My BFF came into town last Thurs­day to attend a wed­ding (and take me as her date). Sat­ur­day after­noon we checked into the wed­ding hotel and had a few hours to kill before we needed to get ready. I sat by the pool with gos­sip mags, she went to the ocean. I said some­thing I never thought I’d say: “Eh, I can go to the beach any­time.” What can I say? I was really excited about this pool, though the lady in the bathing cap was not there.

Photo of National Hotel, South Beach

It started to rain lightly and BFF returned from the beach. She declared in a very seri­ous tone, “I get Florida now.”

Appar­ently when you go to the beach in New Eng­land, the ocean is not the tem­per­a­ture of bath­wa­ter. The East­ern Seaboard also, I hear, lacks palm trees.

While we were at the wed­ding, my par­ents arrived from Kansas. (Ryan, son-in-law of the year, gra­ciously enter­tained them until my return on Sunday.)

Ten days of guests means a lot of eat­ing yummy food, shop­ping, dri­ving through pretty neigh­bor­hoods and gen­eral Florida Lite. Both BFF and my par­ents said some­thing like, “I under­stand why you don’t like it, but…” and it got me thinking.

Is Florida really that bad? Or are the places you like to visit not nec­es­sar­ily always the places you want to live?