Month: October 2015

Deciding where to go and what to do isn’t a straightforward proposition. We’ll decide what kind of break we’re in need of. Then we start looking for places that fit the bill. Then we might come up with a couple of things to do. Then we’ll circle back and look at our “what” again, to be sure we think it’s still valid. It takes a couple of iterations.

I think there are two phases to thinking through the vacation. I’ll call the first research. It’s kind of broad, which helps you decide on the location. Then we plan, getting specifics on hotels, restaurants, museums and tours.

When we are researching, we look everywhere: books we’ve read, magazines like Garden and Gun or Destinations, and friends. Occasionally I’ll look at TripAdvisor’s “Top Ten” lists, or we’ll see something on a movie. It’s very general and open-ended.

But planning–that requires specifics. And specific resources. Here are my favorites:

My own network: We have had enormous success in finding great restaurants, rentals, and guides, by asking someone we had already worked with. Chances are, you’ve met some great people in your travels, too. Most of them are happy to give referrals! For example, several years ago we rented an apartment in Paris through Paris Made Perfect. We highly recommend them, and when we visited London we tried to rent through their sister company in England. They couldn’t accommodate us but put us in touch with one of their competitors whom they knew well. We had a great stay.

At the end of this post I’ve listed a few of my favorite resources from my own network. This is a short list, and later this month I’ll give a much more exhaustive list. Right now, I’m hoping this will spark your own ideas.

TripAdvisor: I could write a whole post on how to use this great, but huge, site. It’s extremely powerful, but it can also be overwhelming. It is excellent for restaurants and hotels, as long as you know what you are looking for. It is less useful for shopping and vacation rentals. It is invaluable for small museums and tour guides.

Travel Agents: I rarely use a travel agent, but they can be very helpful in certain situations. I’ll post later next week about our specific experiences. Don’t overlook them.

Guidebooks: Seriously old school, but when I haven’t had wifi it’s been a life-saver. The smallest guidebooks are the best, I think. For example, DK Eyewitness Travel’s Top Ten in Florence and Tuscany is only about 100 pages, but it has a map and is loaded with the best of the best. These small books also slide into a pocket or backpack easily. The big exception to this is the Unofficial Disney Guidebook series. These are pretty big but are excellent guidebooks.

Hotel and Credit Card Concierges: There was a time that I never, ever considered using these services. But this is what they do best! Our credit card even has a concierge service associated with it, and from what we understand it is very rarely used. My sister has had great success booking concert tickets through them. We tend to use them for tour and restaurant recommendations. I’ve noticed that, in general, the very best concierges are in hotels with the most bustling lobbies. But don’t even overlook the hotel clerk who checks you in. One of my favorite restaurants of all time was a recommendation from a friendly desk clerk.

Do you have some go-to resources? Please share!

A few from my network:

Paris Made Perfect (and London, too)

Henrietta Ferguson and Luxury Tours of London

Uniglobe McIntosh Travel

TripAdvisor (my profile)

 

Let’s talk about packing.

As the mom, the vast majority of the actual getting-the-clothes-into-the-suitcase falls on me. I have learned a LOT in moving the small army that was four preschoolers cross-country. It makes my four big kids now seem like a breeze. Here are my best tips:

• If you forget it, you can buy it when you get there. If you can’t buy it, you can do without.

When the kids were tiny, this one thing used to stress me out more than anything else. And then I realized that if I didn’t pack enough diapers/socks/shorts/hats, I could buy them. I was probably going to buy a couple of those things anyway as souvenirs! (Well, not the diapers.) That meant that when the kids were little, I only had to worry about the time we were moving between home and our destination. If this isn’t true for an item, pack it first.  Obviously, this doesn’t exactly apply to things like prescription medicine, although I’ve even had that phoned in.

• Everyone does not need their own suitcase.

Oh, we’ve all seen the little cuties in the airport, pulling their own bag. And then we’ve gotten stuck behind them because they are so slow and can’t maneuver their bag. Don’t do this. Save yourself and everyone around you the trouble. I found that the easiest and quickest way to pack was to figure out who was staying in what room, and pack one bag per room. Now that the kids are older, they take this approach quite often, so they don’t have to pull a suitcase all the time.

• But everyone does need a backpack.

Add a clean t-shirt, fresh underwear, a toothbrush and a swimsuit. This will fit in a gallon bag.  Even Mom and Dad should do this one. Backpacks are easy to carry in the airport, stow easily in the car, and get everyone accustomed to being just a bit responsible for their own stuff. As soon as my kids could walk they got their own backpack, age-appropriate, of course.

• Don’t be afraid to pack a big suitcase.

Especially if you have little kids. Save your hands for theirs, not for a suitcase. Yes, it’s $25 (or maybe not, check your credit card). Yes, it’s worth it.

• Unpack when you get there.

If we stay somewhere more than one night, we take our clothes out of the suitcases and move into the closets and dressers. It is just more relaxing not to live directly out of a suitcase, and our clothes look better. My kids are so messy that we even have a far easier time packing back up to go home! Somehow this keeps the t-shirts from sliding under furniture or the socks from going missing.

• Get the kids to pack their clothes as much as possible.

This requires a leap of faith, so start early. We spend the weekends at a lake fairly often in the summer, and have for many years. When the boys were about four, I’d tell them we were going to be at the lake for two nights; please pack accordingly. They’d figure out what they needed, toss it in a duffle and away we went. Sometimes they ended up with some crazy outfits, or no pjs, or sometimes even no shoes. (THAT happened more often than I want to admit.) The nice thing about lake packing was that it was very low risk. After all, we really were just swimming and grilling out all weekend. They might mess up, but they learned.

As they got older, I’d tell them what we expected the weather to be, how “nice”–like one good outfit for going out to dinner, or all camp-type clothes–and how many days. Now they figure out if they want to share suitcases (frequently they do), and they pack their own clothes. I’ll give them a hand but it is a process driven by them. It’s been several years since we’ve had a big item left behind.

I’m sure there are lots of other ideas, but these are the ones that have really served us well over the years, no matter how many or few clothes we need to take, or where we go, or how we get there. What are your favorite packing tips?

 

 

If a week is good, ten days are even better!

Ten days:  Just a little longer

• Pros: The luxurious feel of extra days longer than a week, almost as restful as two weeks but much less expensive, ability to add a second destination, at least one day of travel not on a weekend–less crowded
• Cons: More expensive, can be hard to find a place that doesn’t rent by the week

Once we started taking nine or ten day vacations, we haven’t looked back. My slightly work-obsessed husband believes in this so strongly that it is his number one vacation tip!

Bill found that it took no more effort to take off the Thursday/Friday before a week away than just taking the week itself. I typically do laundry anyway on vacation, so that didn’t make a difference, either. And the sheer indulgence of “sneaking away” early? I can’t even tell you how thrilled we were the first time we tried it.

Those extra days can also offer time to deal with the unexpected. We’ve started leaving on Thursdays to go skiing, and we return two Sundays later. Two years ago, we got to the airport to find our perfectly-scheduled non-stop flight cancelled. We were put on a flight with one stop which left six hours later. (There went my grocery shopping time.) We arrived in Salt Lake City to find that our one-hour connection was delayed by another three hours.

We had planned to land in Bozeman around noon, eat lunch at a favorite restaurant, and then get to our house and set up to hit the slopes on Friday morning.

Instead, we got to our house after 2 in the morning (Montana time, 4 a.m. at home!). We could barely get moving the next day and still had to get the kids’ gear. In spite of the delays we still managed to get a full week of skiing in. Had we only spent a week, at least 20% of our ski time would have been gone. There is no amount of airport Uno that can make up for missing the slopes!

I’ll give some other examples of the benefits of an extra couple of days in some future posts, but since we started taking a longer vacation (I think we started back in 2008?), we have only taken one one-week vacation.

We’ve found that the best way to plan trips is to mix it up a little. We love a couple of long weekends during the year, and I try to plan for times when we might be a little tapped out and need a change of scenery. If I pick a time that is too busy, we’ll either have to cancel or we’ll spend the whole weekend exhausted.

And then, because Bill has four weeks of vacation a year, we’ll plan a trip at winter break and another in the summer. One thing that’s been surprising is how hard scheduling the summer trip has become! Sports and camp have come to dominate summer so that I have to be intentional about clawing back some family time. We may even have to go back to “just” a week, as the kids show no signs of giving up football, running, or horses for a season.

What is your favorite length vacation? Have you gotten to take TWO weeks? I think Bill will have to be retired before we try that!

 

A week has always been our default vacation length. Vacation rentals and other places seem to encourage it, and it is really easy.

One week: The typical vacation length

• Pros: Easy to schedule, long enough to get a mental break
• Cons: Not quite long enough?

Resorts often will reinforce the week-long idea, trying to book most of their arrivals and departures on the weekends and discouraging mid-week arrivals. For several years, the Tyler Place was our little bit of heaven on earth. In their eighty years of hosting family camp, they had discovered that week-long stays were exactly what they preferred. As a result, they won’t book anyone for longer than that!

All the guests arrive on Saturday after lunch, and we all depart shortly after breakfast the following Saturday. Having the uniform schedule gives the entire resort and all the guests the same rhythm. We all looked forward to Saturday’s mixer, meeting the other guests, and we all loved Friday night’s dance party, a mix of Kellerman’s (remember the movie Dirty Dancing?) and the very best college band parties.

Any other vacation length would have detracted from that intense camaraderie, and therefore from the whole vacation. We loved our week in the Vermont woods! But some families would tack on a few days in southern Vermont, or New Hampshire, and one family even took a week to drive. We always thought that sounded like fun, but couldn’t see our way to taking more than a week of vacation.

That is, we couldn’t see it until one year, a house that we had rented in the past had an extra weekend available, so we took it, making a week vacation into ten days. And so we discovered…

We’ve never had the flexibility from my husband’s job to take a truly extended vacation. It was my dream to take a year off and travel the world with the kids, but now that high school graduations are on the horizon that is a dream that goes back on the shelf.

You know what? That’s okay. We continue to have deeply satisfying vacations without leaving for a year, or even a month. It’s absolutely possible to have great trips even over long weekends.

So how do we choose a vacation length?

A long weekend

• Pros: Super-easy to schedule, less expensive, ideal for exploring just one or two attractions
• Cons: Destinations are more restricted because of limited transit time, harder to make a mental break in a short time

I’ve found that the best long weekends are centered around an event, like a football game or wedding. The event give you some structure and a dedicated time to do something together, away from technology.

One of our long weekends that comes to mind is a trip we took to Greenville, South Carolina, a couple of years ago. I hadn’t been to Greenville in twenty years, since my grandparents had left for a North Carolina retirement.  Was I in for a surprise!

We had picked Greenville as our landing spot for the Georgia Tech-Clemson football game. We left Atlanta early Friday afternoon, enjoyed a great barbecue dinner and then wandered the very cute, revitalized downtown and park. What a gorgeous spot!

The next morning we discovered a huge street market, crowded with football fans and lots of other families out for a lovely morning. We almost never get out on a Saturday morning as a family, so it was a treat to hang out together and talk to farmers and artists in their booths. And then it was time to head to Death Valley.

Let me just tell you if you’ve never been to see a Clemson football game, you absolutely must go. We had so much fun, and the fans were amazing even though we were dressed in gold and white! It was just a fun day.

We even drove home that evening after the game. That was it, one night, two days, and we still talk about how much fun it was. We ate and laughed our way to Greenville in the car, had some good family time, and then watched Georgia Tech lose in Death Valley. It’s totally do-able!

Of course, you might want to consider more than just a long weekend every once in a while. We’ll talk about longer vacations tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

The typical questions you ask yourself when you start planning your vacation are the logistics:

• Where you stay
• How you travel to your destination
• When and how long you go
• Who you go with
• What your schedule is while you’re there

I think of the logistics as the tent poles that hold up your vacation “tent.” The richness of the vacation is inside the tent. The trick with logistics is to hold them loosely–don’t get too caught up in everything working just like you thought. You might miss some real fun.

When I was younger, my sister and I would wait out interminable airplane delays by playing “Fashion Police” and “Glamour Don’t.” I can remember laughing uncontrollably as we people-watched everywhere we went. There are still things we laugh about today, that happened years ago. If we’d gotten too caught up in the delay, we would have missed the fun right in front of us.

Here’s another, more recent airport delay story: We had a tight connection to make in the tiny Belize City airport. We had gotten our bags and found our gate, and we could even see the tiny airplane on the tarmac waiting for us. We just couldn’t see the pilot, or the gate agent. We eventually found a gate agent who confirmed we were in the right spot, so we pulled out the deck of Uno and played. And played.

Then Jack decided he needed some exercise, so he planked right there on the gate chairs. And the Paige joined in…and Darcy…and, well, you get the idea. While we were goofing off, a lanky pilot carrying a half-eaten hot dog sauntered up to the gate agent who had now made his appearance. They chatted as the pilot continued to eat his lunch. He brushed his hands off and made his way out the door, to “our” plane. Then the gate agent looked right at us and said, “You need to go! Why aren’t you on the plane yet?” What?? We grabbed our scattered bags and books and rushed out to get on the plane he had motioned at. As we got on, the hot-dog-eating pilot greeted us from the left seat. And we were the only ones on the plane!!

We arrived at our hotel several hours later than planned, but they weren’t surprised as they had cold drinks and a late lunch waiting for us. Bill and I could have been angry–and then the kids would have been mad, too–but instead we just enjoyed our card and planking time together and took it as a lesson that time in the tropics is merely a suggestion. It was a good lesson!

This didn’t happen by magic for me. Back when we first started traveling as a family I would worry myself to death about all kinds of details, most especially the hotels. But I noticed that my anxiety made the kids a lot harder to please, too. I had to be very intentional about trying to stay calm, and I still do, but it is absolutely worth the effort. And you can almost always switch rooms, or hotels, or get a cleaning crew in to fix things.

It is worth the effort.

Besides, how often do you get to plank in the Belize City airport?

How have you turned an unexpected delay into a good thing? Or do you have a story of one gone horribly wrong? Please share what you’ve learned!

I think I might have gone down a rabbit hole yesterday on the whole idea of working out various interests. Respecting each individual is important, but we’ve gone there and done that. Let’s move on.

What exactly makes a vacation truly great? We’ve found that it takes three things:

1. We’ve chosen something and somewhere that fills a need for our family’s life right now.
2. We’re taking the right attitude towards logistics: be realistic and well prepared about what we can control. The things we can’t? RELAX.
3. We’re fully present once we’re away from home. That means ditching work, turning off the technology, and being open and willing to experience new things together.

It seems like every trip offers its own challenges on each of these three fronts!

Are you shocked that it doesn’t include amazing sights, or great theater, or a beautiful cathedral, or an encounter with people who touch your heart? Any of these contribute to great trips. But I’ve found that life-changing family travel is at least 75% in your approach to the trip, and less than 25% the actual destination and activities.

For the last couple of days we’ve talked about #1, the “what” you are filling.  Starting tomorrow, the logistics–or how not to make the details of travel take over your vacation.

It’s late, so I think I’ll try a list of the high points, or just things to remember, from the the week just passed:

It was homecoming week at school, which meant the kids dressed up every single day. When you wear uniforms all the time, a week of choosing your clothes was exciting! And exhausting. I’m so glad we are back to uniforms tomorrow.

I painted! These were my two choices on the garage. Each one is a darker color with a lighter one dry-brushed over it, to give it a weathered look. Thank goodness I don’t dry-brush for a living. Also we are going with the lighter one. (The house is white.)

I painted! Actually got out my watercolors and painted. It was unbelievably relaxing. I think I haven’t painted in about four years. It’s one of those things I’m not very good at but really enjoy while I’m doing it. Yay for me!

It rained. And rained. And rained. We are eagerly awaiting the completion of the covered arena. I hope we see the sun this week! Bill was the chaperon for Darcy’s Rock Eagle field trip this week, his first time on an overnight trip. Less rain there than here at home helped them have a great trip.

Matthew got his braces off. I think he looks so handsome…and more grown up. Sigh.

The football team won! And the cross-country team came in first! Matthew played a great game and Jack set yet another personal record.

Both of my high schoolers went to the Homecoming Dance. Don’t they look great? I think so. I especially love the “Blue Steel” look.

Care to share a high point in your week? Please comment!

It’s okay, really, that every single trip and activity isn’t accommodated on a vacation. Decide on your “what,” and then look for other ways to accommodate interests throughout the year. We’ve found that if we think of vacation planning holistically–all the stuff everyone in the family likes to do throughout the year–the big trips feel less make-or-break. We manage expectations and actually have a lot more fun.

Matthew loves to hike. I mean, he LOVES it. There is something in it that speaks to his soul. He’s actually making plans to do an extended portion of the Appalachian Trail next summer. Without us. (Thank God!) His overriding desire for a vacation every year is to get outside and away from everything.

When he was younger we filled in that desire with Boy Scouts, and in the last couple of years with Outward Bound. This past summer he summitted three 14,000-foot peaks over 12 days, the first seven in a nasty combination of hail/sleet/snow/rain. No, thank you. He came home positively exultant.

Frankly, the rest of us would have been miserable if we had even been there for three days. We were really fortunate to give him the time and space to do what his heart’s desire is, and then when we traveled together he didn’t even mention hiking.

The girls and I all ride horses. Specifically, the girls compete in eventing, and they love all things horse. The biggest eventing competition in the country takes place in Lexington, Kentucky, every April, and we decided to drive up to see it. The guys in our family would have rather gouged their eyes out than spend an afternoon watching dressage with a bunch of horse-crazy girls.

So we left them at home and had a great time. It was a memorable long weekend where the girls were able to overdose on all things eventing and not worry that someone else was bored. The guys all stayed home and were relieved!

Don’t forget that you can do things locally, too. A trip to the wildlife park about an hour away is a fun get-away, and a rainy afternoon is a perfect day to get a museum fix. For that matter, clearing the calendar and just spending a day by the pool is a treat in the summer. When we stop and remember all the neat things we do throughout the year, it takes the pressure off of vacation time to be perfect.

The idea here is to think of the “big trip” as just one more piece of your family’s life together. And don’t hesitate to break out into smaller groups to do some fun things. When you reconnect, you have so many stories to share.

Tomorrow, we’re talking details: how long to go? And later this week, the dreaded packing.

**Also on my blog, I write a “week in review” post just so I can keep track of what happens in our house. Feel free to join me there!**

 

It’s great if you’ve figured out your “what,” but it’s likely that everyone else’s “what” is different from yours! How to handle that? I’ll tell you what we do.

Mom and Dad decide.

Really!  When we start thinking about our next vacation, everyone chimes in. “I want to go see [insert historic site here].” “We haven’t been scuba diving in ages.” “Let’s go hiking.” “That last place was TOO HOT. We need air conditioning!” “I want to go zip-lining!”

But we, the parents, know better than anyone else what our family needs. Hopefully that goes without saying. Vacation planning, though, is a great place to practice benign dictatorship.

As I think back on our vacations, this idea is a lot more important now than when the kids were little. Real opinions seem to have kicked in around 8-10 years old with each one. That’s why this idea of balancing competing interests is on my mind so much now! When you have all littles, or only one big, the idea of balance is really more about keeping kids happier in the moment. I’ll write about that in another post.

But here I have people who are on their way to adulthood, with legitimate interests. Trips represent such great opportunities for growth and learning that we really do want to maximize that for each member of the family.

A couple of years ago our “what” was an adventure. We wanted to do something kind of exotic and off-the-beaten-path. Bill and the boys were interested in scuba diving. However, I have no interest in sitting on a beach all week.  I’m too fair for that, and I would feel like a slug after about a day and a half. The idea of breathing underwater also gives me the willies! Also, islands are not my favorite. They make me claustrophobic. That is weird but I am owning it.

Both girls wanted to be around animals, especially horses to do a little riding. Paige wanted time for beach reading, and Darcy wanted a pool, not a beach. Matthew was also interested in hiking. Bill thought we needed some history built in. And weather–no hurricanes, please, and no rain and not humid. We live in Georgia and we are well acquainted with humidity, thank you very much.

The boys got scuba-certified in the fall, so they were absolutely determined to pick a great scuba spot.

That year we decided on a resort in Belize. We managed to accommodate the scuba diving (and the girls and I snorkeled, very cool), hiking, and animals. We added zip-lining as one of our favorite things to do! We didn’t get to ride horses, but Belize is full of amazing wildlife and we saw monkeys, alligators, toucans, and leaf-cutter ants.

I didn’t have to sit on the beach all the time because there were lots of other activities, like kayaking and bird-watching (surprisingly fun even though I’m not 83 years old). The resort had a lovely pool so Darcy, not crazy about sand, swam there. The beach wasn’t great because of the resort’s proximity to a river, but there was sand and surf.

We had a very, very tiny bit of history by visiting Mayan ruins one day. But our trade-off was getting to know and love Belizean culture much more than we expected.

The weather was, well, the tropics in July. Hot, hot, hot, and super humid. We bathed in DEET every day to fend off the bugs. But we picked a resort known for its delicious local cuisine. It isn’t surprising that Paige still talks about the food and our sweet waitress and bartender (smoothies only for her, of course!).

Bill and I also knew we needed some good family time and an extended break from technology. Our resort had no televisions and no wifi in the rooms which gave the kids withdrawal symptoms on the first couple of days. Instead, we played cards and sat and talked and read together. We also played so hard during the day that we were all exhausted by 9 at night. It was such a sweet time!

There are other times you impose your will, and still others where the kids pick most of the trip. A couple of years ago we took a trip to New England, as far north as Ogunquit, Maine, and then down to Cape Cod. That was an “impose our will” vacation, because we felt like a great way to soak up some history. But we did build in beach time and we sought out great restaurants.

My boys made a school trip to Boston last spring, and it was gratifying that they remembered that vacation fondly as they saw familiar sights on the Freedom Trail.

This year we are trying to let the kids, especially Matthew, really pick the trip. Like I said earlier, this may be his last regular summer vacation with us, and we want it to be somewhere really special to him. He is getting a taste of what it’s like to balance all these interests, though, as the other kids lobby him to their favorite idea.

There are other ways to balance out these interests, too, and I’m going to talk about an alternate method tomorrow…See you then!