Coming home, from wherever you were, is the best thing ever.
Going away can be pretty cool, especially if you’re heading on a tres terrific holiday abroad or whatever, but still, coming home beats that hands down.
And sure, unpacking the car and having to stow stuff away inside can be a royal pain in the arse, but still…you’re home!
I love coming home. 
I used to study abroad. I loved going home, seeing the plane was always an uplifting feeling. It still is. I am alwys happy to go home, arrive home etc. My own car, my own bed.
OTH, when the first time you have to deal with everyday crap after coming back…
Just got back from a great US trip. Was dealing with a nasty custody battle in court and the toddler decided to pee on my desk. That made me remember that just a week prior I had been in Time Square instead of bum fuck magistrates courts.
It all depends on where “home” is. Returning to my boyhood home in West Texas from trips to other was always disgusting. It was like a descent into Hell after a brief snatch of glorious freedom.
I used to travel a lot. I enjoy flying (not the nonsense security theatre part, of course) and the idea of being sent to do a job that nobody else could do as well was always an ego boost. But, being on the road is a drag. I missed my wife fiercely and spent quite a bit of time on the phone with her every evening or when I could.
Coming home was always a great relief. Saying, “Hi honey, I’m home” was the way I knew I was actually there. Home.
Fast forward to now. I work from home and rarely leave the property except to pick up supplies. A friend needed some work done at her homestead and my friends and I went there to do it. After several hours of pulling out her old pump and its adjoined pipe and then wiring the new pump and assembling the new pipe, we all returned to our homes. I came back here to my place in the woods to greet my fiancee with, “Hi Honey, I’m Home” for the first time in years.
Be it ever so humble…
Man, not for me, at least for vacations. LEAVING is the best part. Getting in the car, setting out, or that feeling when you’ve finally traveled hundreds or thousands of miles and you’re finally in the the hotel room and you have nothing to do but goof off for the next <x> days. That’s WAY better than coming home.
Not to say that coming home isn’t good, too, but I like the leaving a lot better. I supposed that might change if I had to travel for work a lot or something like that, but in general I like setting out more the returning.
A job that I once had required that all new employees complete a full month of training at their corporate headquarters based in another city in another state. It was about a 10 hour drive away, one way, too far to really ever do and get all the studying done that needed to be done each and every weekend for the Monday Test. While the hotel was nice enough, I missed home.
When the training ended, it was a week before Christmas. I still remember driving through snow-covered highways in western NY and northern PA listening to radio stations playing Christmas music with suitcases and some wrapped gifts in the backseat for my kids.
I remember vividly smiling and fist pumping the air in my car like a little kid in anticipation of going home. Looking back, I realize now that that ride home WAS my present. 
Tell me about it. I get two weeks (squeal!) of vacation for Christmas this year. Aside from how awesomely refreshing two weeks away from work/hell will be, I’ll be leaving a Chicago frigid winter for the warmer pastures of Los Angeles, where there’s actually a goddamn ocean and you can get a decent taco at 3am. Fucking Chicago, I swear…
Oh, you meant from vacations. Yeah, I have mixed feelings about that. I pretty much weep nonstop from checkout to deplaning on home turf, but once I’m in the door of my apt, there is something oddly relieving about being home.
We used to do a lot of traveling, 6, 8 and 10months at a time, and ‘going’ was always a pretty heady feeling. In a ‘So begins the adventure!’ kind of way.
After months of living out of a pack, spending every night in a hotel, every meal in a restaurant, (albeit in an exotic and thrilling location!), you begin to miss things like a fridge to graze. The feeling of things being familiar. Your own bed linens.
When we came home it always felt so wonderful to be around our own familiar things, in a familiar place, instead of everything being new to our eyes. Once home I would go out of my way to hide our packs into the back dark recesses of the closets, the clothing we’d worn for all those months was immediately tossed aside, in favour of the garments we hadn’t seen in so long we’d forgotten all about them!
We’d settle in and a year or more would pass, then one day I’d happen upon one of those well worn Tshirts, from our travels. And I’d be overtaken with nostalgia. Out it comes from the closet and back into rotation!
Usually, when for some reason I’d have to dig out one of our packs, we’d both be so cheered just by the mere sight of it, that after use it would not get put away. But instead be left in plain sight, a reminder of adventures shared. Inevitably this would lead to, ‘We should go somewhere!’, type discussions, as you can imagine.
We repeated this cycle of events every couple of years, for over a decade. I was always surprised at how short the distance between, ‘so glad I don’t have to wear this Tshirt one more time!’, and ‘Hey! Remember this Tshirt? I love this shirt!’, really was!
Another thing that always struck me as odd was just how quickly being ‘spendy’ wore off. Prior to our holidays, we would be in saving mode, and not buying toys. Like electronics, or CD’s, movies, etc. But once home from our journeys, and back to work, money would be pouring into our hands. (If you’ve been living for months without an income, that’s exactly how it feels!) and we would both revel a little in buying things. And it was a great feeling to be able to just spend it, knowing you’d be getting some more next week, and we enjoyed it, truly. But it always wore off in a few months.
(It was a pretty good object lesson, oft repeated, for both of us.)
I totally agree with you, few things are as pleasant as coming home! And not all the lessons learned traveling, happen away from home!
I love to get home too. Yesterday we got home after a week at my parents’ palatial cabin in the woods.
Fast internet! Netflix!
Water pressure!
FOOD TO EAT OMG (my parents don’t eat)!
A soft bed! 100% cotton sheets!
Kitty loves!
I feel that way about coming home every day. It’s my haven, sanctuary, refuge. My toys, my dogs and cats, my stuff, my bed. Ahhh…
I always make sure my house is spotless before I leave for an overnight trip. I love coming home to a clean house!
I love coming home after an extended time away, especially if I’ve had to leave my pets behind. I never sleep as well in a bed not my own. However, if I’m away for longer than a couple weeks, my house looks really strange to me when I come back, sort of like someone walked off with the original and put a copy of it in place. It’s always just a tiny bit smaller, too.
There was a period in my life when I hated going home. But I enjoy it again.
Yes indeedy! I’ve just gotten home (at 8.30pm) after leaving for work at 7.30 am this morning, and apart from the lack of dogs and cats…it is just so cool to lock the door, turn on the lamp and kick back in my own space with my own stuff…my bed can wait a wee while yet.
Ken’oath it’s good. 
I love leaving to go on vacations [I love a good road trip with mrAru] and I love coming home.
We make sure the house is clean and we have freshly washed all the bedding and covered it over with an old comforter so the cat doesn’t get it all yucky while we are gone. We have a short list of refrigerator stuff we leave with the roomie and the money to get it so we have stuff in the fridge when we get back [and frequently she will have something mumbling away in the crock pot waiting for when we get back] so all we need to do is roll in, unpack, eat and grab a shower before falling into bed.
Since I have issues eating fast food on the road, we travel with one of the plug in ac/dc coolers full of cut up fruits, veggies and sandwich makings, stuff like coffee, teas and dehydrated lemon juice, plain instant oatmeal and suchlike so we can make chow on the road. A campers french press, some tervis insulated mugs, and a camp dining set finish up the camping box in the vehicle. We like the auto camp gear hot pot for making almost boiling water so much we are thinking of adding the ‘lunchbox’ oven and skillet as well. With the momvan, we might build in a mini-kitchen. There have been some interesting van and minivan covert camper conversions popping up online lately.
Apart from seeing people I’ve missed, I’m not a fan of coming ‘home’, wherever home is, even aften long trips. I don’t sleep any better in my own bed- in fact, I generally find it harder to sleep at home than I do in a strange place.
I don’t really have my ‘own’ place though, I’ve either been living with parents or in a shared house; maybe it’d be different if it was really ‘mine’.