This is what daydreams are made of.  Except in four short months, this reverie of mine will become reality, as we board a plane for a month in France.  This is a photo of Annecy, the storybook town in an Alpine valley that will host us for the first two weeks of our trip.

It was in the neighboring town of Talloires on the same pristine lake (it’s the cleanest lake in Europe) that my Frenchie husband and I met and shared our first kiss (“gross!” yell the girls) 21 years ago. This leg of the trip is our pilgrimage to share a little bit of our pre-kids history with our kids.

Talloires is also where I spent the first 18 months of my post-college life working at the Tufts University European Center.  So I have lots of memories that I want to show my girls.  And I can’t wait. It’s hard to believe that I was 21 when I first spent time in this beautiful region and I fell in love with my husband, and that another 21 years have since passed.

We’re going to hike, swim in the lake if it’s warm enough, take an old train up to the “Mer de Glace” at Chamonix, and venture across borders to visit Switzerland and Italy.  And two weeks later, Paris here we come.  Now if that’s not a dream vacation, I don’t know what is.