All expenses paid for. If you could spend the summer anywhere in the world, where would you go? Me--Ireland. And you?

[DFW]

37. Right where I/we am/are going: Truro, Massachusetts.

We discovered it on a recommendation over 40 years ago. We liked it so much then that we thought we could try it again the next year. Rinse and repeat. Our one year old daughter who was with us in 1984 now joins us every year for at least one week with her husband and two sons. Our younger daughter, who lives in Germany, will also be stopping by with her man and two daughters, since they will be attending some World Cip games in which Germany is playing.

We will rent a house that is a one minute walk from a bayside beach, or a ten minute drive from our favorite ocean side beach (Long Nook beach). We have been going for so long that some of the locals are now old friends, and I guest on the local community radio at least once a year. In next door Provincetown, you could run into almost anyone. House Minority Whip Katherine Clark or Rachel Maddow are just two examples. Singers Zoe Lewis and Patty Larkin, humorist David Sedaris, a lot of etc. Any of them might turn up sitting next to you at any of the outdoor cafés or restaurants. A street banjo player once invited me to join him on guitar. I did and his take jumped from $15 to $45 (he wanted to give me half, and I told him no way—I went ahead and made his day).

Truro is a 15 minute drive south of Provincetown. Fifteen minutes from relaxed hustle to tranquility. Provincetown in the summer is nearly impossible to park in for under $25 unless you are willing to make a long walk. The reasoning behind that is to keep it a largely pedestrian town and it works. Restaurants range from modest to expensive, but since I am married to a gourmet chef, we rarely eat out. We just buy our fish from one of the local shops, buy the spices and veggies where we can find them, and she works her magic. A local place makes their own ice cream, and their key lime cheesecake ice cream alone is worth the trip over to America.

It’s our place for needed yearly decompression.

We live in the German Rheinland. Every month for my job, I am in Paris, Brussels, Utrecht, Barcelona, Switzerland, etc. If we want a weekend or even a week in Scandinavia, Prague, Budapest, Croatia, Portugal, Italy, etc. it’s a spur of the moment decision we can make any time. They are all one to three hour flights at most. But to just chill out and let nature and lack of planning be our flag bearers, it’s back to the Outer Cape for us.