abroad in Spain on weekly Ryanair flights, going anywhere that my budget could stretch to get me to. I wanted to see it all.

With time, and more discretionary income, my travel accommodations improved, but the frequency declined. I saved my bonuses (and vacation days) from my first job working in finance to travel. When it was time to take my first week-long vacation, I went to Croatia. I loved it, but I wanted more. Eventually, I’d leave that job in finance to join a remote startup and move to Spain. It was a dream realized. I could finally travel as much as I wanted.

Over the fourish years that I lived in Europe, I traveled like crazy. Even more so when I met my now-husband, Gustavo, who had the same itch. We stayed in Airbnbs and did homeswaps, flying budget airlines and getting crafty with local grocery stores to be able to do as many of these trips as we could.

It wasn’t until I was twenty-eight and we moved to Scotland that I went to my first five-star hotel. Gleneagles in Perthshire. Gustavo and I splurged for one night to celebrate our move to Scotland and his new job and our anniversary—and even though we were only at the hotel for less than 36 hours, the staff treated us like we were royal. The pillow menu! The personalized note congratulating us on our anniversary! The constantly restocked shortbread! It was divine. I remember marveling at each of these tiny miracles with Gustavo, so impressed with this world of opulence I had never seen.

Since then, through my work as a travel writer, I’ve stayed at many world-class hotels. And while I will never forget my humble roots, it’s easy to take these things for granted. Pillow menu? I’ve seen it before. If the hotel mini bar isn’t complimentary, I’m aghast. I’ve seen amenities from helipads to bring-your-own-horse offerings. Every luxury hotel is constantly raising the bar and rewriting what is possible.

For most of these trips, I go by myself or in a small group of travel writers. It is always incredibly fun and I thank God for the opportunity to experience these places. But over the course of these years, I’ve come to realize something I never thought would be true.

It doesn’t really matter how nice the hotel is. More than anything, it’s about who you’re there with.

In March, I took a short work trip to Scotland by myself, before heading to Switzerland with my mom, the first time we took a trip just us.

The hotel I stayed at in Edinburgh was, in every single way, five-star luxury. A new delight awaited each time I entered the room. Mull cheddar shortbread and spiced apricots. Dyson hair dryers. Twenty-four-seven concierge.

One night it was a martini glass filled with caviar and two non-alcoholic cocktails. The second I saw it, I sent a picture to Gustavo because I knew how much he would have enjoyed it. Not wanting to be wasteful, I ate the caviar by myself. Then I crawled into bed and realized that they had embroidered my initials into the pillowcase. I took a photo and immediately sent it to my family group chat.

And as I lay there in my million-thread-count sheets, in the world of luxury I had longed for when I was a child, I thought about the rollaway bed. What I wouldn’t have given to have Gustavo, my brothers, and my parents jammed in that gorgeous hotel room with me, able to experience the same joys.

The next day I flew to Switzerland and was joined by my mom. I was there reviewing hotels and she got to tag along as my plus one, so I got to witness her first (and second, and third) five-star hotel experience. Seeing these places through her eyes, I experienced everything new again. The beds were more luxurious, the towels softer. The warm cookies were the most delicious I’ve ever had—all because I could share them with my mom, a person I love so much.

And as exotic and fabulous as all the accommodations were, it’s not the fancy bells and whistles that I remember when looking back on that trip. It’s sitting in our pajamas drinking hot water with lemon and taking a long walk around Lake Geneva, a place neither of us had been.

It’s the hours-long train rides when we chatted about anything and everything. Sitting with nothing to do but talk reminded me so much of our road trips to Idaho as a kid. And I saw then how my parents were right all along in the way they taught us to travel growing up.

True luxury isn’t really about how expensive a place is or how fancy it feels. The greatest amenity is spending your time exactly how you want.

Now, after so many years trying anything and everything I could to see the world around me, there’s nothing I want more than to have the people who make my world, around me.

And for that, I’ll go anywhere. As long as we’re together.