The weekend before we left for Mexico, we attended a dinner party at which one of the hosts asked everyone, “If you could travel to any place in the world, where would you go?”

London and Hawaii were popular choices. I chose Paris, because I still want to spend a month there, writing. I will manage this before the year is out. It’s a promise to myself.

More recently, talking with my mother, I said I wanted to live on the beach, and teased that Fuzzy should get promoted a couple more times, so that we could afford such a thing. “Any more promotions,” he said, “will require us to live in Florida.”

“Oh,” I replied. “I don’t want to live on a beach there.”

My mother suggested we save our pennies and buy a second home somewhere coastal, which has me fantasizing: if I were to buy a vacation home, where would it be?

I wouldn’t mind living in Portland, OR, but it’s not on the beach, and rivers don’t do it for me. I love Half Moon Bay, CA, but it’s insanely expensive. Bolinas and Benicia, also in California, are favorite places, though Bolinas is a bit weird. And often smells funny. And I love love love the region around Tomales Bay - Pt. Reyes Station and Inverness - so much do I love that region, actually, that the town where my book opens is based on it.

But California is expensive, and I don’t really have ties there any more. So the search continues, with other dream locations including Ocean Grove, NJ, where we lived for a while when I was a child.

The thing is, I prefer cold, stormy beaches to just lying in the sand baking on hot ones, so warmth isn’t entirely an issue, though a temperate climate would be nice.

You may ask, “why not Mexico?”

My parents live there. I can visit any time. It’s not a place I really want to live.
But I really should visit more.