It may be unfair, but when I’m on a beach vacation, I always end up comparing my current location to past vacations I’ve taken. The beach vacations that have defined the way I look at beach vacations are those I’ve taken in Latin America (in Mexico and Nicaragua) and, even more so, Southeast Asia. It was therefore that comparative lens that I had to look through when my husband, David, and I went to the island of Gozo, in Malta.
It may be that Gozo and its beaches were doomed from the get go.
My travel experiences in Southeast Asia in my twenties (on three trips when I was 20, 23, and 26, respectively) were extremely formative to my traveler identity today. And my trip to Nicaragua with David in 2014 was my first international trip with him, as well as in sobriety. So Latin America and Southeast Asia both carry a significant amount of emotional weight. This fact, in combination with the emotional pressure of traveling to Gozo on my honeymoon made the trip one with heavy expectations.
So when we got there, and things didn’t happen 100% according to expectation, or didn’t fall together exactly as I had dreamed they would, I was a bit disappointed. The beaches weren’t sandy like the beaches in the Gulf of Thailand, the food wasn’t as good as in Chiang Mai, or there were so many more people than in Little Corn Island, Nicaragua.
I immediately succumbed to making comparisons, and negative ones at that.
I believe that I am generally a positive person when it comes to travel experiences. Because travel is not my job, and I exclusively travel on vacation time, my state of mind is usually, “I’m on vacation, so what is there to be unhappy about?” But, coming from such incredible beach experiences in two different parts of the world so close to my heart, Gozo had a lot to live up to
Ultimately, David and I had a good time in Gozo, albeit not exactly what we expected from the beach portion of our honeymoon. I write this as we’re flying home to Seattle, and if it sounds like I’m trying to convince myself that I had a good time – it’s because I am. I am alternating between kicking myself for planning a trip to a place that, ultimately, we didn’t fall in love with, and telling myself that we’ll be thankful for the trip, the experiences we have from it, and the stories we’ll tell down the road. Even though I know the latter will no doubt hold true, it’s hard to not project all of the what-ifs that go along with travel – the biggest one of the moment being “What if we’d stayed longer in the Baltics rather than going to Malta at all?”
And I know I’ll get there, and that the comparisons I’m making in my head aren’t useful ones. Malta (and Gozo) is unlike any place I’ve ever been, and unlike from any place I’ll visit in the future. That’s the beauty in travel – experiencing the differences in places. And despite the food not being as good, or the beaches being more crowded, Gozo gave us memories and experiences with a culture different from any other we’ve experienced to date – and for that I am, ultimately, thankful.
