I’m very fortunate to have some great friends to travel with. We’ve all known each other since college, but we only became a travel 4-some a few years ago with a trip to Ireland. We quickly perfected our traveling style, and all travel really well together.

So back in May, while enjoying a few glasses of wine discussing various ways of taking over the world, a plan was hatched to take a Summer trip. Several emails passed back & forth over the next couple days, an online poll was taken & airline sales were scoured to determine a destination.

Airtran was advertising a great rate to Nassau, and that meshed nicely with our pact to “attempt to leave the US at least once a year”. Nassau it was.

Only, somehow we missed out on the Airtran deal and had to fly Delta. Which worked out because as soon as I stepped foot on the plane, the flight attendant hugged me. Normally this might seem odd, but in this case it was cool because she is a family friend I’ve known since I was a kid.

Plus, she was able to move us all up to first class. She’s good like that.

So we all take a few days off of work, pawn our responsibilities off on other people & fly shotgun to the Bahamas. Life is good. We arrived with absolutely no plans other than the rental house we’d booked. Thank you internet.

Day one was a bit of a blur. We hitched a ride to the grocery store, waited an hour in the rain for a cab home & tried to get our bearings.

Day two we got a taste of the touristy by riding through town on a jitney, visiting the Atlantis resort & taking a sailboat ride. Oh, and eating at Johnny Rockets. Don’t judge.

Day three was the day we really got it figured out. This was the day we discovered Compass Point and Love Beach. All the Bahamian brochures want you to think Paradise was at Atlantis on the other side of the island. The brochures don’t tell the whole story.

Not sure what my friend Anne said to the guy at the front desk of Compass Point Resort, but I thank her. Before I knew it, we’d made a 5 minute walk from our house, entered a building, were handed a free large beach towel and led to the most gorgeous beach I’ve ever seen. Crystal clear water, palm trees, the whole bit.

We were inside a postcard. And we had the place to ourselves.

So after snorkeling a little while, I noticed that I was extraordinarily buoyant (Yes, I brought my own snorkeling gear. Yes that meant I only had room in my suitcase to pack 1 pair of underwear. No, I don’t care what you think). Crazy buoyant. Like, I couldn’t sink if I tried buoyant. Hush with the fat jokes.

No, really…I discovered that I could actually lay on my back in the almost invisibly clear water and take a nap. Take a nap. On a bed of water. Holy goodness.

As I lay there, in the water, napping, & swimming, I couldn’t help but think about everything that had to happen to get here. All the working, the saving, the planning, the packing, the traveling. All that stuff. Why?

For this. This is the payoff. This is why we do all of that.