I love going on out-of-town trips with my boyfriend. I also enjoy spending time with him either one of the following: staying at home over the weekend and cooking and/or baking with him, catching up over breakfast or brunch dates, working dates in cafes for hours, and just cuddling in bed while he caresses my hair while I tell him "This is nice!" over and over again. I love all of these to the point that I couldn't seem to choose one over the other! Haha
We were a young couple then and before I could discover how I want to spend our quality time together, COVID happened and we were forced to comply with nationwide lockdowns. Forced because we were left with no choice and things came unexpectedly. We didn't even have a chance to see each other before local travel restrictions escalated.
It must have been one of the hardest challenges we survived. It's crazy to think how we were able to manage the changes: spending months apart (which both of us despised), not being able to see each other, not being able to hug and kiss each other, and having no idea when will things start to go back to normal. At one point or another, I found myself exclaiming "I didn't sign up for this!
Quality time and physical touch are my love languages in that exact order. Although working from home, we were able to find more time but if your love language/s is/are the same as mine, you'll get it. It's just different. Nothing compares to having your loved ones near you. It calms the mind knowing that when you want to get or give a hug or a kiss, you can just get/give it right away. But nonetheless, we made it out alive! We had to face tensions here and there throughout the 4 months we were apart but we got better and closer to each other after it.
When hotels started to open up and my work lifted restrictions on recreation/leisure activities, we immediately grabbed the opportunity to spend a weekend together. We booked a hotel room in the city; it was still difficult to travel far at this point. I made sure there's a pool. It was a perfect day to be out and about. Our room to the pool and back to our room once again. It felt like traveling from one island to another! Kidding! 😅
It was a sunny day in September. We spent most of our time in the pool area actually. The city air was surprisingly refreshing and it felt less polluted (Travel restrictions=less cars on the street!).
There were other guests but it felt like we rented the entire pool. We had it to ourselves; we freely took a lot of photos without worrying about photobombers and we enjoyed the sun!