I realize we all have different schedules and budgets, but I’m curious how long you’re gone for a typical summer family vacation. Our work schedules allow us to be gone up to 6 weeks, which we’ve done with our kids (bc they are out of school too). Europe a few times and also Florida. But the trips have gotten shorter recently to about 3 weeks abroad. And now DH is saying max two weeks for Europe trip this summer. Cramming in three countries. We have a family apartment there, so hotel costs are only for about half the nights. Money and costs are not really an issue bc we like to do a lot of free things (hiking and swimming). I could stay all 6 weeks and never even think about home. DH gets antsy and wants to be back. For no real reason. Can’t even give me one. So tonight I said trip may end up 16 days bc of flights and he grumbled. But really I think it needs to be 17. Plan is 6 nights in Switzerland, 6 in Aix, 3 Florence. That’s 17 if you count fly days. I’d like to extend Nice and Venice out another day too. So then we’d be at 19. DH will lose it if I do that. But he does none of the planning and knows nothing about all the things to do and see and experience.
So how long do you go and does your family fight for more or less?
What’s your typical or even IDEAL vacation length?
When they were in high school we usually did about one and a half to two weeks yearly. When they were in undergrad about the same but not every year. This seemed agreeable to all. Each of us either had jobs that did not allow longer stretches or the kids had other things going on. Ideal would be about 2 weeks one location.
We usually went on a nearby (4 hour drive) vacation for 4-5 days every few years but had two one week vacations and one two week vacation in the past 26 years, too. H is self-employed with no backup. We haven’t been on a vacation together in the past 6 years. I’m extremely jealous of your freedom @ProfessorMom1.
I can’t imagine 6 weeks (though I have lots of friends who “go home” to the family country for that long, at least. And DH and I lived abroad for 2 years.) A friend and I will go back to Germany next year, likely two weeks. But I’m not into the tourist cram, where one sees everything that’s there to be seen. A few key experiences do it for me.
Thing is, DH’s work schedule meant most vacations were short (and focused on his interests.) I got good at that, the ability to soak in an amazing amount of memories in a short period. (We do have a regional vaction we take most years, a few hours away. But now, with the girls’ and their partners’work schedules, that’s down to about 4 days. And sometimes, a day trip or overnight, because we can.)
Why three countries? And if you’re free every summer, why not plan to go back next year?
We mostly do domestic trips. When it’s just H and me (most of our trips since the kids left for college over a decade ago), we have a lot of flexibility. Sometimes we do a week or less, sometimes it’s two or more weeks.
When we travel to another country or fly for 8 or more hours, I want it to be at least 2 weeks. Our longest trips tend to be about 3 weeks. Our kids can rarely spend more than a week or two with us, often we are lucky to get a long weekend here or there.
If I wanted to stay longer than H, we’d negotiate and consider having him go back sooner or meet us when we are wherever we want to spend more time. So far, we’ve compromised and been pretty content.
When kids were growing up, I always had to take 2 weeks off back to back, but no more than that, so we always took a 2 weeks vacation in the summer. I would have loved to take 6 weeks off. You are very lucky.
Yes, why not let your H leave after 2 weeks. Why does he get antsy now?
DH never felt like he could be away more than 1 week at a time. So, those were the lengths of our family trips a couple times a year before they left for college. They were always at home within the U.S.
Now, on my insistence, we take 10 nights trips sometimes, with and without the kids. Mostly it’s just he and I now taking 3 or 4 really long weekends somewhere.
I’m looking forward to when he feels he can get away for 2 weeks straight.
Our summer vacations were usually 9 days…a week and two weekend days. We also took a weeklong trip during the kid’s and my either February (it’s not a week anymore…just one day) or April vacations.
The one trip we really wanted to do was a cross country drive…that would have been about 6 weeks. DH couldn’t take that many days off at a time…so we never did the full drive.
H refuses to leave our general area, so the longest vacation we have ever had was overnight camping, which I detested but did because I thought it was good for the kids. Now that the kids are grown basically, I took a 16 day vacation with my D and her bf to stay with his parents at their home in Europe. While I loved it, it was a couple of days too much because I wound up getting stuck for vacation days at the end of the year. However, if I had unlimited vacation, I would take more trips and when I retire, I will probably go on senior tours by myself.
We usually do one week at a time. Including weekends, that generally works out to about 8 days. Work and kids schedules combine to make anything more than that difficult.
If we’re staying in the continental US or Mexico (we live in Texas) then 4-5 days max. If we’re going to Europe/Asia as we have been the last 3-4 years than 2 weeks. As my kids’ schedules are getting more and more complicated we will be switching gears to more domestic travel and no longer than 5 days for a trip.
We vary based upon where we’re going and what we want to do. Our shortest real “trips” can be two nights away. Our longest trip was 2 months and that was a road trip doing mostly tent camping with a handful of motel nights thrown in. There have been a fair number of month long trips.
Ideally I like two weeks or more if we’re traveling, esp if it takes a couple days to actually reach somewhere.
We also take longer winter trips, not just summer. I like escaping south in Feb when we can. The last couple of years we’ve had to adjust due to parent needs, but I long to get back to tropical waters during this month.
When our two oldest lads were entering high school, we opted to homeschool them partially to keep our lengthy travel options open. Youngest decided to return to high school - those were long winters… Interestingly enough, he chose a college in FL!
H is self-employed and a good part of his job is portable, so he’s not always taking that long of a vacation. It’s more “relocating” his office. Our preference is a condo with a view and he’d rather be overlooking gorgeous tropical water while working than winter dreariness - or taking breaks to go snorkeling/diving/hiking and working at night. His ideal office location would be living aboard a sailboat.
Our travel choices are also why I rarely work full time and when I do, it’s almost always in the fall semester at school. My kids tell me I should learn to teach classes and/or tutor online. I don’t know that I’d like teaching without actual face to face contact with students.
Our vacations and trips don’t fit any sort of pattern. Dh travels a lot for work. He’s currently been spending one week in London every month for nearly the last year. Even though he has a lot of vacation (5 weeks I think), he just can’t afford to be gone from the office for 5 weeks straight with all the other travel he does. We normally take 7-10 day trip to the beach every summer with all six of us. Then I usually will go for shorter trips, 2-4 days, several more times throughout the summer (my family has a vacation house). I’ll take whatever kids are home with me, or they drive down themselves. Dh will join when he can.
For actual planned in advance trips, I think the longest we’ve ever gone away is 2-2.5 weeks. Those trips seem to happen every other year and are trips like…14 day trip to AZ/UT national parks that ended in southern CA, trips to Seattle/Vancouver, Ireland. A lot of our trips are shorter to places like Charleston, Maine, NH. Having four kids with different schedules, it is hard to plan anything longer than two weeks. We also often do things separately like Dh took our boys to the Masters and I’ve taken our girls to NYC. We’ve also sent our kids off on their own with relatives-the last two summers my younger two spent three weeks in northern and southern CA with dh’s family.
To answer OP’s question about ideal length, I don’t really have one as it totally depends on the trip. I think if we were moving from place to place and living out of hotel rooms and suitcases, I’d probably be a little sick of it after about three weeks. OTOH, if we were staying in one or two places as “home bases” i could easily spend the whole summer away and just do day trips. However, Dh could never be gone that long unless he was able to work remotely. That said, unlike the OP’s husband, Dh does not mind being gone for extended periods (vacation, not work!) and if his work schedule was such that he had the ability to be gone for 5-6 weeks, he would totally do it (his father was an intl airline pilot so he grew up traveling the world-his family would spend whole summers abroad). We would only enjoy this though if we were staying in places where we could make our own meals-neither of us likes to eat out every night.
When our sons lived at home, we’d do two weeks and work in the weekends, depending on FF ticket availability. We did a cross country camping trip, but I flew back after two weeks for work.
Now that they are thousands of miles away from us, we work in visiting them with our vacation plans. DH is somewhat constrained as to when he can travel, but when he can, we’ve been doing three weeks.
We have no problem with one of us having to peel off early. If DH has to leave, I take the solo days to visit things he’s not interested in seeing. Win-win!
The longest trip I/We have taken was a France trip for about 10 days which included weekends and 4th of July. We have a cottage that is about 3 hours away so that IS vacation and mostly we have done long weekend or 4 or 5 days at the most - again, time constraints.
I can’t imagine any of us - my H and I or our kids unless they were very small - ever having the freedom to take off even 3-4 weeks.
OP, I have to believe your 6 week vacations are the exception not the rule for most families.
We usually took a one week trip at the most, with many five day trips that seemed just right. Last year we spent two weeks together at Christmas, and that was just WAY too long. I don’t like to be away from home more than two weeks. There are way too many things that need to be taken care of at home that make longer trips problematic. We take care of a neighbor’s house while they travel for 4 months at a time, and even though they have researched all the things they need to take care of before they leave, there are always the unexpected things, like a delivery of a phone book in the driveway that reveals nobody is home if a neighbor doesn’t collect it.
Longest was probably a little over 2 weeks (leave on a Friday and come back the Sunday after the two weeks). That was when we had to fit in an event with a vacation. Mostly one to two weeks, working in the weekends. At times the kids only came for part of the trip. I really like having more than one week as it feels much more relaxing, but can now appreciate shorter, but more frequent trips.