I'm starting to be annoyed by all those things that seemed charming about being in a different country:
- The ridiculous number of different Euro coins
- Lukewarm diet Coke that costs 2 Euros for 200ml
- Driving on the WRONG side of the road
- Toilets that sound like 747s taking off when you flush them
- Traffic roundabouts. GAH.
Even BabyT says she's ready to go home. Fortunately our flight is early tomorrow, but we've got a 6 hour (!) layover in Heathrow. Long enough to drive us crazy, but not enough to do anything interesting.
We hit this limit when we were in Las Vegas after our wedding in 2005. We had gone for 5 days, and by day 4 we were so done. We vowed any future trips would be 4 days or less.
I think we need a new rule for other vacations. 2 weeks sounds good. If we have more vacation to burn, a week at home would be lovely. I think I'm just not an adventurous world traveler. I miss my bed, my dogs, and diet Coke.
What about you? Got a vacation limit?
in 1992 when GZ retired fm boeing, we bought a used 29' travel trailer & truck. We paid for LZ's wedding. I quit my job. We drove up to Fairbanks, then all the way down to S. Florida... gone for 9 months! After alaska we stopped at home for 10 days to pay bills. otherwise, traveling. we fly fished, played golf, & hiked. We also re-financed our bellevue house when interested rates dropped while in florida, & did our tax return somewhere in colorado:) I MISSED OUR HOME after about a month <== that remains my travel limit, since we got the Big Travel out of our systems. HAVE A SAVE TRIP.
ReplyDeleteWow Cheryl - that is awesome! My husband would love a trip like that but I'd miss home WAY too much.
DeleteI am with you. Two weeks is enough to be away from home. Even in the most luxurious place, there's nothing like being at home. I always say, 'Its nice to leave, but its great to come home.'
ReplyDeleteYES! I've always been like this - I think it's part of my personality. I'm just a homebody, I guess.
DeleteYour idea about saving some time for at home is such a great one!!! We always feel like we need a few days when we get back from trips, and we just drive to Grandma's house in CA. We try to come home on Saturdays now (if not Friday), so David has a full day to decompress before he goes back to work.
ReplyDeleteYes! We totally plan trips this way too - preferably a whole weekend before having to go back to work. Helps that my first work day is a Tuesday, so I have Monday at least.
DeleteTwo weeks is my limit too. Though I also really enjoy spending an entire year someplace new... but that's more like you settle in to a new home and work for a year and then go back.
ReplyDeleteEven a year would be too short for me, but I could totally see the appeal of 2 years.
DeleteWe haven't gotten a 2 year sabbatical, so we take what we can get!
DeleteWell, I was ready to leave Asia at the end of our four month "circle Pacific" trip, but I wouldn't have had to head home- I just needed to go somewhere with decent cheese and where traveling is easier for the monoglot American than I am. So I was glad to fly to Honolulu at the end of that trip, and really sad to board the final flight home.
ReplyDeleteMy husband, on the other hand, looked at me on our last night of the Asia leg of our trip, which was in Tokyo, and only half-jokingly suggested we continue on to India!
We have incredibly itchy feet, I guess.
I mentioned this on your blog too, but I think it's so great that you guys are on the same wavelength re: travel!
Delete4 months on the road would kill me, I think :)
Maybe renting a home in a foreign country would be more appealing? That way, you get the best of both worlds. I found that when I stay at an apartment or home, I adjust better because I feel like a "local". I enjoy buying groceries even!
ReplyDeleteMy limit is way more than 2 weeks and correlates with flight times. The longer the flight, the more time I need to bounce back from jetlag and unwind! I think one month is my ideal length.
o&g - thanks for the comment! We did rent a house in Ireland, and it was nice, but still too long. We did make a trip to the grocery store nearly every day and that was novel in itself.
DeleteI could easily take a vacation longer than 2 weeks if I were at home. But I get a lot of comfort from being in my house specifically.
My ideal vacation would be about a month I think. I also think that this is a big difference between Americans and Europeans (sorry for this generalization); I will only start to call something vacation when it's longer than a week! And I agree with oilandgarlic that it really helps to stay somewhere you can cook yourself: it saves money (going out to dinner is just really cheap here in the US) and you're much more flexible about what you do.
ReplyDeleteAnd you know you can drink tap water everywhere in Europe, saves a lot on costs when there are no free refills ;-)
YES, I think this totally is a difference between Europeans and Americans! I think it probably helps that most Europeans get a lot more vacation time than we do. And it seems like a lot of interesting destinations are much closer.
DeleteI know I should drink water. I just have a diet Coke problem :)
Our longest holiday to date was 7 weeks in Southern Africa - we went from Victoria Falls in Zambia through Botswana and Namibia to Cape Town in South Africa over and then from Cape Town along the coast to Durban & inland to the Drakensberg & in a big loop towards Mozambique. It was amazing and I was not ready to come home. We're actually planning to do a similar trip when our kid(s?) are somewhere in the age range 7 to 12. They definitely will need to be that old to enjoy it though.
ReplyDeleteWe also spent 6 or 7 weeks around New Zealand, but that was kind of a 'visit relatives and hit high point tourist spots I hadn't seen yet' before we moved to Australia and quite a bit of the time was spent at my in-laws.
In general though, I feel as if i haven't had a holiday unless it is at least 2 weeks and I don't know where my limit is. I feel it is likely to be different now I've got kids...
In Australia, they have this *great* thing called "Long Service Leave" - it's basically 3 months of paid leave (in addition to annual leave) that you accrue after 7 (or 10 years) with the same employer. At my employer, you can actually take it pro-rata after 3 years and it's flexible how you take it (from a day a week to 6 months at half pay). I'm very much looking forward to taking it. :-)
Wow, those are some looooong vacations. I only get 4 weeks total of vacation time from work :(
DeleteI think the age of the kids probably does matter a lot. It was harder with T in some ways, because her whole routine was disrupted and we were in a new place.
Looove the idea of Long Service Leave. We have a "sabbatical" idea at my own company, but you have to be at a ridiculously high level to take it. :(
Long service leave is a real perk - we've also got a 4/5 where you can take 80% of your salary for 4 years and then take the 5th year off at 80% pay. Or, if you can request up to 12 weeks leave per year on adjusted pay. One of the advantages of this is regular, short term 'acting' opportunities that come up for internal transfers so you can go do something different, new skills, see a different part of the business etc. It's pretty good.
ReplyDeleteZM - is this part of your company's benefits or does the whole country have this as a policy? That is so amazing. I'd totally do the 4/5. Can you do it more than once?
DeleteIt's part of the company benefits & part of their selling point given they don't pay as much (for technical professionals) as private companies.
DeleteOh - and my favourite foreign grocery experience was in Japan. We missed a connecting train and had an hour to kill so spent *ages* wandering the aisles trying to deceipher packaging. We bought a huge bag of random junk food and had a great time testing it all out.
ReplyDeleteok, THAT sounds like a lot of fun. I think it would freak out my hubby, though. He's not particularly adventurous with food. And unfortunately, with T's dairy allergy I can't even do that here at the Japanese dollar store, though I'd love to try out some of the snacks with her.
DeleteI don't like traveling. It seems obligatory to put it on one's wish list, but I've finally accepted that this is someone else's dream, not mine.
ReplyDeleteBut then again, I recently read Laura Vanderkam's post about how 'memorable' can trump 'fun' when it comes to happiness (http://lauravanderkam.com/2012/03/happiness-memorable-trump-fun/). It's true that I have many great memories from trips, and these memories bring me happiness.
Because I want to create great memories for my kids, I'm going to try to compromise here. We'll travel for the children, but we'll set some of the same ground rules you've set - for each trip, we'll settle in at only one place and we won't stay for more than 2 weeks. Another rule will be that at least half our trips will be in the U.S. - I'm hoping for memorable without the culture shock!
You know, it's so great that you can say it's not your dream. It took me a looooong time to admit/figure that out too, because everyone is supposed to want to travel the world, right? :)
DeleteI have a couple of places I'd like to visit, but they're all developed nations, and all but Japan speak English (mostly). My trips to India as a kid made me realize how hard it is to travel in a developing nation, and it really wasn't FUN in the typical vacation sense. Educational, eye-opening, yes, but HARD.
I spent 5 days in India, hitting the highlights of Jaipur, Agra & the Taj Mahal & Dehli and it was totally enough for me! No desire to go back (but I did really enjoy the trekking we did in Nepal).
DeleteHowever -Japan was fantastic. We went skiing & had a few days in Tokyo. I'm so looking forward to going back - although I think I'll try to learn a little Japanese before we go. We coped ok with zero Japanese but I think it would have been better with more than 'thank you' and 'chopsticks' as the limit of my vocab.
Ooh, I would never have thought about skiing in Japan, how cool. Maybe in 10 years we'll be able to go somewhere that far :D Actually, it's only about a 10 hour flight from Seattle and there's a direct one, so not horrible. But I doubt I'll be convincing anyone here to get on another airplane anytime soon...
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