it's blindingly simple

A few years ago, I found this quote in a magazine somewhere, and took a photo to keep it with me. In just a few lines it reflects the tug that we feel, us wandering children, who choose to live so from home.

It's blindingly simple. 
You never fully understand or appreciate where you're from until you leave it.
Until you have to explain and defend it to others, to whom it is foreign.
Only then can you see why it is the way it is and why you love it. Nay, how intensely you love it. 

If travel does one thing, it shows your roots in a way that nothing else can. 

- Margaret Mead

There is no place like home, and when you do go back to visit, everything seems so much shinier and rose-tinted. 

On my last trip I was lucky to have a something close to a perfect day.
It was a Monday afternoon, and a post-wedding birthday celebration on Waiheke. Filled with some of my favourite people from all corners of the globe, it stretched on and on, as wine-soaked afternoons should. I took a lot of photos (that got progressively blurrier as the wine went on) but the day will always leave a little glow in my memories.