first dates to write home about....

I have a big imagination and am not afraid to use it.

Best first dates?

hmmmm.....the first one to write home about was a 4 day road trip from Dallas, TX to the coast of Virginia. I was 20. We drove 19 hours straight until we hit the coast at which point I parked, got out of the car, stripped to my underwear and dove into the ocean. I remember coming into Memphis, with the glass pyramid shining like a diamond with the sunrise like an incredibly detailed Chinese silk that had the most remarkable quality: every time I thought "Wow, this is the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen," it would be as if someone shook the silk and then it would become10 times more beautiful. I looked over at the beautiful stranger that I had met once for coffee before getting into his car...his Indiana Jones style adventurer hat pulled down over his eyes and thought..."who is he?? Should I wake him up to see this wonder?" (I didn't- in the end I thought it was best spent in my own company) In four days we only paused twice to really sleep- in a mountain bed and breakfast in Virginia and in a gorgeous forest somewhere I've forgotten. Four days...Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia...the Olympic Village before the Olympics, Louisiana...coffee with chicory and beignets for breakfast, an afternoon walking in a hot rain in the French Quarter of New Orleans then an all night drive back to Dallas. The relationship? Um, the good thing is that it ended...but that first date...THAT was something to remember.

Next best (chronologically speaking)? We met by accident one night in Kuala Lumpur and after two months speaking on the internet, we met for our first date...two weeks in India and Kashmir. We saw the Taj Mahal, rode elephants and camels, saw former glories of Maharajahs of old, saw temples and mosques, trekked in the Himalayas with gypsies, stayed in houseboats in the mountains...it was perfect. Our second date? Well, Thailand was grand but we said our goodbyes halfway through...we never even made it to Cambodia, let alone Vietnam. I didn't even have the will to finish the holiday and hopped the first plane back to London- two weeks later I'd moved here to Madrid. He's gone back to Colombia.

Future first? Hmmm....inch allah (God willing) my Easter week holiday will be a first date...nothing says romance to an adventurer like a good Tuareg or Berber camel trek into the Sahara (Morocco). Alternately, I have an Egyptian friend looking into tours there....then of course there's the allure of Algeria or Tunisia... I've never been to Africa at all, you see. Nothing makes a first date like a big first, and I've only got Africa and the Arctics that I haven't yet stepped one foot on.

Best/worst break up line ever?

"Um...I've been thinking. Maybe we should see other countries."  (Ok, that was mine....I've felt guilty over that one for the last 8 years. I left him 4 days into a month long trip...I had to though. It was either that or )

It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step into the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to. -the Hobbit