Honeymoon Options Down to Four

Rhodah and I just scored two new countries in our search for acceptable honeymoon destinations: Spain and Andorra.

I can travel all over the place without a hassle, even though my state is running about 10,000 new coronavirus cases per day. Rhodah, as a Zambian, is about as welcome internationally as a new airborne variant of cholera. We found out the Swedish embassy in Lusaka would process visas for both Sweden and Iceland, so we made an appointment, and I told her to ask them to name every other country they represented and to apply for visas to all of them.

Today they told her they processed Spanish visas, and that made me think of Andorra.

In case you don’t know, Andorra is the Liechtenstein of the Pyrenees. Resting between Spain and France, it’s one of Europe’s smallest countries. Even smaller than Otisburg. The people there are wealthy, and it’s a tax haven. It’s sort of like a little Catalan-speaking Switzerland.

Andorra features beautiful mountains, tax-free shopping, and excellent food. It has the disadvantage of being somewhat like Spain, which makes it at least a little bit like Miami, but you can’t have everything. About 70% of the residents are foreigners, so maybe I won’t feel like I’m in Little Havana. The official language is Catalan, not Spanish. That gives me hope.

To get into Andorra, all you need is a way into France or Spain. Andorra doesn’t issue visas. They just assume you’re okay if you made it to the border.

Although Andorra is a wealthy country, hotel rates are not particularly high. Another plus.

We spent some time trying to create a viable itinerary including Iceland, Sweden, and Andorra, but I don’t think it’s realistic. We are going to be stuck in Spain for one or two nights, and that cuts down on our time to visit desirable countries. My feeling is that it’s time to cut Iceland loose. It’s a hard choice, because Sweden isn’t all that exciting, either, but Sweden looks like the lesser of two evils.

Rhodah has not traveled much, so she wants to hit a lot of destinations in a short time. I think there is a better way. My feeling is that it’s better to spend 10 days in one location than 5 days in 10.

My mother made the mistake of inviting my aunt along on a trip to Europe, and my aunt had never been out of the country. She made the second mistake of choosing an organized tour. Once they were in Europe, my aunt caused problems by insisting they take part in every single outing and activity the tour company lined up for them. My mother was too busy to enjoy herself. It’s easy to go abroad and end up spending way too much time on planes and in buses, trains, and cabs, rushing around.

Oriental tourists have a reputation for zipping around in buses, taking pictures of themselves in front of things. They used to, anyway. A friend of mine told me about seeing them pour out of buses and line up in front of landmarks. The Asian at one end would run forward, turn around, and take a photo. Then the next Asian would follow suit. When everyone had taken a picture, they got in the bus and left. This is not tourism. This is documentation. It’s like birdwatching, except you’re the bird.

The people he saw learned nothing at all about the places they visited. Saying you’ve been to a country after acting like that is like saying you’ve been to the Grand Canyon because you saw it from a plane window.

My buddy Mike had a worse situation than I do. His girlfriend wanted to go to Paris for a weekend. Fly in on Friday. Spend Saturday and Sunday rushing around to see the highlights. Home on Monday night. It would have been a total waste of time and money. They would have felt awful on Saturday as well as the tiny fragment of Friday they would have experienced, and they would still have been jet-lagged on their return flight.

She also wanted to fly in early in the day. Fine idea, except the difference between an early arrival and a later arrival was $1800, or maybe $150 per hour per person, on the most unpleasant, least-rewarding day of the trip. Kind of steep when only one party is paying.

Her work schedule made it impossible for her to get more free time. I’m glad Rhodah and I don’t have that problem.

In the end she was unable to go at all because of the possibility she would get stuck in France because of a positive coronavirus test. She has kids. Now they’re going to a beach in Florida, in the summer. Who does that? Not me, thank God. If I absolutely had to go to a beach in the summer, I’d go to Long Island or the Carolinas. Definitely not one of Florida’s low-grade beaches.

Anyway, we are now leaning toward two main destinations plus some unavoidable time in Barcelona. There is pretty much no Spanish-speaking destination I want to see. To me, they’re in the same pile as Muslim countries and drab Eastern European nations where donkeys sleep indoors and women, being less valuable, are kept in barns. Live in Miami for a few decades, and you may also develop an allergy to Spanish.

Maybe I should go to Colombia to get over it. The Colombians I’ve known were easygoing, polite, and very friendly. Hispanics from different countries are different.

I have had some concerns about how much time we should spend abroad and how much I should spend, but I’m starting to wonder if it matters.

Last night, I was watching Youtube before bed, and I came across a video about the meteor which supposedly killed the dinosaurs. They call it Chicxulub. I decided I wanted to see a video of an animated simulation of the crash, but no good ones turned up. Instead, I started seeing videos from the 1998 movies Deep Impact and Armageddon.

In 1998, true to form, Hollywood displayed its inability to produce original ideas by simultaneously releasing two movies about asteroids hitting the earth. In one movie, a team flew to the asteroid and blew it up. In the other, Earth shot missiles at the asteroid and failed to bring it down, so the world ended, putting an abrupt halt to Morgan Freeman’s white-privilege-poking presidency.

I had no interest in watching this kind of thing when I turned the TV on, but here I was, watching, on the same day I saw videos about supposed once-in-a-millennium floods in China and Europe. I had also been reading about people getting coronavirus twice, although there is reason to doubt at least some of those stories.

While I was praying later, I started talking to God about the tribulation. I started asking if the end was really upon us.

Sometimes when I pray, I’ll hear a phrase over and over, so I’ll write it down. I think they come from God. They have proven reliable so far. A year or two back, I heard, “Almost done.” I thought God was talking about the current age.

Last night, I kept hearing, “Armageddon.”

Was it God? Was it me? Was it a spirit? I don’t make any claims.

If the end of the world, preceded by the rapture, is imminent, then who cares how long my honeymoon is or what I spend? I’ve only flown first class once or twice in my life. Maybe it’s time to live it up.

Hmm. A first-class ticket to Barcelona would cost at least $8000. Are there really people who pay that? We would probably spend around $80,000 on tickets if we went that route. I hate to sound cheap, but…

The world seems stuck. It seems like nothing is going forward. Even the Olympics are blighted. They aren’t allowing people to attend, so when you check out events, you see quiet, empty stadiums where the only people are TV crews, coaches, and the strange, unhappy, often drug-distorted characters who devote their lives to the procurement of fleeting glory most of us don’t even notice.

They’re holding the 2020 Olympics, and it’s 2021. What will they do in 2022? It’s silly enough to have the games every two years. Things will look even worse when they hold them two years in a row.

I would be perfectly happy to leave the earth from Andorra, holding my wife. The prospect of a future full of new variants, decreased freedom, increased leftist oppression and violence, shortages, and chronic guerrilla warfare is not inviting.

By tomorrow, we should have enough information to create an itinerary. I am looking forward to trying some of that crazy Spanish ham.