Wish I was there! via lachlansear @ flickr
The dog days of summer are in full swing, and my mind is drifting to thoughts of vacationing. I’m a homebody, almost to a fault, which is why I’m still a bit surprised that I’m going to take two trips in the next four weeks — one with my fellow Harpies and one to California to see sister.of.a.lesser.god and some awesome friends. It’s been a long time since I’ve taken a trip: my last vacation was February 2008, and before that it was December 2004. There are plenty of faraway places I’d love to go, such as New Zealand (hence the picture at right), Scotland, Madagascar, and Egypt, although I’d also do just about anything to spend a summer seeing a baseball game at every stadium in the Major Leagues. My best vacation was unquestionably a humble American road trip in 2003, in which I drove from New York to Texas to pick up one friend, then swung up to Illinois to pick up another, then hightailed it back to NYC. It may not sound very exciting, but it was an amazing experience, filled with such memories as:
- Getting into a verbal sparring match with a Bible-thumping proselytizer outside of the Alamo and being told that I was going to burn in hell.
- Eating at the Hobbit Cafe in Houston and washing down my meal with a Pippin pina colada.
- Seeing a life-size cardboard cut-out of President Clinton in the lobby of the Econo-Lodge in Hope, Arkansas.
- Killing time on the long stretches of the Interstate by taking turns with my friends reading passages from a bodice-ripping romance novel entitled The Princess and Her Pirate, in which a rogue, kilted Scottish pirate named Laird Cairn MacTavish seduces a headstrong princess. The pirate’s penis is its own character, complete with a name (Hoary) and its own dialogue! A sample of this literary masterpiece: “Beneath his kilt he hardened and grew. Sometimes Hoary, as Cairn called his favorite nether part, forgot the greater good, preferring to embark on his own endeavors.” Seriously, click the link to see the insane cover.
Hopefully my upcoming vacations will create more awesome memories. So, the question for this Fun Thread is: what was your best vacation? And what is your dream vacation?
Best vacation: like 5 yrs ago my friend and I went to the US Virgin Islands for a week. We split the time between St. John and St. Thomas, ie half at some little bed and breakfast and half at the more resort-y type place. It was so beautiful. I HIGHLY recommend.
worst: ugh. probably a family trip to Niagara Falls. So boring. It didn’t help that my dad likes to hunt for the cheapest lodgings available and anyone who’s ever been there knows that can be pretty ugly in that area.
Best vacation: A week driving around Ireland in a Fiat Punto with the Dude, ending up in Dublin for Paddy’s Day. And finding out, in a public library in Dingle, that I’d gotten a rad fellowship for my PhD program and would be moving to NYC.
Dream vacation: Costa Rica. Two weeks working at the Aviarios Sloth Rescue Center and swimming and reading and lolling and rarely using the internet and probably drinking a bit too much.
best vacation is always in a foreign place where I can talk to the people. Unfortunately that limits me to english and spanish
PhDork, me and my bf are in the middle of vacation planning HELL. Can only go the last 10 days of September due to work constraints and was originally going to be Belize. Now wavering between Costa Rica and Ireland. Would love to pick your brain on Ireland. At this point, planning is pushing me to tears.
Best so far: a week in Disney World with the man. Childhood-esque for a week was amazing, and he was just as big a kid as I was.
Dream: Italy, Greece, Casablanca. Pretty much anywhere since I’ve only done Canada a lot (due to close proximity growing up) and Jamaica for a college spring break.
@PhDork: Road trips are the best! I also had a great one in 2002 with father.of.a.lesser.god when I got to drive from LA to NYC in 10 days in my little Ford Focus. And I got to see his childhood home in South Dakota…and BUFFALO!
@ImTheMarigold: Oh, I would love to go to Italy also. I bailed on a family vacation there 2 years ago and it’s a huge regret.
WOAH! I totally know what bible-thumper you’re talking about!!
Is it this guy? http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=50569893&id=7936469
My bf is from SA, so we go there sometimes.
Also, I am totally going to go get that novel, STAT.
Best vacation: my Bar trip, which came: after a lifetime of being a slave to responsibility; after years of rigid schooling; as a prelude to working in a place where my life would no longer feel like my own. It was seven weeks of hopping from train to ferry to train to bus all the way from Turkey to Spain. It was my first time in Europe. We had only a loose itinerary that went out the window almost immediately in favor of following our fancy. It was complete and total unfettered freedom. That I took the trip with someone who was, at the time, a relatively new new friend, and the trip turned us into something akin to sisters adds another dimension of richness to the memories. Although I’ve had some pretty awesome vacations since then, nothing will ever compare to that trip. In that sense, it’s my best, and my dream vacation all rolled into one.
@Melody Ann: That might be the guy! And seriously, buy the book. It’s like $7.00 on Amazon.
Rather sappily my best vacation was my honeymoon. It was a cold war honeymoon in two parts. First we went to America to LA and San Francisco and then we went to Russia to St Petersberg and Moscow. The Russian part took place over Christmas and New Year and was incredible (not that the American part wasn’t fun but the Russian bit was my favourite – i like cold places), with highlights including the random New Years Eve rock concert outside our hotel window where at midnight they started playing I Fought The Law in Russian, the mad drunk Russian teenagers we met sharing vodka near St Isaac’s Cathedral and hanging out in cafes all over both cities just reading and drinking and occasionally talking.
Other than that every holiday i have ever spent in Paris has been wonderful, particularly the first time I went there with my then boyfriend now husband and we won a fortune on the Prix d’l'Arc and blew most of it in an amazing restaurant near Notre Dame.
My dream vacation would be in Paris, Russia, Ireland or the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It would involve rain, books, whiskey, log fires, great food, four poster beds, big baths and in my husband a companion who lets me read for hours without getting in anyway bothered by it. Hmm right that’s actually so sappy I now feel mildly nauseous.
Oh and I meant to add – I must read that book, sarah, i shall be heading to Amazon immediately.
I’m living and working in Costa Rica now, so I guess I’m kinda living in a vacation (though it doesn’t always feel like it!)
Best vacation? Gosh, it’s hard to choose. My sister and I have taken several great vacations together, so I’d probably choose the one that started it all: backpacking around Europe after I graduated college and she finished her year of studying abroad in Rouen, France.
Worst vacation? Family roadtrip across the Southwest at the age of 12 (waay too cool for the fam), in mid-summer in a car without air conditioning. Highlights? Boating Lake Havasu at >110degrees F; my mother fighting with the desk clerk at the Disneyland Hotel; staying at a dump across the street with a flooded bathroom, thanks to the jacuzzi upstairs; my younger sister’s endless singing of “Little Kitty Fufu”.
Dream vacation: South America. Boating down a river through the Amazon, climbing the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, visiting Tiputini in Ecuador, then taking a small nature cruise out to the Galapagos. I’ll make it there someday!
Best vacation is hard to choose. The trips I took whilst studying abroad in Australia were amazing. Boyf and I took a vacation a few years ago to the Outer Banks, NC, and stayed at an acquaintance’s beach house. That was nice and relaxing and romantical and we didn’t have dogs bothering us.
Dream vacation would be somewhere in the Mediterranean.
The Hobbit Cafe! I was at one point a regular there!
Best vacation…probably to the Cotswolds with my ex. Super ultra romantic–probably the happiest I’ve ever been. Despite everything that went down afterwards, I still remember that vacation with pleasure.
But my recent trip to Colombia was pretty awesome to– lots of unexpected fun stuff happened.
Oh, this is fun. It’s so hard to choose!
Best Vacation: Much as I’ve loved many, many trips, I think the best of my life so far was the tour of Egypt with my Mom and the Archaeological Institute of America. I’d never been on a tour before (much prefer finding my own places), but that one was INCREDIBLE. I don’t think anything will ever top actually seeing the mummy of Rameses II, complete with his oddly-shaped head and aristocratic bearing. Riding a camel up to the pyramids, entirely swathed in such thick fog we couldn’t even see them until we got to the top, and then BAM! It cleared, and there they stood, towering over the millennia. Walking through Luxor, imagining the monks running the country in secret cabals and worshipping Pharoah who walked there as a god; staring in awe at the bas-reliefs at Abu Simbel, Rameses II’s temple. Yup. Best ever. (No slagging on my honeymoon, which was unbeatable in other ways.)
Dream Vacation: Right now? Australia & New Zealand, or a photo safari in Africa (elephants, gorillas, giraffes, you name it). I want to see those landscapes and animals before they’re gone! (I think I have longer with Aus & NZ.)
Best — I gave my daughter a trip to Rome for her high school graduation, and offered to send a friend with her; she picked me! It was a wonderful trip, transition of our relationship from adult/child to adult/adult. My son will also get a trip, and his plans are to go to the Shoe Museum in Toronto…it started out as a joke, but now he’s serious about it.
Worst — most uncomfortable was the trip to Noel Missouri with my family as a child, to stay in $1 a night cabins. The mattress broke when dad sat on it, the bathroom wall had a hole big enough to put your head through to the outside, there was a wasp’s nest in the living room (and I was stung), and someone had burned wood inside the electric (non wood burning) oven. That was 45 years ago and we STILL talk about it. Being with a closeknit family in that situation was fun, though the experience wasn’t! The worst vacation as far as nonenjoyment was the last one I took with my (now ex) husband. I’d won the trip to an exotic place, he insisted on going (I’d have rather taken one of my children), it was horrible, and our marriage broke up soon after when I discovered he’d been having affairs for years.
Mine are cheesey and much less cool.
Best: A trip to Disney World with my now-husband at the very beginning of our relationship. What could have been a horror of families and screaming children and enormous amounts of money spent on crappy food was instead romantic and fun and delicious. We spent every night dancing and drinking at the adult-themed downtown area. I have an entire photo album where I am smiling so big my face might explode.
Worst: A “surprise” holiday in a cabin with my entire extended in-law family. It was cold and tiny and miserable and no one thought to warn me ahead of time that we were staying for four days and not just an afternoon. Plus I was on my period and totally unprepared.
Dream: A sailing and diving trip in the Caribbean, living aboard a boat. I did one as a teenager and would appreciate it so much more now as an adult.
Best vacation by a mile: Buenos Aires and Easter Island in late 2007. Buenos Aires is now my favorite place EVER. We just spent a week walking around, talking, eating steak and drinking Malbec. Then we went to Easter Island for five days, which was amazing. It felt like being in the middle of nowhere (which, technically, you are). One morning we went to one of the main sites — the quarry where they made most of the moai — at sunrise and had it all to ourselves for two hours. Magical.
Worst vacation: Florida with my best friend and some of her college friends. Her friends brought their super loud, trashy friend with them and I was embarrassed by them whenever we went out. I ended up lying and saying I had to leave early just to get the F out.
Dream: A month in Asia and Oceania! I long to see Tokyo, Angkor Wat, Ayers Rock, and New Zealand (thanks, LOTR movies!).
[...] the first time), I won’t feel too out of the loop. Hopefully I won’t get yelled at by crazy proselytizers like I have on past vacations, and I promise to think of all of you when I’m having a spin on [...]