The Road to Romance
Saturday, July 28th, 2007Business-travel romances really do happen. (And no, I don’t mean the “guess who I met in the bar?” variety.) In the July 31 eFlyer, we report on a study that shows that more than half of travelers who have a romance on the road turn it into a long-distance relationship, or more. Not too surprisingly, women outnumber men (but only by about 5:4) in believing a road relationship can have a future.
 I was actually a witness to one of those “does it really happen?” stories. I was in the Turks and Caicos, working on a guidebook, and I met a young woman about my own age who worked as an interpreter at the U.N. For a subsidized semi-vacation, she’d taken a job interpreting for an investor who was looking at some property in the islands. He was staying at a private villa, she at the same Front St. hotel (sadly no longer in existence) in Grand Turk as I, which had a cozy pub. As two single women travelers, we gravitated together over drinks. We played darts with some of the locals, and she got talking with one American who turned out to be staying in the hotel while his yacht was being repaired.
I was soon off to check out the other Turks (and various Caicos) for the guidebook, but she and I exchanged contact info, with a plan to meet for lunch when we both got back to New York. Instead, two weeks after I got home, I received a postcard. Jill had quit her job (also by postcard) and was touring the Caribbean with her new boyfriend on his yacht. Six months later, I got an invitation to the wedding.
As far as I know, they lived happily ever after.
