I almost never buy anything unless we need sundries or snacks. No interest in shopping here at home and even less so when I travel. I would much rather spend my time and money on sightseeing/excursions/museums/local cuisine.
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We are going on a 12 day trip to Israel/Jordan in spring 2024. We have never gone on an organized group tour before, but we are making an exception for this trip. It’s a “Following in the Footsteps of Jesus” trip with a group from my church led by a seminary professor who has led these tours for years. There will be some evening “study sessions” to prepare for the next day’s sites. This is something that’s been on my bucket list for years so I told DH has has to go (there is some grumbling involved). Most of the people in the group will be folks we’ve known for years and consider friends.
DH is usually our vacation planner, and he is a “points and miles” guy. So he tends to plan trips around finding places where he can get a good deal on business class flights and make use of Hyatt or Hilton points. We’re much more into history than nature, and are happy to walk around a foreign city all day, take public transportation, etc.
We’ve taken a lot of cruises over the years. Last year we did a British Isles cruise and a Canada/New England cruise. We always add on a land visit (on our own, not through the cruise line) at one or both ends. For the British Isles cruise we spent a week in London during the heat wave before the cruise. For the Canada/NE cruise we spent 2 nights in Boston on the front end and 2 nights in Quebec on the back end. For 2023 we’re doing a Panama Canal full transit on Viking Ocean.
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Family vacations with adult kids are the norm in my community. People have a lot of money and take their adult kids on big annual trips. We have the money but NOTHING would be worse for me. I don’t like to travel in the first place and being with a lot of people ( my kids and my husband) with “what’s next”?” type of attitudes is no fun at all for me AT ALL. I don’t want to “pack it all in” because “ who knows wjen we will get back”. Not a good time for me. DH and I spend about 3 months of the year in a warm weather location but we don’t do much there. We work. He does more visiting local tourist spots. I just like being at home and going out to eat. We gave our kids all of our credit card earned airline miles (500k) and will help subsidize their vacations. A friend was like “ but don’t you want to go WITH THEM”. No.
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I lived in Bolivia during a year in high school. Cochabamba. That is where my Dad was from. I still have all that side of the family over there. Have been several times, but haven’t been in 30 years. Now that my parents are gone, I don’t feel the desire. That’s where DH and I had our honeymoon, pays Rio.
I guess it’s changed so much I wouldn’t recognize it.
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It seems to be somewhat the norm in my community too, at least with people I know, but not everyone I know. I do know some people who are very wealthy and take their children, grandchildren and in-laws on big annual trips and pay for all of it, as far as I know. I’d say most of my super close friends who vacation with their adult kids, usually just do small trips like rent a house on the beach or a cabin in the mountains. Or it could be a bigger trip, but the adult kids pay their own way. We technically COULD afford to pay for our adult kids to go on vacations with us, but we’d have to take fewer vacations. And they prefer to take vacations on their own and H and I like to vacation on our own too. Plus our kids live near us, so we see them a lot anyway and we took plenty of vacations together as a family when they were children. It could be different if our kids lived further away and a vacation was a good way for us to meet up with them…
Our style of vacation has changed in later years. Early years was road trips, moving every day or two to see as many places as possible - often national park and such type of unique places. Many other vacations involved visiting family in Michigan, New England, and Florida. I always wanted to get away from Chicagoland in the winter to places where I could walk the beach and swim in pools.
Then we moved to San Diego, truly a vacation paradise, and we do lots of daycations. We have a lovely pool, and can get to the beach in ten minutes or so. No more family left to visit in the prior destinations. Husband is reluctant to travel unless I can come up with a list of ideas to make it worth his while. Our trip in late 2021 to Palm Springs basically incorporated what we like in vacations - scenic and new to us nature venues (we spent a day at Joshua Tree), good restaurants, perhaps a nice museum, maybe an interesting zoo (we went to the Palm Springs Art Museum and the Living Desert Zoo), and maybe a public event (we attended the Palm Springs Veterans Day parade, such as it was). My feet no longer want me to do vacations that involve a lot of walking, at least not two days in a row.
And referring back to the shared/separate bedroom thread, husband doesn’t think we can share a room without sleeping issues, which is true to some extent. I think that’s part of his reluctance; maybe he doesn’t want to spend a vacation with me nudging him to stop snoring. Or him nudging me.
Husband says there is nowhere in particular he’s interested in going anymore. Sigh. At least I got him to move here. I was looking at solo cruises just before the pandemic. We’ve been to Hawaii three times, most recently 25 years ago, and I would love to go back just to snorkel, honestly. Reports and reviews indicate it’s a very different experience than way back when. I was looking at the circle island cruise for that reason.
Son prefers to visit us rather than me/us going up to see him in Seattle, although we’ve done that.
I like active vacations. At home. I walk my dog and play tennis every day. So if I am not active on vacation I start to get antsy. When our three kids were younger and our family was SO busy a weeklong vacation at the beach, just relaxing was a good break. But now I prefer active vacations.
I just got back from a fabulous two week trip to Australia with three tennis friends. We spent three days at the Australian Open, and the rest exploring Melbourne, Sydney and the Whitsundays (Barrier Reef). We were on the go all day, every day and had so much fun.
I live very close to Disneyland. But I don’t like crowds so I don’t love it and have no desire to go to DisneyWorld. I don’t think I would like a cruise.
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Road trip. Visit historic sites. Ask locals (usually historic site employees) for restaurant recommendations and have a good sized lunch around 2 pm. Dinner is takeout or something light. I hate eating a big dinner but when working that’s usually what I do so vacation I do my preferred schedule. I don’t really like hiking but I like to walk at outdoor museums, battlefields, cute small towns, cities. I love the southeast / Gulf coast which we can drive to and I love fresh seafood but can’t do more than a day of a “beach vacation.” I get too bored and annoyed at sand everywhere it’s not supposed to be. When my boys were growing up we went on a lot of theme park based vacations for them so I’ve been there done that.
I love a beach vacation, but I don’t sit out on the sand. We go to a cute town that has lots of local restaurants and shops and usually go with friends and family. Some days we don’t make it out to the beach, but I always regret that, like to get at least one good walk by the ocean in and I could walk for miles. We try to eat dinner together, maybe put a puzzle out, and just have a chill time.
I also like a road trip, but my family does not like it if I have a list of things we have to do each day, so I usually come up with a menu of cool things to choose from with the understanding that we cannot do them all just like you can’t eat every dish on the restaurant menu, not enough time in the day or room in your stomach.
If we do a family road trip I usually ask folks to pick one thing they really want to do and we make sure to do that and then we just play it by ear for the rest of it. Might pick from the menu or if it’s a shorter trip we might just wander and see what we see.
We went to Ireland for a week in October and saw friends. We did two big things, the Cliffs of Moher and The Book of Kells, and then we just did our own things, visited with friends, wandered around the cities (Galway and Dublin) and checked things out. We split up and my husband and I went in one direction and our kids (18 & 21) did their own thing.
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So interesting to read everyone’s differing styles. To me, not doing anything and just reading my book would make me feel like I was wasting the money on getting to and being in a vacation spot. My feeling is that I can sit and read on my couch, in my yard or at a easily accessible park, lake or beach. One or two days of that kind of hanging out is great, but not an entire vacation.
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It changes over time, right? When D23 was little we did a lot of great beach/surfing vacations to the Outer Banks and Puerto Rico and Costa Rica with family and friends.
I love a beach vacation and to just lay around and relax. Husband and daughter do not.
They love to ski - I used to tag along but stopped in the last two years as I cannot keep up with either of them and don’t really enjoy it.
Having some issues going away with friends and family because DH is VERY active and no one our age can, or really, wants, to keep up with him. I’m in pretty good shape but I can’t do the things he wants to do, and certainly not as quickly.
We did a great trip to Switzerland in 2018 - a perfect mix of hiking the alps and enjoying the city life, but really nothing big since then. We rented a beach house to see my family in SC in summer 2020 and 2021 and both years were disasters. Bad weather and some familial tension, so we skipped this summer citing college tour visits.
We have been talking about planning a trip to Spain this summer before D23 heads off to college but the prices are - $$$ - just for airfare so I haven’t gotten very far.
But we are probably a mix of active and relaxation - if we get to Spain the plan would be a few days in Barcelona and then to Mallorca, rent a nice finca with a pool and a view - do day trips around the island and just hike, swim, eat, relax!
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I like my vacations paid for by someone else! I’ll do whatever they want.
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I don’t feel that way if I go anywhere warm when at home it’s often cold 8-9 months a year!
Good point maya54! Living in the NE, going south in the winter has been fun. I have mostly gone to spend time with a niece and a dear friend. But even then we spend maybe one day on the beach, some time hanging in the house, but also do walks in the wildlife areas, museums, and craft fairs or other festivals. Just returned from a trip to NOLA with my Florida friend and another college friend. Luckily, we all enjoy active trips.
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We enjoy a lot of different types of vacations - semi-active (think rambles, skiing etc as opposed to hard core hikes), city (lots of parts of Europe as well as major US cities), beach (annual trip to the Cape - have also done Florida, Mexico, Dominican), national parks. There isn’t a lot we won’t do. Haven’t every cruised and don’t find that appealing but would consider a river cruise at some point (maybe when we are older) - we did Disney & Universal when the kids were younger and enjoyed that but wouldn’t do it again - too many lines and way overpriced (IMO) considering what it is (not to mention that I’m the only family member that actually likes rides). I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel as much as I have. I love seeing new things - and revisiting old favorites.
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My parents had friends who did archeology tours in Egypt and Greece which sounded interesting. I’d be up for tours like that that have a specific focus. Rick Steves tours sound neat, but we tend to use his advice when we travel and travel on our own…
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We love our adult kids but being with them 24/7 for a week or more can be a bit much. We own a timeshare in the San Diego area. When our 2 kids were young the 4 of us would share the 2 bedroom unit. But now that they have spouse/SO’s, we feel the need to rent a second unit so that we’re not TOO cosy. We’ve also helped our kids out with hotel points or airline miles for some of their trips, including our D’s upcoming honeymoon. Some time in the next couple years I’d love to do a family cruise. I think cruises can work well when you want to be together some of the time but not all the time. And because all the meals are included you don’t have to split up bills or think about who is treating for a given meal.
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People often vacation to where we live too - our county’s finances depend upon it. I love living there, but yes, we go elsewhere for our vacations.
One conversation I found interesting came from talking with a group of Aussies who were traveling across the US. They loved the Adirondacks - near where I grew up in NY. I made a comment to the effect of, “Yeah, they aren’t like the mountains in the west, but they’re neat.” They went on and on about how the Adirondacks were so much better (in their eyes) than all of the western mountains in the US. WTH? As they continued to explain (again, in their eyes), “The western US mountains look like regular mountains anywhere else, in Europe or elsewhere. The Adirondacks are green to the top and have a cool look to them.”
My take away is what you grow up with is “neat, but typical.” What you see once in a while is amazing. I haven’t been to Australia (yet), but I expect I’d be more wowed there than they are.
People come here where I live and often comment on how beautiful it all is. I use those comments to reflect and say, “Yep, that’s one of the reasons we chose to live here. Eye candy!”
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We live in a vacation state with plenty of things to see and do. While I prefer the woods and waters of the east in the summer, we “winter” in a resort.
This morning, we’re enjoying coffee on one of the club patios overlooking the golf course and the Superstition Mountains:
Our club facilities are spectacular with a full service spa/salon, fitness center and classes, playing courts, restaurants, concerts, pro shop (PGA course), multiple pools, walking trails, etc.
For us, this doesn’t get old. We’ve both traveled enough in our careers to last a lifetime. If I’m ever curious about another place, I’ll buy the coffee table book and enjoy the pictures from the cocktail comfort of my patio. Any curiosity I have about other places is easily satisfied by a book.
Definitely, different strokes.
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In the morning, she sits on the beach under a palm tree or some scrubby bush/tree, while my back and the backs of my legs become sunburned while snorkeling.
Lunch at the beach. Nap and/or a beverage or two in the afternoon, or – if we are spry – a walk around town.
If I am not too sore, we go out for dinner. If I am, she grabs takeout from the nearest place serving something we’d like.
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