When was the last time you took
a 10 day vacation? Mine was last year to Kauai, and it was wonderful! Taking a
10 day vacation might be hard for most Americans because it's instilled in us
from an early age that you have to work to make money to make a life for
yourself … and then there is the fact that we only get 2 weeks of vacation and
1 week of sick leave a year. LAME, I wish we had more.
1. Most importantly, a 10-day vacation gives you the time necessary to
surrender, to capitulate, to truly vacate.
2. Travel consumes a smaller percentage of your total vacation time.
This is very true for us since our two last
trips have been to Hawaii. We spend a total of about 10 -12 hours just getting
there!
3. Because travel consumes proportionately less
of the 10 days, it also opens the door to a
traveling vacation with multiple stops.
I have yet to convince my husband that a multi city trip is
fun. We are still trying to plan our trip to Thailand and Cambodia (hopefully
locking that down in the next few months). And to be honest I am torn between that and
Croatia and Slovenia …. What do you think?
I have been on two Trafalgar Bus tours and I loved them! You
spend about 12-14 days traveling Europe and getting to see all the important
stuff and skip the lines! My first one was Italy and we pretty much saw the
whole country (all but the south) and my second one was Imperial Europe where
we hit the big cites of Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Austria.
4. You’re gone long enough that you’re forced to offload your duties at
work.
This one isn’t a big deal for me; my work pretty much stays
at work. But it’s a HUGE one for my husband; he checks his work phone all the
way up until he goes to bed. But when you are time zones away they have to be
able to work without you.
5. You’re gone long enough that you’re forced to budget
financially for the vacation.
We definitely budget but we still splurge (after all we are
still DINKs, duel income no kids). We always go to a grocery store and buy
snacks and breakfast items and we find a cheap local place to eat a few times
during our stay.
6. A 10-day vacation leaves sufficient time for the creation of memories
through experience and the catharsis of do-nothing relaxation.
We aren’t really the "do
nothing" types but this past trip to Kauai did leave us plenty of free
time which we chose to go to the Allerton
Gardens and it was one of our favorite things and we are so glad we went!
7. You have the time to actually develop rhythms
of life unique to that particular vacation.
I don’t know about this one, unless you are renting a house I'm not sure hotel
life equates to normal life.
8. You get the joy of seeing the week and weekend vacationers leave.
We like to travel over holidays to take
advantage of the time off (and we don’t have constraints like having to get
kids back to school or anything like that). So when we travel over Thanksgiving
we do see the crowds leave the next day while we chill in the ocean.
9. You can avoid the dreaded vacation hangover.
We do like to have a few days remaining when we get back. Time to re-charge and
unpack… and upload all those pictures!
10. You come home a better spouse, parent, employee — a better person.
Find the original article here.