Tasting Vacation

The last time Ben and I came to Vancouver Island was on our honeymoon, twelve years ago. When we were planning our trip, we decided to buy a new cd, just for our trip. We thought that if we often listened to it on our trip, it would remind us of our honeymoon every time we heard it afterwards.

It worked beautifully! To this day, if I hear one of the songs on that cd, I’m instantly transported back to Vancouver Island.

We’ve never tried buying a “vacation soundtrack” since. I don’t know why, because it was fun, and it worked well.

When it comes to trips and family vacations, I tend to think about the visual memories, but not the other senses quite so much.

Think of all the potential – I’ve been missing out! I take all these pictures, but I could also be thinking about the sounds and tastes and smells of our vacation, too. (B.C. feels wet, so we’ve got that sense taken care of!)

Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to end up with an official song and an official snack for this trip! It happened by accident, but I’m pretty happy about it.

If I had intentionally chosen these things myself, I would have picked differently, I’m sure, but they just kind of happened, so we’ll take what we can get!

Everywhere we go, we keep hearing Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never, Ever Getting Back Together”. It’s been stuck in my head for the last 3 days. The lyrics obviously have nothing to do with our trip, but it’s extremely catchy and “pop-y”, as Ben says. He delights in using his most obnoxious singing voice to belt out, “WEEEEEEEEEE are never, ever….”, which makes Anika squeal and freak out, and basically, it’s just lots of fun. So that’s our vacation song.

And my official vacation snack is sunflower seed butter on rice cakes. I’ve never had it before, and I didn’t even like it when I tried it this last weekend, but now I’m addicted to it, and it will always remind me of this trip, every time I eat it. I thought sushi would be a close second official snack, because we ate it every day when we first got here, but Kaylia does not like it AT ALL. Seeing as she’s been overtired and on the verge of crankiness around meal times for most of the trip, we’ve decided to ditch the sushi, and stick to food she likes, avoiding unnecessary battles.

I’m pretty sad about no sushi, since it’s EVERYWHERE around here, and I want to be eating it.

Anyway. There you go. Taylor Swift and sunflower seed butter. I’ll spray myself with a garden hose, crank up the music, look at pictures, and eat rice cakes. It will be an easy, free trip down Memory Lane in the future. I haven’t figured out what Vancouver Island smells like, though…

My favorite still remains the visual senses. Maybe it really is the best one, because it’s the only one that can easily be shared with other people!