What Is An Extended Vacation Like?

[newchapter]

If you like the outdoors, hiking, fishing, rafting, tubing, sandy beaches on a lake, I have a secret town in Georgia you would love... It is Suches, GA. Most of the town is US National Forest and the unofficial beginning of the Appalachian trail. I was there last week for 7 days and was not ready to leave. In fact I ended up buying almost 6 acres of land next to the cabin I was staying in... Not too much property for sale there, but I went for it. There are also cabins in Vogel State Park you can rent that are on a lake, streams, or creeks and hiking trails through the national forest. I live in Georgia and never knew of this park until now that has existed since 1931. It's amazing and a must see if you love the outdoors. Suches is known as the valley above the clouds. It is almost 10 degrees cooler than Atlanta. Check it out next time you are in North Georgia.

 

[marko]

At least until now, I’d feel guilty about paying for travel & accommodations to “do the same things we do at home... I’ll have to wrap my head around this concept.

I wonder if you might be more focused on the cost than the context of the experience.

My oft-mentioned grandad used to say "why spend money to go to Paris when there's a nice French restaurant here in town?". Not the same gramps, but thanks for leaving us a bundle so we could buy a condo there.

What is an extended vacation like? A few years ago I posted the following on this forum:

...Oh, I can think of ways to fight off the ennui:
Find a nice beach town in Italy. Sleep till 10. Quiet breakfast and cappuccino in town. Beach until 3. A nap. A cool shower. Meet some new-found friends around 9-10PM for drinks and dinner al-fresco. Bed by 2AM every night.
Maybe work a few hours a week in a small art gallery in Nice; meet some interesting people; maybe find a nice girl who's last name starts with "de" or "von" who's similarly inclined. (Make sure she's telling the truth when she says she's not married)
One should aim to outgrow being bored AND young once one stops being a teenager...

Actually an extended vacation is not a vacation...it's just 'the way you live'. "Vacation" just tends to imply a w*rk context, doesn't it?

 

[kcowan]

When going to Europe we never fly in and home from the same city.

Same here. London. Amsterdam. Paris. Frankfurt. Malaga, Milan, Rome, Zurich. Next year it might be Budapest and Madrid.

Once we get to the continent, it is really easy to get around.

 

[Koolau]

Our last vacation while still w*rking was for 5 weeks in one hotel. That was our final "run through" to see if we wanted to move there. We did our best to live as if it was our home. We cooked meals, visited areas we'd never seen before, found most of the resale shops, found which stores had the best prices, etc. etc.

Since we moved there, we now take our yearly vacation back to the old homestead. We stay 2 to 4 months in the summer. From there, we can travel by car most places of interest (short vacations within the main vacation.) It's nice to have a place that's our home-away-from-home. We have a car, house, "stuff", friends, favorite activities (local celebrations, festivals, etc.) So, now most of our vacations are "extended." We usually get to see all the kids, most old friends, etc. Our situation may be a bit unique in that we can take an extended vacation for cost of air fair plus less than the cost of a family stay at Disney for a week and yet stay as long as we like. YMMV

 

[brett]

Same here. London. Amsterdam. Paris. Frankfurt. Malaga, Milan, Rome, Zurich. Next year it might be Budapest and Madrid.

Once we get to the continent, it is really easy to get around.

We typically only get one way car rentals in Europe. Especially in Italy and Turkey. About the only exception is when we happen to be on the Greek Islands. Even then, last time we rented in Kefelonia we did a one way rental from city and a ferry port drop off.

When we were in Spain we were unable to pick up a car in Toledo and drop it off in Lisbon. We had to drop it off in Seville. Then take a bus just across the Portugal border to Faro, pick up another car, and eventually drop it in Lisbon.

 

[Andromeda]

I'm fortunate to have had quite a few opportunities in my working life for long vacations, including the following:

1. After a 1-year working sabbatical in the UK in 2001-02, I took 9 weeks off before returning to my job in Canada. It was AMAZING. I spent 5 weeks studying French in Grenoble, followed by 2 weeks studying Spanish in Salamanca. Although the language courses required me to be somewhere every day for a few hours and to do some homework, most of my weekdays and all of my weekends were free to just relax and live in the cities where I was based. (The other two weeks of the 9-week trip were spent getting organized to move home and settling back in at home.)

3. After completing a big project on assignment in New Zealand in 2003, I took 3 weeks off and toured the country. Although I hopped around a bit (and that felt hectic), most of my plans were fairly flexible so I didn't feel rushed.

2. We took a 5-week honeymoon in 2005. We spent 2 weeks in Morocco and 2 weeks in Spain, engaged in fairly slow travel.

3. We've taken 2 very long trips abroad since we were married - Malaysian Borneo + Singapore (2014) for 3.5 weeks and the Galapagos Islands (2016) for 2.5 weeks.

4. Of course, the best "vacation" in retrospect was the year I spent unemployed in 2016-2017 - I was receiving my full salary and we were already FI, so I wasn't too worried about finding work!

 

[audreyh1]

Yeah, it’s really difficult to get from Portugal to Spain and vice versa other than flying. Too bad there isn’t a nice high speed train option between major cities.

 

[brett]

Yeah, it’s really difficult to get from Portugal to Spain and vice versa other than flying. Too bad there isn’t a nice high speed train option between major cities.

Yes, but not a big issue for us. We were staying in Seville for four days or so we were happy to get rid of the car when we arrived.

We tend to mix our extended vacations up a bid. Depends where we are. Some city time, some country time, beach time. We often pick up some last minute resort or cruise time depending on where we are.

 

[Teacher Terry]

3-4 weeks is the longest I have went. 3 weeks is my maximum without the dogs. The older I get the shorter time I want to be gone. I like to see the sights on vacation but also down time if tired. I hate being too tightly scheduled.

 

[WestUniversity]

As my j*b became more and more stressful in the final years I had to take two weeks at a time to decompress and recover before returning to w*rk.

A few days off or a week vacation didn’t even make a dent…

 

[brett]

3-4 weeks is the longest I have went. 3 weeks is my maximum without the dogs. The older I get the shorter time I want to be gone. I like to see the sights on vacation but also down time if tired. I hate being too tightly scheduled.

One of the reasons we are spontaneous travelers is exactly that. We may have a general plan for a 10 week trip that includes some definite plans. By and large it is spontaneous. If we get to a place we enjoy or just want to veg for a week this is what we do.

If, while traveling, we spot a great offer on a last minute cruise and the port is easily reachable, we will change our plans and spring for the cruise. We did the same thing in Mexico pre covid. We took advantage of two or three 5 day last minute stays in AI's. And completely relax.

It is certainly not all go go, planned down to the last hour or day. The only firm plan we have is our flight home...and sometimes not even that. If we go on a one way ticket or an award ticket we return home when we are ready. Could be ten weeks, could be seven weeks. Could be, like on a previous land while in Sicily we snagged a great last minute cruise from Rome to Barcelona that had an even better cruise air fare for our return home. So that is what we did.

 

[Scuba]

One of the reasons we are spontaneous travelers is exactly that. We may have a general plan for a 10 week trip that includes some definite plans. By and large it is spontaneous. If we get to a place we enjoy or just want to veg for a week this is what we do.

If, while traveling, we spot a great offer on a last minute cruise and the port is easily reachable, we will change our plans and spring for the cruise. We did the same thing in Mexico pre covid. We took advantage of two or three 5 day last minute stays in AI's. And completely relax.

It is certainly not all go go, planned down to the last hour or day. The only firm plan we have is our flight home...and sometimes not even that. If we go on a one way ticket or an award ticket we return home when we are ready. Could be ten weeks, could be seven weeks. Could be, like on a previous land while in Sicily we snagged a great last minute cruise from Rome to Barcelona that had an even better cruise air fare for our return home. So that is what we did.

You are my travel idol. We love longer trips and doing what we want at our own pace, but haven’t become relaxed enough yet to go without accommodations and a rough itinerary planned. Someday!

 

[bevette]

We have done many, many extended trips. 10 weeks is our longest to date, but in one single location our longest has been 30 days.

For our in-one-location 30 day trip, we were centered in an area with tons of things to do. I made up a 30 day calendar of activities in advance, just one per day. I also included one 'chill' day per week to waste time on the internet, grocery shop, do laundry, pay bills electronically, etc.

We loved it, because we could generally take out time in morning before heading out, enjoy our planned activity, and afterward were happy to relax back at our VRBO the remainder of the day smelling the roses if you will. To my surprise we weren't bored whatsoever and we got a good sense of what living in the area full time could be like.

It was nice to have a long term home base, and it was nice to have the flexibility to go hard or slow on any given day depending on what we felt like.

We are looking to do it again this next summer in the Seattle area.

I absolutely love this approach! Especially the one down day per week. I will implement it on my next vacay. I recently took a 5 day staycation in my home city (which is a tourist destination) and visited one offbeat attraction per day. I collected the ideas over time from various media outlets (local TV news profiles, magazine and newspaper articles, blogs, etc.). It was incredibly fun.

 

[Cerys]

My late husband had to travel a lot for work. And traveling for enjoyment was something that he had a very difficult time with. Anything more than a week and he got real itchy. And those weeks had to be packed. And after we started our own business, he had a perfect excuse to never ever go on a vacation ever again. And he didn’t. In 21 years he missed four days of work. The last of which was his diagnosis, so there you go.

Now traveling with my family when I was younger, a whole different experience. My parents worked very hard, and when vacation came around they wanted to relax. That did mean some sightseeing, but after dinner, and sometimes before dinner, there was a pool. And we were in it. That was one of my father‘s requirements — every hotel/motel we stayed at had a pool. And with three kids and a wife, Daddy would make us get ready first and he’d have some alone pool time. In a previous life he might’ve been a fish.

It did make for some wonderful memories, we took a lot of vacations to historical places, but what I remember most is my father teaching me how to swim, how to swim properly, how to dive, and racing me, and just us playing in the pool. Doggie paddle races…

 

[sroby2020]

I'm getting lots of great ideas reading these posts. Like others, our "wanna-go-home" limit is about 3 weeks. Back to the comfort of my own bed, my cats, and my boring routine. We are 9 years into our last set of cats, so maybe one of theses days when they're all gone, we can leave for longer stretches. We now rely of a pet sitter to visit once a day to feed and scoop. We also wonder about the small amount of legit mail that we get (and enormous amount of junk mail). USPS will only hold for 30 days, without going to a forwarding service. Suggestions about mail would be great.

 

[meleana]

We never took more than 21 days in a row for a vacation, but even then we had to push back or else we would have e been going a mile a minute.

We went to Hawaii and spent 8 days in one resort on one island and another 8 days in one resort on another island. It was great.

I find the best thing is to settle in to one place for a week and immerse yourself in the area instead of trying to see a whole country or several states in a week or even two week time period. Spend some time strolling. Just sitting looking at scenery. Swimming. etc. and sightsee, sure. Do some food shopping in a local supermarket and prepare some meals if you are in a condo or house. Have a picnic. Go see a play or some other type of live entertainment. Mix it up! A little if this. A little of that!

I find it laughable when people say, for example, they want to visit New England in a week. I would never consider doing that. I would pick a state, a location and stay there and enjoy everything in that area. I have been going to Vermont for 22 years- 2 weeks per year for many of those years- and still haven’t seen all of it thought I have hit 194 towns.

When we went to Scotland, for example, we booked a cottage on the Isle of Fife and rented a car and used that as our base for the week. I like a bit of slow travel to try to really get a sense of a place. Allow time to sightsee and a time to breathe and take it all in.

My brother would like to live in Italy for a year.

I don’t know that I’d like to be away from home more than 2 or 3 weeks. Since we retired to a place in New England we liked to vacation we actually feel like we are permanently on an extended vacation without having to leave home!

 

[HGTVFanatic]

I can’t comprehend calling one week away a vacation. I don’t even get into vacation mode until a few days in after all the planning and packing. We bought an RV five years ago and I’m kicking myself for not doing it sooner. You have your own bed, bathroom and kitchen. It doesn’t get any better than that. However, I have read all the comments here and am a little jealous of all the world traveling. We’ve only been out of the country twice — Japan (loved it!) and South Korea but mostly stayed with daughter and her family so exploring was limited with three kids. We recently returned from a six week trip to Michigan from Maryland and I thought we had made a mistake planning such a long trip. I was certain I would want to come back early but nope. Enjoyed every minute. And the reason is we didn’t feel rushed. We did whatever we wanted when we wanted. If we had spent two days seeing and doing and felt tired, we just spent a day doing mostly nothing but biking around the campground. We’ve also been to Hawaii twice and each time spent more than two weeks. We rented condos on two separate islands. Three years ago, we took an RV trip to New England and visited NH, VT, CT, MA and NY for a month. Definitely was not long enough. It’s nice to get home but after a couple of weeks, I’m ready to go again. Husband not so much.

 

[Scuba]

I'm getting lots of great ideas reading these posts. Like others, our "wanna-go-home" limit is about 3 weeks. Back to the comfort of my own bed, my cats, and my boring routine. We are 9 years into our last set of cats, so maybe one of theses days when they're all gone, we can leave for longer stretches. We now rely of a pet sitter to visit once a day to feed and scoop. We also wonder about the small amount of legit mail that we get (and enormous amount of junk mail). USPS will only hold for 30 days, without going to a forwarding service. Suggestions about mail would be great.

We have used virtualpostmail.com for our mail when on long trips. It’s great. You get a daily email with each envelope scanned. You can direct them to shred it, hold it, forward it to you where you’re traveling, or open it and scan the contents to you. Far superior to anything offered by USPS, and very reasonably priced.

 

[Catmandu]

Long vacation

Just came back from 8 spectacular days in New England, and it dawned on me we have never had a vacation where we just relaxed and took things slow. Our longest vacation ever was two weeks and that was over 30 years ago. Most of our vacations, even now retired, have been one week or less. [-]We[/-] I usually figure out everything I want to do and see, and that determines exactly how many days we travel - I don't even add an extra day.

We always try to pack in non stop activities while on vacation, so much so that we're usually worn out at the end of each day - even if we thoroughly enjoyed it! We generally don't like to sit still, laying on a beach for hours would bore us to death.

A buddy of mine takes a month off every year in New England, and that got me thinking.

Maybe we should take a month off somewhere, and very deliberately limit activities each day, and just relax?

So those of you who have mastered relaxing on vacation - what are we missing? For the first time in 67 years, I am genuinely curious. Maybe we've been doing vacation wrong all these years, or at least might appreciate a different MO in this chapter of our lives.

I think we've mastered the art of long vacations. We're currently in week 6 of an 8 week vacation. We were in Portugal for 3 weeks and now in Valencia for 5 weeks. We are living here like we live at home with our routines. Our plan is to come to Valencia for 3-6 months every year and then travel from here as a base. But just staying here like a local is nice too! We cycle here, hike or just hang out and go to the market and cook. We also plan touristy days. There's a beach with easy access as well. People are just so laid back so you begin to take on their lifestyle. I highly recommend it!

 

[Catmandu]

I guess I need to look into other options for accommodations for a longer stay too. That’s another reason we haven’t taken longer vacations as it gets really expensive at most hotels/B&Bs we’ve stayed at. Admittedly way more than normal for us (usually $150-300/night), but our stay last week was $600/night with fees & taxes (competitive where we were) - I can’t imagine that for a month. Airfare was $820 for two, so travel wasn’t the big expense…

We always do long vacations and use Airbnb or Booking.com. Currently we are in Valencia staying in an apartment for 5 weeks and it's about $80/night. Even on shorter stays we use these 2 options. With an apartment you don't need to always go out to eat so that's nice as well.

 

[2017ish]

I wrote a long reply, then deleted it. We are in the long travel camp (just 2 instances of week long trips since retired, with long of 3 months and norm of a month minimum), but despite planning them ourselves and usually traveling as only a couple, tend not to be really spontaneous whilst on them.

I think that everyone has different comfort levels, somewhat akin to whether one was/is comfortable traveling in 2020-21. I'm not going to convince someone who hasn't been traveling that they should go now while the crowds are still somewhat low at international destinations. Not will they convince me to not do so.

We can talk about how we each travel, but there is going to be a large amount of talking past one another. Another example is a friend of ours, with whom we travel at times, whose taste runs towards the four seasons and the like. We can extol all day the advantages of city center, airBnB walkup apartments, but that would never be in her comfort zone.

Just my 2 cents from the end of our first week in Iberia.

 

[Scuba]

Yes, I agree that people have their own travel styles, although once retired, I think these can change. When we were working, we typically stayed in small high-end resorts, often on private islands. This made sense when I was in a high pressure job and just wanted a relaxing getaway.

Post-ER, we’ve happily transitioned to long travel. We can go away for 2-3 months for a similar or just slightly higher cost than a 2-week stay at an exclusive resort.

We have several friends who love staying at hotels and think we are super adventurous for booking our own trips and staying at Air BnB apartments. Some of them are retired and some aren’t, but they definitely have different travel styles than we do. One couple tried to get us to plan a vacation with them but I felt our priorities were too different.

 

[brett]

I traveled extensively for work. To the point where sometimes my spouse referred to herself as a work widow.

For vacation...we always traveled. So many airline and hotel points to take advantage of!

The first trip after retirement was seven months on the road followed by three months in a rented furnished town apartment.

Nine years of retirement, four to five months of international travel each year. Two months at a time.

What is an extended vacation like For us, in retirement it has been fabulous. So many places to go, so much to see, so many different things to experience.

This covid business is a real drag.

 

[5Miler]

We are booked for our 4 week dive vacation in Bonaire in April/May next year. We used to go for one week at a time until retirement 9.5 years ago and now go 3 to 4 weeks at a time. April 23 will be our 18th year and 22nd trip. We always stay at the same place and have developed many friends over the years with both island residents and vacationers like ourselves. Many vacationers own time shares there and tend to visit for multiple weeks at the same time every year. Most are from the US but some are from the Netherlands.

We have developed a routine over the years and easily settle in for a relaxing vacation interrupted by occasional happy hours or dive boat reservations. Evenings are split between eat-in or go grab some takeaway and we often dine with friends in the resort with everyone pitching in a dish as we all have apartments with kitchens. Every Saturday is eventful as some friends leave at the end of their trip but others are just arriving. It is a constant revolving door. There are a few of us that make sure to schedule our trips at the same time and arrange for either adjoining rooms or one nearby. We sure missed not making this trip in 2020 although we tried hard to make it happen.

I don't think we could ever do just a one week vacation in Bonaire now that we've done this so long. We would barely get unpacked before it would be time to leave.

 

[DrRoy]

3-4 weeks is the longest I have went. 3 weeks is my maximum without the dogs. The older I get the shorter time I want to be gone. I like to see the sights on vacation but also down time if tired. I hate being too tightly scheduled.

3 weeks is also DW's limit for travel without the dog. We take her for longer trips, (domestic only).