We like all different kinds of trips and do enjoy good food/wine while away. I do not want to see a kitchen when I’m on vacation.
I can enjoy a beach/resort vacation although time sitting at the beach/pool needs to be mixed with activities like snorkeling, sailing etc. We loved the islands of Hawaii because they all had a great combination of relaxing at the beach and interesting things to do/expereince.
Also love touring new places – cities and parks in the US and abroad.
Our favorite family trip was a two week safari in Kenya when the kids were in middle/high school-it was just amazing.
I never have been on a cruise. My son enjoys them and we were considering a short family cruise before the pandemic hit so H and I could try it out. Not sure if we’ll ever do that now.
Well we’ve done, and enjoyed, all types of vacations. Before I was married I traveled quite a bit and we’ve been fortunate to keep our traveling ways with our kids. When they were younger we did various warm weather beach vacations (Florida, Mexico) as well as Universal and Disney (fun once but can’t imagine doing it every year as some do). For shorter getaways we’ve done the cities: NYC, Chicago, DC, San Francisco. On short trips we do hotels, for longer ones we usually rent. We’ve taken the kids to Europe multiple times (Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and London) and those have been among our favorite trips. We did Yosemite & Monterey/Carmel the year before the pandemic and that was great too. I’d say we are more active than not - activities and sightseeing more than just lounging by the pool. I feel extremely lucky that I’ve been able to see and do as much as I have – I’ve always had itchy feet and a yen to see the world. If I had to pick a favorite it would be the safari I went on in my early 30s (before husband and kids) to Tanzania - beautiful beyond belief.
While I prefer not seeing a kitchen I sometimes have to. Our S has a severe peanut allergy so he need to be very careful what he eats. I’ve handled this by taking one of two paths for our destinations. Path 1 is to rent a house and do most of our own cooking. We have rented very nice homes in Australia, Belize, Maui, and Costa Rica to name a few. Path 2 is stay at high end hotels where I can work with the culinary team to make sure the food is safe. We have found that Ritz Carlton, Four Seasons, and the Fairmont are very helpful. The culinary team at the Ritz in Grand Cayman actually made a complete menu for S listing everything that they had ready for him. The chef at the Fairmont Mayacoba personally made “expedition Meals” for our S to take as we took day trips (5 courses including a ceviche of the day, salad, various sandwiches, fresh fruite, and a dessert).
We always take active vacations. Scuba diving, snorkeling, rappelling, hiking are all on tap.
Yes, I know. Perhaps I should have said “first time out of the continental U.S.” Guam/Saipan constitute serious travel for someone who has never been farther away from home than school.
Oh, I forgot. We also enjoy visiting college campuses, despite the fact that our youngest graduated about 10 years ago! Old habits die hard I guess! But seriously, they are often in fun parts of town, and depending on the college can be quite scenic.
Congrats to all and best wishes to your wonderful, talented kids. Their journey has been a huge challenge with covid baked in. I’m happy to learn that most colleges are speaking about a return to normalcy in the fall, so your kids will be able to get right at it, which is GREAT. D attends school in NYC and they just announced their summer program is going live / full time vs. hybrid. So happy about this as they did as best as they could this spring, but hybrid acting and dancing just isn’t the same. Voice was done pretty well via zoom but that will be much better too.
I don’t have one specific definition for vacation other than…leaving town and getting away from home. Some of our vacations are relaxing days at the beach, others are full of hiking/nature, some are exploring historical sites, visiting other countries and learning about their culture in a variety of ways.
It is interesting to me how so many look forward to not having to cook. We must be weird in that we don’t like the constant “restaurant food” on vacations where we don’t have a kitchen. While I like a break from cooking nightly meals at home, at the same time, I don’t want to eat in restaurants/get carryout every single night. Dh and I both like cooking so prefer a mix of homecooked meals and restaurant food when we travel, tho that is not always possible.
We are leaving for our daughter’s graduation in San Diego next week and will have 5 days without a kitchen (by the time we knew for sure her graduation would be in person and how many in our family would go, it was too late to find a suitable airbnb). I already told dh I’m not looking forward to all the restaurant food we will be eating, esp since we have been eating very healthy meals for the last three months.
Thinking about two of my favorite recent vacations (as empty nesters): one was a river cruise in Europe, and the other a week at the Chautauqua Institution in western NY.
On the river cruise, I really enjoyed the delicious food, with meals/wines that tied in to the local areas we visited. I also enjoyed the guided excursions to historical sites. Our room was the least expensive so was not very spacious, but it was not an issue as we did not spend much time there.
At the Chautauqua Institution, we stayed in a room in a boarding house with a shared bathroom down the hall, and were designated a portion in one of many commercial size refrigerators and shelf space in the shared kitchen. I cooked some of our meals, and we ate out for others. The weather was perfect while we were there. We selected from the numerous daily activities, from famous speakers who were authors, experts in their area, etc. to the multiple performing arts events (dance, music, theater, etc.), or just enjoying the beautiful lake and area.
So evidently the lodging is not important to me, nor is not cooking (although I wouldn’t have wanted to cook all the meals). I think what I enjoyed most was having multiple opportunities for enrichment that I didn’t have to plan or work too hard to seek out and enjoy.
This brought back a memory for me. We were at a parent teacher conference for my oldest when he was in early elementary school and the teacher asked us what we did for vacations. We relayed a few to her, then asked what brought up the question. Apparently another young lad in her class told everyone he went “on a trip/vacation” to Grandma’s house for a weekend day and my son “corrected” him saying, “That’s not a vacation! In order for a trip to be a vacation it has to have at least one night away from home and not with relatives…” It seems he was rather adamant about it all.
Not once did we define a trip/vacation to him in that way - he developed that definition completely on his own - but that night we did have a conversation about “different stroke for different folks.” One never knows what one needs to cover when raising kids!
I do not enjoy getting lost, though there can be a fine line between that and adventure.
In Culebra a few years back, we parked our golf cart at the Flamenco Beach parking lot, walked about a hundred feet to our left, squeezed through a metal fence gate with a “Cuidado! Explosivas!” sign on it, hiked a mile or so… and ended up at a lovely beach called Carlos Rosario. This is a small beach with beautiful sand, some rocks to left and right, and beautifully clear turquoise water in between.
I had my snorkeling gear with me, and i very quickly donned it and jumped right in. I snorkeled for an hour.
When we got back to the b&b. my back and the backs of my legs were pink. for the next four days, it was painful just to get out of bed. lol. and yet i didn’t stop snorkeling. I just made sure to glaze myself with SPF 40, and ask her to do the lobster side of me…