The answer is Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The question was, “Where will I spend the holidays?”

Faithful readers of this column know that up until the few days before Christmas I had no idea where that would be. In my last column, I shared how my new husband is an avid collector of frequent flier miles and how using them often means spinning the wheel at the last second to see what’s available.

He came up with South America. Even more than that, he pulled a last-second belated honeymoon out of a hat.

We danced tango at midnight, albeit quite clumsily. (“Dancing With the Stars” will not be calling anytime soon.) We took an Argentine cooking class. We floated an afternoon away on a boat on the Tigre Delta. We had a ton of laughs as we took in the sights and sounds of Buenos Aires.

My husband took care of everything. Booking every tour, making every reservation, mapping out the entire last-minute trip. For this lifetime single gal — I’ve gotten myself from Africa to Kuwait and back — it was a new, fun, welcome experience to be taken care of.

Pretty much my only job was to take the pictures. Which I did with great joy. That is, until the second to last night of the trip. That’s when I let down my guard and left my beloved Nikon D100 SLR camera in the back of an Argentine taxi.

Chalk it up to the late hour, being tired. Whatever. No two ways about it. I blew it.

“I think I lost the camera,” I said feeling like I had the Rock of Gibraltar sinking in my stomach.

“It’s gone?” my husband asked.

I explained how I hadn’t seen it since we got in the taxi the night before. And it was nowhere to be found in any of my bags or around our hotel room.

That’s how I get to the part of marriage I never anticipated and find I really don’t like: There’s someone there to witness your mistakes.

It’s like when you trip and fall in public. You might have smashed your nose or broken your wrist, but you know the first thing you do is look around to see if anyone just saw you make a fool of yourself.

I’m finding marriage is kind of like that. I certainly wasn’t perfect when I was single. Messed up plenty of times. But then, it was just me to see it, clean up the mess, and deal with the consequences. Now, there is someone to bear witness. Not just someone, but my most important someone.

His reaction to this disturbing news was action, helping me search every corner of the room, checking in with front desk who looked at us like dumb Americans knowing that camera would never be seen again.

And with that, he let it go.

“Well, it’s just stuff,” he said.

“Just stuff?” I asked amazed. “But all of our pictures? The new zoom lens you just gave me? I had one job on this trip and I blew it.”

He took my hand and said, “We’re healthy. Our kids our healthy. The rest? It’s just stuff.”

That’s how I ended up crying as we walked down the streets of Buenos Aires the last day of our trip.

Embarrassed tears for blowing it; sad tears for losing one of the few material things I really care about; and tears of amazement of how I would get to bring home the best souvenir of all — a man who truly gets what’s important.