What's Your Ideal Vacation?

Yes, this is really Emery in Paris.

I recently became a 12-month employee. In academia, that means I’ve gone to the dark side—I’ve become an administrator. I love the opportunity to try administration (of course, I’m still teaching and conducting research) and I must admit having a 12-month paycheck as opposed to a 9-month paycheck is also rather wonderful.

So, I’m using my vacation time to attend a Suzuki violin camp in two weeks in Hartford, Connecticut. Don’t get me wrong, I love violin camp. I love being the superstar parent who takes notes for everyone, keeps track of the time, and asks far too many questions in the parent support group classes.

But, if I’m really honest, I’d rather take a vacation in a city without having to attend a camp. I’d go to museums, shops, and hikes. I’d seek out quiet corners and buy my meals at grocery stores so I could picnic. And, then in the evening, I’d go to the opera, or a play, or a film. And, I love attending Mass in foreign cities. I once dragged my sister to Holy Thursday Mass in Athens and it was all in Greek. 

So, I asked my family this week to blog about their ideal vacation. Victor, you’re first.

VICTOR: My ideal vacation is doing whatever I want, whenever I want, for as long as I want.  Imagine being married to a control freak who thinks “vacation” means “using your time wisely” i.e. every second of every day being filled with the most efficient itinerary meant to maximize your time and pack in as much educational museum time as possible.  If “relaxation” is your idea of vacation, forget it.  I mean, you might miss the museum of umbrellas or … ugh.  Forget it.

But here’s a fact:  I am well acquainted with every inch of Prague.  Every.  Inch.  Why?  Because Jackie and I took an apartment there for a solid month in Prague when we were still a “no offspring” married couple.  I had notions of lounging in cafes and sipping wine, but this isn’t Jackie’s vacations style.  If there is a museum or park or library or ANYTHING  … well, we saw it.  And looking back, this is a good thing.  That’s a long way to travel not to see as much as possible.  She has my gratitude.

However …

“Relaxation” is in no way part of her vacation vocabulary.  Example: We’ve been to Disney like … oh .. 12 million times.  One might think this is a perfect argument NOT to go yet again.  But no.  Wrong.  At this point in my Disney vacationing career, it feels good to feel no obligation to go on every ride.  I mean, we’ve done it all, right?  But if you’re on the Jackie plan you WILL BY GOD CRAM AS MANY RIDES INTO A DAY AS POSSIBLE.  Ugh.  What about just moseying about with no plan or hurry?  Can’t we do that?

Extrapolate that to the entire world and the fact is that if she would just lighten up a bit, and if I would just pick up the pace a bit, we’d be the perfect traveling couple … seeing a lot and making the most of our time, but also chilling and sipping some wine and relaxing.

Just 2o more years of marriage and we might finally nail it.

EMERY: Since the others have been talking about vacations in other parts of the world, I will be talking about vacations where you stay home. While I do rather enjoy a lot of vacations where you travel to other places, it’s always nice to have a week of staying at home, without a thing needing to be done. But this style of vacation can become awful, if not done properly. A good example of an awful day during a staycation goes as follows. You spend most of the day on the couch, not going outside at all. No plans, nothing to do. You try to think of something, anything to do, but most of it is either a hobby that you would have to commit to, or not very exciting. When this happens the day becomes extremely slow, you feel very sluggish, and just wish the day would end.

The best way to fight these lazy days is by having a plan. What I started to do is not play as many video games during the weeks of camps, so that there are more games to be played during the other days. The best thing to do however, that I just recently realized, is going outside. Making up errands to run, or just going to get some exercise is a great way to get out, and not feel so sluggish. What wakes me up more than anything is hanging out with friends. Interacting with other people that I know well enough to feel comfortable around gets me very energized.