What’s your style of vacation?

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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Living in a northern state, I have had a great need to get away in winter, better indulged now with retirement. My main criteria is no ice on sidewalks to enable long walks, and better yet, hiking. Though northern Arizona and seeing family was good for a number of years, the past two I have gone to Oaxaca in southern Mexico to meet a friend. Between working on our Spanish, exploring various craft traditions and walking miles every day, it has been about perfect. We stay in a place where folks gather on the rooftop to chat at sunset and the sense of community is lovely.

Every summer I camp with friends on a semi wilderness island. We have our traditions and shared history. The profound relaxation I feel in that setting is intoxicating, though I certainly spend a few hours hiking each day as well. Over the years, I have become more impressed with our shared toughness as we age.

Being single, figuring out the alone vs companionship part of travel is a challenge. Travel is more to me than a vacation, it is an avocation involving language, history and cultural study, cuisine, and more often these days, learning something of the natural history of an area. With companionship, I take more risks, but am less immersed in the culture and challenged to up my game with language use. Alone, I am more engaged with the environment, appreciate the freedom to explore what strikes my fancy, but it certainly can be less fun.

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I’m impressed and admire your travel and community circles.

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We like to do a bit of everything while traveling, although we lean towards outdoors activities. We definitely aren’t hardcore outdoor or active enthusiasts on vacation though; we spent decades working outdoors, so who wants to camp or hike all day for fun? I’d rather stay in a nice hotel and take a nice leisurely two or three hour hike or walk to enjoy the flora and fauna of our vacation locale.

I’m the vacation planner of the family. It’s like pulling teeth to get any input from my H and kids. They just say, “oh you always do a great job, we trust you!” Luckily, they are very easy to please, and I can’t think of a time when anyone complained about any of our activities. It gets old though having to repeat multiple times what’s on the agenda, what time we have to get up, what clothes we need to wear, etc. When I have printed out the itinerary/agenda with all the information that they need to know and everyone has a copy! I’ll admit, I’ve had a few meltdowns over being the one in charge of everything.

A typical trip might be two or three outdoor activities, a museum visit, tours of a local attraction, local entertainment, etc. We like to pay for guides for some activities as we learn more and we don’t just spend time wandering around aimlessly and ignorantly.

One activity I haven’t seen mentioned on this thread is boat tours. Although we have a person who gets motion sickness in the family, we just give her Dramamine and she’s good to go. We’ve gone on guided boat tours around Manhattan, on Yellowstone Lake, down the Li River near Guilin, in Alaska, San Diego, Costa Rica (both ocean and mangrove), Sanibel Island, Scotland (Loch Ness), and in the bayous near New Orleans. They were great learning experiences and the scenery was terrific.

Things I don’t care for: churches, architecture for architecture’s sake (I like the aesthetic value of structures), fine dining, snow skiing, or wineries.

Fave Natural Areas: Kenya, Glacier National Park, Li River, Guangxi Province, and the Redwoods.
Fave Cultural: Terra Cotta Warriors, Taj Majal, Little Bighorn National Monument, Santa Fe, NM, and the Anne Frank house.

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@LeastComplicated that sounds like me, pulling teeth. What I often do after a ton of research, is make a list of fun things I’ve found. Then I ask them to rank them and let me know if anything sounds especially cool. That usually works. But yes, we like to do boat tours!

But one other thing that makes a good vacation for me is to plan is to plan in downtime each day. We are always on the go, but I feel much much better if I nap or at least veg for 2 hours after lunch or in the afternoon.

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I live in Southern California 10 minutes from the ocean, so a beach vacation is never on my mind. I prefer to be active and go to see cities. I do not like driving everywhere— that’s a big negative living here for me as I was originally a city girl. So when I go on vacation, I want to be in a city where I can walk for miles, stop in a restaurant, stroll in the big city gardens if I need a nature fix, pop into a cool non-chain store. I do not like cold weather so I will avoid the winter months.

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There are beach vacations and there are beach vacations. My idea of a beach vacation is some lounging in the sun, sure……but it also means swimming, walking/running on the beach, kayaking, paddle boarding, etc. Definitely earning that beach town ice cream cone to be eaten at night by being active during the day!!!

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Just the ice cream spells vacation to me. :icecream:

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I guess my family distinguishes between “trips” and “vacation”.

Trips are specifically to go to a place or event. We’ve enjoyed major sporting events, special museum exhibits, and specific places. Airbnb is the best thing that ever happened to us – the downtime is excellent as we all are in a new place and cooking together.

Vacations are more than a long weekend and are for doing nothing. We are fortunate to be on our 5th generation of a Maine camp, where we do exciting stuff like fall asleep on the porch, refinish the floor, see who can swim across the lake, etc. Our other “vacations” have been few and far between, I’ve nothing like the rest of the thread but we did spend an off season 5 days at the beach – right on the beach — and it was heavenly. We cooked, we stared at dolphins, we walked and walked and walked on the nearly emptybeach. I got up very quietly one morning to see the sun come up over the ocean, and when I walked out to the porch, both my kids were there, already. Magic.

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Now you’re talkin’

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We have enjoyed different sorts of vacations–from hiking (Yosemite to the Camino Santiago) as well as just sitting on the beach. I have often tagged along with my H when he’s had business meetings in interesting places (Europe and Japan as well as places in the US). We enjoy art museums and other cultural attractions as well as sampling the local cuisine. H and I have never gone on a cruise; it’s not something that interests us. In 2019, I did go on a trip to Croatia (with my cousin–we’re Croatian). While there, we took a cruise on a small ship (30 people) stopping at various islands along the Adriatic. I’ve been to all 50 states with the exception of Alaska, which is a place I’d still like to visit. I have been to Italy, but want to go to Sicily (after watching White Lotus). Other than that, I’m content right now with going to our vacation home, which is on a beautiful island. Since Covid, we’ve been spending lots more time there (even in the off season).

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If you’re recruiting for new family
Members….

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We like all sorts of vacations. We like camping and did tents until a few years ago when we got a trailer. We enjoy bareboat sailing charter trips which we have done in different parts of the world. We live near the beach but we enjoy the occasional beach vacation. We enjoy visiting cities and want to explore more of Europe. We are independent travelers but have on occasion done day tours and also a few longer tours. When we visited China we had a guide in each area but we weren’t part of a group. We did an extended family trip to Kenya for a safari and of course had a guide.
My husband likes to go snowboarding a few times each winter. It’s not for me so I stay home. We did a river cruise in Europe with the in-laws and family but otherwise we don’t see ourselves going on cruises.

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Uh oh, you’re supposed to earn that ice cream cone?

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I find myself amused (in a nice way) that some folks lump all beaches and beach vacations together. To us there’s a huge variety in beaches and we plan accordingly. Are we planning on watching dolphins/whales (HI wins here, esp where the Spinner Dolphins hang out)? Do we want to scuba/snorkel? Do we want to walk/kayak? Surfing/boogie boarding? Do we want the beach to ourselves (pretty much) or are we ok with crowds? Rocks or sand? Water temp? Cliffs? Nature or walkable town? Salt or fresh water?

Even in the same country/state/territory there are so many options.

It’s similar with camping options.

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A few years ago, when we were in Maui, we made a tradition of going on a daily evening walk of 3-plus miles RT to eat mac nut ice cream! :slight_smile: We’d walk along the shore to the shopping center, eat the well earned treat on the beach, and then walk back to our condo. Best ice cream :ice_cream: ever.

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I think people are lumping various beach experiences together for the sake of brevity. For example–I’d rather go on a beach vacation than visit a city, e.g., New York, San Francisco, New Orleans, etc.

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@Marilyn, I hereby gift you with a lifetime, unlimited guilt-free “ChoatieMom Ice Cream” pass.*

[size=70](*Not good for fake ice cream. Looking at you soft-serve, frozen yogurt, and frozen custard.)[/size]

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I do admit that when we go biking on Coronado, we often stop for lunch at Moo Time for hot fudge sundaes. We also lunched on them one time on Sanibel when it was raining so we went down to the Lighthouse end.

But I must protest the limitation on soft serve - need an exception for frozen custard. On occasion after spending a few hours at Mission Beach, we head up to Mr. Frostie on Garnet for a nice dipped cone.

Today was a homecation, I guess - one of the nicest days so far in 2023. Fired up the hot tub for an hour then lounged reading, watching the palm trees sway, listening to the mockingbirds, and admiring my brand new little Bearss lime tree.

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Then someone else will have to gift you one. A big “NO” from me on frozen custard, frozen yogurt, or soft serve. Life’s too short. I’ll let gelato slip by, though.

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A soft serve vanilla chocolate swirl dip cone is something I always try to get when I visit (or should I say vacation) in my hometown in season. Nothing beats a dip cone from the local Dari-Delite to bring back memories. Try it, you might like it! :smile:

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