Copy/Paste

Some people like to spend their vacation at home. Others like to go abroad, but favour the same place, year after year. Yet another group of people likes to discover something new every year. Then there are those who like to combine all 3 elements...which would be yours truly. My ideal summer looks as follows: one week spent in Klagenfurt, enjoying my parents' company and my beloved Wörther See, and another in Nice, my summer home away from home. The "discovery" holidays can happen at another time of the year, as far as I am concerned, but I don't mind them taking place in summer either, if my schedule allows. Klagenfurt and Nice are musts, though. Due to the fact that I recently switched jobs, I spent a few days in KLU already in May and June, rather than around the August 15 public holiday as I usually do. Nice, where I still will be when this post goes live,  had to be reduced to a long weekend, also, but I'm not complaining. Skipping it for good, though, would have been out of the question for me. I have not counted, but this must be my 10th visit to this city, and the one summer when La Mademoiselle and I did not go, we both missed it. It has become a fixture of my summers and the gang has grown in the past years, when we managed to infect others with the Nice bug as well. It's not that we do extraordinary things there (basically it's a mix of beach, shopping, excursions to other highlights along the Cote d'Azur, the order of these decided spontaneously and sometimes individually), but it feels great to feel like locals, to go grocery shopping at "our" supermarket, to put our beach towels at the same spot every year, to stop for drinks at the café with the same grumpy old waiter, to buy sachets of dried lavender to take home, just like we did the year before. Comfortingly familiar and yet never boring.