What kind of vacationer are you? If you have vacation days offered by your employer, do you take them? If you’re self employed, when you finally have the chance to get away, do you? What do you do?
I’m a four-day, cram it all in, see as much as you can kind of gal. Fly in, do something that night. Get up early and take a big tour, hit a couple of museums, key sites, or hysterical landmarks. Catch a show that night. Next day, hit another museum or park, see someone you know there (maybe two or three different meetups) and have a heart-to-heart. See a show, meet someone for dinner or drinks. Next day – something big, super fun and memorable and a great lunch before the airport. Get it all in, don’t worry about sleep, buy souvenir books and notice everything cuz you don’t know if you’ll get to come back.
This method was honed on the road during car trips across the US with my mom and sisters. We rarely stayed in one place more than one night, unless we were visiting family. Then it was two nights. My mother’s tour guide tendencies were modeled after the musical “On the Town:” gotta see the whole town in just one day! In fact, on my first trip to NYC with a car full of cousins from NJ, we saw it all in one day! Saw the Statue of Liberty, went up in the Empire State Building, had a hot dog on the street and saw the Rockettes. In just one day. We lingered for a family reunion in Texas and another in Florida on two different trips. Four days, I think. We stayed a leisurely 3 days on the shores of Lake Michigan, when my mom had summered as a child. Two days in Colorado with her best friend. Had to keep moving – so much to see on those road trips! I was trained well.
When I was in elementary school we’d get a mountain cabin for a month. It was a completely different kind of vacation. My parents would get a cabin without a TV, and there was no such thing as a VCR or DVD player. We worked on jigsaw puzzles, played board games, played with toys, read books, and worked on latch-hook rugs or painting projects. It was leisurely, generally, with a few trips to the village for ice skating or ice cream sodas peppered in with our days swimming in the mountain lake. Friends and family would come up to visit and stay the night. My dad would dramatically read poems like “Casey at the Bat” and “Kubla Khan.” I would create variety shows or long-form larps for my cousins to perform with me. Leisure. We were not hikers or sportos but we ventured outside to walk the neighborhood, to explore and to find rocks to paint. A different kind of vacation than the road trips. A month of luxury that, as an adult, I didn’t think I could afford – neither time nor money.
I wanted my kids to see many things. The four or five-day itinerary made us squeeze in as much as possible, using as few vacation days from work as possible. I tried to maximize activity for the lowest cost. It felt great to cover so much territory, even if I sort of wore out my wife and kids.
This week, I find myself in Disney’s vacation paradise. It’s a work trip but I have time on my hands – an actual day off! It seems that people book more than four days when they come to Walt Disney World. In fact, Disney has created many ways to enjoy leisure in between visits to the parks. Sure, each resort has a pool, but many of them also have hammocks to lie in, bikes to rent, and evening movies. There are fishing trips and golf, ping pong and arcades. It makes me rethink “vacationing” overall. My four-day hits and the road trips didn’t include time to just chill – aside from the reading and writing I did while my mom drove the car. How did I forget to do this?
I spent the day riding around on boats, skyways, and buses on my day off, just talking with people and thinking about how other people and other families plan and spend their vacation time. I’ll share more of my thoughts in the next post…
Until then, I’d love to hear whether you take time off, and how vacation plays out for you. Has pandemic changed how you handle – or will spend – that time?
