This was sort of a question on a Facebook forum I’m a member of. I’m not sure if we’ve talked about this, probably have but I’m hoping not for a while
My husband is not the best vacationer. He’s definitely not a lay around the beach, reading a book kinda guy. If he wants to sit around, he wants to be in his own house, with his STUFF! Why go somewhere else to sit around? We do live on a golf course in a vacation area, so we do feel we live in the best place.
If we go on vacation, we like a structured trip. Our river cruise was the perfect vacation. For us. It’s very structured. You see a little bit of each place you go. A different place every day. Lots of tours. Lots of castles and churches. It’s exactly our jam.
We liked that we got to meet new people. We are happy making small talk and liked the communality of the environment.
My husband is an engineer so this idea of a highly structured trip appealed to us. Others would hate it.
We did a trip to Italy and while we loved Italy, we floundered. We don’t like just wandering. Don’t ask the husband to sit at a cafe, have a drink and watch the world go by. Not his thing. But a tour of a factory, we’d be all over that!
So what’s your jam? And if I’ve brought up this topic before, I’ll blame it on my increasing old age.
We like to wander. We don’t typically plan things, but rather explore and discover. We love the water, but we want to jump in waves instead of laying on beaches. We seek out the quirky. We don’t go, go, go the way some people do, with itineraries … we go, go, go wherever we feel ourselves drawn. It could be city, country, shore - doesn’t matter, as long as we can poke around and discover new things that interest us. Our S still enjoys traveling that way - in fact, last summer he took a two week solo trip exploring places and things that interest him. Our D, OTOH, prefers to lay at the pool at an all inclusive resort in a tropical place.
Beach, beach, museum, beach, museum, beach beach beach. Lots of naps. Cook for ourselves.
Organized cruises, tours, etc. make us break out in a rash We spent 2 weeks in Newport bc DH had to work there; I read at the beach, window shopped, and we took a tour of the only mansion that was self-guided so we could avoid crowds and docents. and took that tour just so the people he worked with were satisfied we had done so.
My husband will stay home with your H @deb922 . :). He just really doesn’t have much desire to go anywhere. He is content at home. If he IS going someplace, what would appeal to him would be a national park, nature. But he is not overly physical.
I’ve been thinking of this a little. I really rely largely on my kids to be my travel companions. I don’t want to do that all the time and they have limited time - to travel with me and even for themselves in some cases. Would I do a trip alone? Do like a women’s tour?
Admittedly, tours are not my thing. Standing and moving and listening to someone talk and point things out sounds like a nightmare to me. I am willing to do limited museum visits but it really needs to be a specialty museum. History is not my thing.
I like culture but I want to immerse myself in the nature/food/architecture of a place. I can roam the streets “looking” for hours. I like to see how people live.
Landmarks are fine for a short visit but I don’t want to spend 4 hours at a church. I’ll see the church, do a quick visit inside/outside, move on.
So overall, I’d say I prefer having a list of “want to do’s” - things to see, places to eat…but I don’t want to know that on Thursday I have these 3 things lined up and someone is waiting there for me to partake.
We tend to be active when we vacation. We like beach vacations, but where we can walk 6 miles on the beach. We like to ride bikes, and have done several guided bike trips as vacations. We like to see new places, but we also own a timeshare in Grand Cayman, and go there fairly often. We like museums, but we wouldn’t be happy spending a week doing cultural stuff. We like national parks, but prefer when they’re not too crowded.
We like to go somewhere new and see/experience as much as we can. The kids are both at 30+ states and my wife beat me to 50, traveling to AR and ND for work, while I’m stuck at 48. And 25-30 countries.
And when we’re there, we’re on the move. We just returned from 8 days in the UK. Even with 3 nights in London, we managed 1,160 miles on the rental car. Along with ~140,000 steps. We did over 1,000+ miles in Alaska and New England within the last few years. Iirc, we even managed a couple hundred miles on St. Kitts, exploring every nook and cranny, back before the tourist boom.
This means a relative inexpensive, adequate hotels at night. Moxy and Delta hotels in the UK - fine for 9 hours, with 8 hours of sleep. We’ve certainly stayed at upscale properties, but it’s kind of wasted. Hanging around at the pool or hotel beach just isn’t our thing.
The first part of our European trip a month from now will be spent at a beach resort in Spain. We will relax a lot but take a couple of day trips. When we fly to France, we will rent a car and go, go, go! I want to see everything.
I prefer Disney trips. WDW and Disneyland. Aulani would be awesome, but haven’t been there yet.
DH would be happy spending several days on road trips. But on those road trips, he’s shout-talking on the phone in the car on work conference calls the entire time…which makes it really unpleasant and gives me a headache. As a result, as long as he’s still working, I officially hate road trips and refuse to do another long road trip with him until he retires in over 10 years from now.
DH also wants to do a beach vacation at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet. Also, I’m not convinced that he wouldn’t spend the entire time on work calls. And then I’d rather just go by myself. And if I’m gonna go on a solo trip somewhere, it’ll be to WDW or Disneyland.
I prefer tours of museums, historic sites, cultural sites etc. I prefer smaller sites, off the beaten track, and hate tourist traps. For example we visited El Castillo in Northern Spain for cave paintings rather than the Alta Mira cave museum. The paintings were not as spectacular, but at least they were real (as opposed to Alta Mira’s reproductions) and there was nobody else there so we got a private tour. Also, El Castillo cost only 3 euros!
OMG the work calls in the car! We would drive to my mom’s and he would be on conference calls all day!
He’d drive in between calls and then I would drive.
I do not miss those days!
Active vacations are good. Husband not a big fan of the water except if he could scuba dive.
We did what I call the husband’s favorite vacation. We would play a good golf course and drive home (Michigan has lots of great golf courses) sleep in his own bed. It was perfect for him
I’m pretty happy getting out. I’m the easy one. My kids are not interested in any vacations with their mother. They use their limited time off with their significant other.
I love, love, LOVE factory tours, especially if what is being made is important to the culture of the region. For example I have enjoyed a high-tech manufacturing tour in the Basque region of Northern Spain, followed by a cheese cave tour in Cantabria, and a tour of an industrial cider making facility in Asturias.
It does help to speak the language. My Spanish is not great, but many tour guides are perfectly glad to speak slowly, especially at off-the-beaten-track places.
We like a lot of different types of vacations. Husband loves sailing trips and camping. He also likes lake trips with the family. I enjoy those but they aren’t my first choice. I love seeing both cities and the countryside. I love open markets, checking out the grocery stores, cafes and wandering. We aren’t huge museum goers but we will visit a few each trip. Or if it’s a location like Florence or Amsterdam with many museums we will go heavy on museums for a few days. We also enjoy beach vacations.
What we don’t like- cruises (though we did do a river cruise with extended family which was great for a large group). My husband hates Disney and he will likely go to Disneyland only if the grandkids insist.
We used to never do tours but we have done a few. China we had a guide in each location but we didn’t do a tour group. We did a safari that was guided which was great. We were our own large group. Those are both places that aren’t easy to do on our own. We have started in recent years to do day tours. We have enjoyed food tours.
We mostly like to mosey and check out things that strike our fancy, but are open to doing the occasional day tour on a bus. We did one last fall on our Ireland trip, but just for one day. We like some touristy sites if there’s a good reason for it to be touristy, but we also love just striking out on our own and exploring.
Love a beach vacation and do that almost every year. We usually go to the same place and just set everyone free to do their own thing. We will come together for supper usually (but not always). I love long walks on the beach and nosing around in shops with my friend, riding bikes through the village. DH likes to take long walks, too. He’s not much for shopping, though, also not too interested in riding bikes.
We like going to the mountains and hiking, too. Love National Parks.
I take 3 to 4 vacations a year. I will always do a beach vacation a year, and then more active sight seeing vacations. In the last few years I have been doing more structured trips - wine/food tours, cooking class trip, cruise. I look for tours where they would take me to places that I wouldn’t normally go and they are usually less than 15 people.
I, too, am in the “no cruises” category. Stuck on a big floating tin can with thousands of other people, all of whom escape the ship at every port to do all of the same shore excursions as you…all the while, norovirus is ready to pounce and spread like wildfire. No thanks!
Also am in the “no camping” category. If I wanted to pack up a mini-house, set it all up, poop in a pit toilet, have no showers for a few days, have to pack up all of our food every night in bear boxes, then pack up the mini-house, haul it all back home, and then unpack the mini-house…well, I’d rather just stay home and sleep in my comfortable bed instead.
But sit on a balcony at the Animal Kingdom Lodge while the animals hang out right in front of you? SIGN ME UP!
There is cruise and then there is cruise. Last cruise I was on, my room (a regular room)was just as big as a hotel room. The bathroom had a tub and a shower, with double sinks. There were only few hundred guests.
Nah, cruises are not for me. I want to do my own thing. I don’t want to be stuck in a giant floating resort. No fun for me and mine. Neither of my kids has any interest either and my husband is a big heck no. I don’t love flying or bus tours for the same reason. I want to be able to set my own pace and decide where I go and when. Sometimes you gotta fly if you wanna get there, though, and sometimes the bus tours are worth it if it’s short and there’s lots of time off the bus, but really we have only done one of those. It was good, though.
I am happy for other people to enjoy cruising. You can have all my cruises!
We spent 2 weeks in Newport bc DH had to work there; I read at the beach, window shopped, and we took a tour of the only mansion that was self-guided so we could avoid crowds and docents. and took that tour just so the people he worked with were satisfied we had done so.