So last week on my knitting blog, Knit the Stash, I filled out a questionnaire for a knitting swap, Beat the Winter Doldrums. Knitters do cool things like this. Get together, make small projects for each other, add in a pile of goodies and send said box of goodies along to a new friend. The questionnaire is to give your secret friend an idea of the things you like, and one of the questions was something along the lines of “where would you go for a vacation right now.” Now I know what the DH would answer: Hawaii. Before you could even finish the question.

But here is the weird part. I just couldn’t shake my answer: London. I’m so dying to go back. I can’t shake it. I’ve been thinking about going back for weeks now, and looking at the calendar to see where I could possible sneak away and go for at least 10 days. So all these notions of going have been rattling around in my cold winter head, but I haven’t written them down. Things happen when you write them down. Pluck them out of your secret stash, and commit them to writing. In public. And going back to London was just that, until last week. I filled out the questionnaire and I just wrote away on how much I want to go back. And I kid you not, within twelve hours I got an email and a snail mail begging me to come to London. Well, they didn’t exactly beg me in particular, but oh, it was like being told you can go in the tourist fudge shop and have only salt water taffy. (Okay, I’ll save my rant on tourist fudge for another day.)

The first one came in an email from Linda de Sosa, and I’ll share the info with you:

This September, 2008, I would like to invite 30 fellow addicts to come with me while we enter Regency England. Highlights in Bath, Brighton, and London include:

Museums – Tyrwhitt-Drake Carriage Museum, Museum of Costume, Museum of Eton Life, Jane Austen Center
Walking tours – Mayfair, Bath, Royal Pavilion in Brighton
Period Homes – Syon House, Chiswick House, Spencer House
Waterloo – National Army Museum, Apsley House
Rare Interior Tours – One of the few Gentleman’s Clubs left, Buckingham Palace
Regency: Regency murder mystery, taking the waters in the Bath Pump room
Motorcoach tour: the dark side of the Regency – crime, law, poverty, and orphans

And to arrive in style, join me in an optional transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2 prior to the tour. We will have waltzing lessons and Regency romance novel book discussions.

Contact: Linda de Sosa
lindad@woodlaketravel.com

The Queen Mary? OMG. I suppose if I sold the kids and the DH on eBay I might get enough. The DH does do laundry so he’d get a good price.

Yes, well, after spending a few hours fantasizing about this tour, then the mail comes. From JASNA. That’s the Jane Austen Society of North America to you non-Austen geeks. And while the above tour had me drooling, the JASNA tour had me at “Hello.” The tour? Jane Austen’s Great Houses in Fact and Fiction. And what a cool tour it will be. There isn’t anything about it on the JASNA site, but here are some of the highlights:

• Review original Austen materials at the British Library and the National Portrait Gallery
• Tour Brighton
• The Vyne, a great house Jane attended many parties at
• Inside Chawton–which is privately held
• Visits to houses that Jane visited and were used in the various movies, including Chatsworth, Lyme Park, and Sudbury Hall

But it is in July. July when I need to be finishing a book. July when I am going to go to SF. July when the kids are OUT of school, when I can’t possibly go. Not in the least. Not at all. But Lyme Park!! Look at it there, just taunting me. And Brighton. Gads, I sound like Lydia Bennet.

Then again, I wonder if I can get an extension on my deadline . . .

So what is your secret travel dream? Let’s write them down and see if they can come true.