There are few experiences as sublime as traveling with close friends. Sharing a new place with people you love to be with in your home space is exhilarating to plan and execute. We’ve had the great fortune to do this twice in the last few years, with the same four-couple group. This group is also a dinner club that gets together to prepare world cuisines every few months. The fact that we became travel partners is the essence of spontaneity.
My wife and I were hosting a club dinner one winter evening, and over a French meal of daube provencal and pheasant terrine, my wife and I announced that we had picked a French theme because we had just booked a trip to Paris the following May. The rest of the evening passed with great food, a fair amount of wine, and discussion about the glories of travel.
The next day my wife got a call from one of the club wives, who asked what we would think if she and her husband joined us in Paris! After a lightning-quick conference, my wife and I said “of course”. By the end of the day their airfare was booked, and after making the announcement to the rest of the club, the other two couples booked their trips with us by the end of the following day. It was after we reserved a hotel on the Left Bank that the group turned our attention to who would watch all our teens, the school events we were missing, and addressing a week away from work. We all still agree that if we had attended to those details before booking the trip, the group trip would never have happened.
The week in France was better than anyone hoped. We all traveled well together, keeping the schedule loose and having fun no matter how the day came together. Our days properly centered around food, with occasional sight-seeing mixed in. The culmination of the week occurred at Le Reminet, a gorgeous bistro where we chose to have a classic French dinner. Our group of eight was given the “cave” downstairs, complete with stone walls, candlelight, and two dedicated waiters. We lingered several hours over the meal, and the memory of us toddling precariously down cobblestone streets back to our hotel, laughing over our wonderful evening, is one of the sweetest.
Recently, we embarked on a another trip, this time to Key West on an October week. Things didn’t go quite as well this time, starting with our connecting flight from Miami to Key West leaving early without us. We took a bus to the Keys (after a stop at a liquor store) and arrived at the hotel at 3am. Subsequently, we spent the entire trip having locals tell us they couldn’t remember it raining there so many consecutive days! We made the best of it though – the beer was just as cold, and the crustaceans just as sweet.
Incompetent airlines and stubborn tropical squalls won’t keep us from hitting the road together again, once the collective coffers get a little more full. In fact, we a have a cooking club dinner coming up soon. They can get very expensive.
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