Vacations for Relaxation or Adventure?

[AmeliaJane]

The family vacation threads, plus a recent conversation with my sister, made me start wondering...what kind of vacations does your family like? To explain the question...

We were reminiscing about our side of the family, in which our parents loved to take us on trips. Sometimes these were tied to my father's business, but they just believed that part of good parenting (especially because we lived in a rural area) was showing the children the different things the world could hold. Graduation gifts to all the children were special family vacations. They continue to travel on their own in retirement.

We were contrasting this with another side of the family, which likes going the same place every year for vacation. They rent a condo and love going back to the same beaches, restaurants, amusement park, etc.

I have for the last ten years been taking a third kind of vacation--I go visit family or friends faraway. That's what I like to spend my free time doing.

So what do you and/or your family like to do?

[Mrs-M]

For the past handful of years now we haven't made a travel trip anywhere, but now that our youngest are getting older and gaining more independence, I'm hoping we can slowly change that.

Repeat vacations to the same place (year after year) don't do anything for me. I need change when it comes to getaways. (One year this, the next year that, and so on). To be perfectly honest, visiting distant family has always been a real favourite of mine. There's always so much love waiting to be taken in. Hugs, kisses, embraces, handshakes, arms wrapped around one another, I really do love that sort of thing, and of course for larger families like ours it helps keep the cost down in relation to accommodations, etc.

Our younger children have been talking about a camping trip, but camping and me just don't get along! Oh how I hate feeling/being dirty and greasy and oily and smelly! I need a shower or bath everyday, sometimes twice a day, so laying around in some tent (on the ground) and living around a smoky campfire for days on end just doesn't do it for me, but of course I'd never tell the younger kids that. If a camping trip is what they want, then a camping trip it will be, but boy am I ever going to be miserable. Not cranky like, just crawly! Dirty hands, bugs all around, clothing all permeated with smoke from the fire, egads! :laff:

But ideally, I'd love to slowly delve into taking big city trips/vacations where we could visit museums and things like that. That in itself has always been a love of mine. I LOVE museums!!! The kids would too, I just know it. Plus, it's so easy setting up daily itineraries where you can schedule a full day around fun and interesting things to do/see.

And of course my dream would be to take a family vacation to Europe at some point in time, before the kids get too old. DH and I have talked about doing that for a long time. I'm thinking England. To me that would be the epitome of a grand family holiday/vacation!

[goldensmom]

Both. As a child our family always took a 2 week summer vacation to some national landmark or attraction. It was so much fun deciding where to go and planning the trip. I never could figure out why my parents never bought any souvenirs of where we’d been as did we children. Then as an adult I revisited those same places and soon realized that the parents paid for the gas, lodging and food and the kids got souvenirs. We also had a cottage on a nearby lake at which we spent most of the summer.

As we are in the ‘been there, done that more than once’ category, we go to the same spot every year now, to relax and I thoroughly enjoy this type of vacation also. Family/friends are welcome at our home anytime but I don’t really see visiting family as something I would enjoy as a vacation. On that note, talking with my grandmother years and years ago, visiting distant family was their only type of vacation. Previous generations in my family were much closer that the present generation and visiting, getting to know one another is probably the reason.

Camping and hiking is also on my list of favorites. I started a list when I was in college of all the trails in the U.S. I wanted to hike - did some of them. My all time favorite vacations are the several trips to London (for the theater and museums) and the English countryside. Gosh, now my head is all out of the things I need to get done today and I’m thinking vacations.

[Alan]

I'm thinking vacations today too. We tend to enjoy the adventurous type, going places we haven't been and seeing things we haven't seen, although that's getting harder to do these days.

In the 90's and early 00's we took a majority of our vacations in Europe, travelling throughout England, France, Austria, Germany, Belgium etc., but since about 2004 we've switched to seeing America in our motorhome with a motorcycle in tow.

Next month, we'll be heading back to South Dakota and Wyoming to see a few spots we missed during our last visit in that area and the following month we'll head out to Texas and New Mexico to do the same with the grandkids. I'm starting to get wanderlust just thinking about it.

[Kat]

I like to relax, preferrably somewhere with a lot of natural beauty (woods, ocean, etc.). My busy everyday life is enough adventure for me! :-) But to each his (or her) own!

[Float On]

We use to always vacation at Hilton Head (DH's mom has several places there). Then all our travel involved shows (retail or wholesale). Got to go to and do a lot of neat things but it also involved working. I'd love to plan a trip that doesn't involve work.

[catherine]

For 15 years we have gone to Vermont for the first two weeks in August with the family. When we started my oldest was 18 and my youngest 11; they're all adults now, but we have stuck with the tradition. We did rent a different place every year for a while, then we found a house that we really loved, so we did that for 5-6 years. Unfortunately, the owner decided to use the house himself this summer, so we're looking for another place. But we LOVE Vermont--so much so, my second son actually decided to go to school and live there, which he does now. I think we actually have more friends in VT than we have home in NJ.

Mrs-M: In 2007 we took the family to Scotland--the four kids and my MIL. She's Scottish, so we wanted to bring the kids to where she was raised and have her tell all the stories about growing up. They were in their early-mid twenties at the time, and it was perfect. We loved it--and I highly recommend it. I saved up frequent flier miles for 9 years--and accumulated enough for six of the seven RT tickets.

[IshbelRobertson]

I have both types of holidays. We go to Cornwall about twice a year, spring and late summer as we have lots of friends in the area and used to keep our boat there. We go to the same small fishing village where our family grew up with the kids of locals, fishermen, schoolteachers, pub owners etc and they are still friendly with many of the kids.

We've lived around the globe, so we try to get back to see friends in some of those countries - often on the way somewhere else - for example when we travel to visit friends and family in Australia, we'll often take a short break in Singapore or UAE.

We also love Greece and we visit one or more of the greek islands per year - often returning to our favourites. I love to cook and have been given gifts of cooking courses at various places in Europe, like France, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Spain. Whilst I do that - my husband goes off on a boys' week break with 2 of his oldest friends.

I am grateful that I worked in academia and had LOOONG holidays each year, my husband now acts as a consultant and can make his own work schedule, so we are adding new 'wish we could go there' destinations to our list!

[benhyr]

DW and I prefer some adventure. We generally try to avoid chain restaurants and we don't visit the same place twice. or, if we're driving to visit friends, we'll take different routes.

We once drove from Minneapolis to Seattle and we decided to stop in Las Vegas, then Napa Valley, and then we went on to the coast and took the Pacific Coast Highway up to Oregon.

We do need to get out of the country more though.

[Stella]

Mostly adventure, although someday relaxation would be a good thing too. A weekend away with just Zach is the only way a relaxing vacation is going to happen for a while, though. Vacationing with small children is seldom relaxing and always an adventure.

If funds permit we are planning a roadtrip this winter from Minneapolis to San Diego to see my mom and sister for Christmas. Along the way we'll stop in Wyoming to see Zach's uncle, Northern Nevada to see his aunt, Las Vegas to see my grandmother and Los Angeles to see all our friends and family there. Zach wants to take the southern route home and detour to Arkansas to see his dad, but I think that sounds like a really long time on the road for a family with four kids seven and under. It should be an adventure though!