If you're going on your honeymoon, there's one thing you definitely need to do
And it's not sex
With a head full of love, celebration, and friends, we arrive at our destination. We're off, traveling, far away. Three whole weeks. It's a gift.
The one true honeymoon can begin. And we already know: there are no more beautiful places in the world than Hawaii. Going to places you've never been, where you don't know what the food tastes like and where you don't know anyone by name: traveling has something strange and something magical at the same time. Precisely because you don't know anyone, you are truly with each other. You only have each other, there, 11,767 kilometers from Amsterdam on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Oh, how sweet, how pink, how cute... Until, yes, my friend connects his mobile... And has wifi. Here we go.
There's a lot beeping, and before I even ask, I see photos of his cousin at our wedding, hear which World Cup football match (where the Netherlands isn't even participating this time, can you imagine) is on at what time in American times (at eight in the morning, football was watched in our hotel room, yes) and I know what's on the homepage of the Telegraaf app. There was a power outage, it rained again in the Netherlands, and a new coffee shop has opened in our street. Then it's quiet. He's completely absorbed in his phone. Just sending a few messages back in the friends app, yes, okay. Also giving his mother some updates. And asking his father a few questions and playing a Wordfeud word because otherwise, he'll lose the game.
Anyone who is ever planning to go on a honeymoon (or on another vacation, for that matter): ignore the wifi. Out of the Netherlands means out of the Netherlands. The world won't end if you don't read your emails for three weeks, nor if you don't know whether your friends got drunk again over the weekend. The best part of that love journey together is that you are truly together. Not half together and half with work, news sites, Scrabble games, and friends and family. Seeing the world, really seeing it, without constantly taking photos of every cactus you see drying out along the way; that is wealth. Wealth is not making the prettiest Stories and having the best photos for a pink wall – no way. Because then you're just busy with that miserable device and the home front. What do you care what your old colleague thinks of the palm tree you're sitting under eating? Better to have conversations about life, the future, your love. That's what you can really rely on when you're back behind a laptop for eight hours on a Monday.
My husband? A lost cause. He didn't want to know anything about being offline and without any problems, he downloaded all the football matches for his calendar on his phone, so he gets notifications when Russia plays against Switzerland. I certainly wasn't online for six days in a row, and after receiving 625 app notifications and the email inbox counter kept ticking, I knew for sure: being offline is the greatest luxury you can have.
And that I have about forty photos for a pink wall in the exotically beautiful Santa Barbara, I forgive myself for that for convenience. I'm still just a beginner, you know. But for the next vacation, we'll make sure not to book it during a World Cup. That's one thing that's already arranged.
The favorite honeymoon destinations of the Dutch are:
- The Antilles (Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire).
- Bali
- Hawaii
