Dear Rehoboth,
I didn’t expect to like you this much.
That’s probably the nicest thing I can say about you.
You weren’t some lifelong dream destination. I didn’t spend years pinning pictures of your beaches or lying awake at night whispering, “Someday, Delaware. Someday.”
You were simply a beach town.
A place to go for a few days. A change of scenery. Somewhere to stick my toes in the sand and temporarily forget that laundry exists.
And then I got there.
There is something about you that is difficult to explain without sounding like I have been paid by the Delaware Tourism Board. You aren’t trying very hard to impress anyone. You’re not particularly polished. You’re not pretending to be some exclusive coastal escape where everyone wears linen and knows what a sommelier is doing with a decanter.
You’re just…Rehoboth.
And somehow, that works.
You have the slightly chaotic energy of a place that knows exactly what it is. You are touristy and you don’t apologize for it. You have your boardwalk, your beach, your little shops, your food, your games, your ridiculous souvenirs, and approximately fourteen thousand opportunities to convince me that I desperately need something I have never heard of before.
And honestly?
I respect the hustle.
You also taught me something I wasn’t expecting to learn on vacation: sometimes the best part of a place isn’t any particular thing you do there.
It’s how the place makes you feel.
Rehoboth makes it very easy to be on vacation.
You can wander around without a plan. You can walk until you don’t know where you are going anymore. You can stop because something catches your eye. You can sit near the water and watch people. You can spend twenty minutes debating whether you need whatever bizarre object has appeared in a souvenir shop.
You don’t need an itinerary.
You just need shoes and questionable financial judgment.
And perhaps that is why I found myself enjoying you so much.
You reminded me that vacations don’t always have to be an Event.
Sometimes they can just be a few days where you wake up somewhere else, walk around, eat something you didn’t make yourself, laugh with your husband, and eventually realize that you’ve accumulated a stuffed sloth.
His name is Floofy, by the way.
I assume you know him.
I have questions about how that happened.
But I’m choosing not to investigate.
There is also something wonderfully nostalgic about you. You feel like the kind of place people have been coming to for years, returning with their families, their traditions, their favorite spots and their stories about the time something ridiculous happened on the boardwalk.
Maybe that’s your real charm.
You aren’t trying to become somebody else’s idea of a perfect beach vacation.
You’re giving people the version of a beach vacation that actually exists: crowded sidewalks, overpriced things, sand where sand absolutely should not be, food eaten out of containers, and at least one purchase that makes you wonder what happened to your better judgment.
It’s imperfect.
And that’s what makes it memorable.
I think we spend a lot of time looking for places that are going to wow us.
Places that photograph beautifully.
Places that make us feel like sophisticated travelers instead of two people standing on a boardwalk wondering whether we have enough cash for whatever we’re about to buy.
But sometimes I don’t want to be wowed.
Sometimes I just want to have a good time.
And, Rehoboth, you gave me that.
So I’m sorry I underestimated you.
I’m sorry I arrived expecting a beach town and discovered a place that was actually kind of lovely.
I’m sorry I left with a stuffed sloth.
Actually, no.
That one’s on me.
I’ll probably see you again.
Not because you were perfect.
Because you weren’t.
But because somewhere between the ocean, the boardwalk, the ridiculousness, and Floofy, you became one of those places that feels good to remember.
And that’s a pretty good souvenir.
Love,
Kristen
