If you had a free round-trip ticket to anywhere, where would you go?

Not a moments thought required for this prompt. Absolutely a free round the world ticket to Australia please with stop offs in Hong Kong. I love to travel and explore new places but nothing is more precious than friends and family. I am approaching the 1 year anniversary of just such a trip. Just as people are concerned about the anniversaries of sad events being difficult I am very aware that I am quite excited to be able to relive my travels in Australia and Asia in November and December last year. Pondering seems too normal a word for those thoughts. Giddy pondering elevates the process more appropriately.

Culturally I am going to seem pretty shallow but I loved seeing outdoor Christmas Trees under different circumstances to a British winter.

The plastic fantastic, consumerist bling of Hong Kong trees and the epic visual strength of Australian trees competing with the sublime weather of a Southern Hemisphere early summer.

Of course a Christmas Tree is a place of gathering. People who like or love each other gathering around a relatively modern symbol of a December festival close to the Northern Hemisphere Winter Solstice that has been taking place long before the word Christmas existed.

• Neolithic Britain (c. 3000 BCE or earlier): Monuments like Stonehenge and Newgrange were aligned with the winter solstice, and archaeologists have found evidence of large midwinter feasts at nearby sites like Durrington Walls.
• Roman Saturnalia: The ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia began on December 17 and lasted for a week of feasting, gift-giving, and social inversion.
• Norse and Germanic Yule: Historical accounts—such as the 6th-century writer Procopius and 8th-century writer Bede—describe long-standing Germanic and Scandinavian traditions like Yule and Mōdraniht (Mothers’ Night) held around the solstice to celebrate the return of the sun.

People ( not all of course) like to gather with friends and family, any excuse really. For some precious friends and family I am obliged to travel. A fabulous use of a free round trip ticket.

I realise I am assuming the ticket is for flights. It could be a bus or train ticket. If time were no object then I have no objections to either of those. Sailing, in comfort would also be OK. I might have to turn my nose up at a free trip in a rowing boat. There would be nothing recognisably left of me by the time I arrived in France let alone any further away.

I would certainly be a rarher lucky cow to have a free ticket of any sort.

Which allows me a visual Cheistmas Tree pun.

I have superimposed a home tree with a cow at the Royal William Yard onto the tree at Coogee Beach Sydney. The Home and Away Tree.