Vacation Hell. What's yours?

What’s a vacation?

Being dragged on a week long road trip “vacation” with my aunt and grandmother when I was 14. It was awful. I did not find them pleasant to spend excess amounts of time with. In fact, I would have rather been stuck in hours-long detention than be dragged out on “vacation” with them.

I was 14 and just about to begin high school at the time. And with all respect to my now-departed aunt and grandmother, they were what’s known as fraus here on DL.

Traveling fraus and their teenage nephew/grandson - could have been the premise for a comedy in which the boy is chronically miserable. It was the type of vacation that couldn’t end soon enough. My own home life wasn’t exactly ideal by any means but it was sure as hell preferable to running around the upper Midwest in a rental car with them.

RE cruise ships, I’ve only done them to travel from US to Spain on two occasions. It’s a very nice time I thought, but then I’ve only done two cruises and both were these “repositionings” so I could get to Europe. Agreed about the downside of megaships. First time was a small ship. More recently - an Oasis class. They can keep the Oasis class and similar leviathan ships. Not my thing.

Fire Island, but with kids and then it rains and rains.

Most things during the summer (northern hemisphere).

Being on a cruise ship or a tour bus.

Anything involving tour groups.

I guess the endless cynical posts here weren’t enough for OP so he decided to create a new one solely dedicated to negativity. Maybe he was just bored again and decided to drag everyone down to his miserable, lonely level.

Congrats, OP. You’re a fucking ray of sunshine on this hoiday. Way to close out the summer. 🙄

^ [woosh!]

Sitting on a beach is hell to me. Vacation to me means seeing and doing as much as possible.

One of those places swarmed by college kids from red states during a holiday — red cups, vomit, red hats, country music.

[Quote] I guess the endless cynical posts here weren’t enough for OP so he decided to create a new one solely dedicated to negativity.

Are you lost, dearheart?

R7 LOVES the Caribbean, cruises and Disney

EG who has had mostly wonderful vacations but once I spent thousands travelling to a tennis match which was rained out with a flooded hotel and cancelled flights. Never again. Also, a 48 hour delay in Buenos Aires was costly on many levels. My one and only gay cruise was also a Felliniesque dream/nightmare.

R7 doesn’t like negativity so he went for a round of attacking and picking on the OP. Got it.

My vacation hell is the person I’ve been with.

R10 = Osage Beach, MO 🤮

[quote] Vacation to me means seeing and doing as much as possible.

I don't like that kind of vacation.

A friend of mine who had never been anywhere and worked her whole life went to the Caribbean for 2 weeks. The first day, she stepped on a ray and spent the entire vacation on crutches with pain and a massive infection. She's never gotten over it. Another friend, flew all the way to the Maldives to stay in the above ocean bungalows and the weather was bad the entire time. 8 grand, for rain.

Maine: Black flies, Cancun: Dysentery, Florida: Mosquitos, noseeums, snakes, alligators and Florida man. Everyplace else: Traffic and annoyance.

R18, what about a little road trip to somewhere in NY or a neighboring state?

Add me to the Disney list.

Camping. I wouldn't necessarily mind doing outdoorsy things in nature, but I'd insist on returning to a hotel room at night. Once you've been homeless, sleeping on the ground loses all its novelty and charm.

Yeah, no to camping. Anything without an indoor bathroom & plumbing is a no.

[Quote] I don't like that kind of vacation.

I completely agree, r17 — the anxiety-driven rush from one thing to the next because god forbid you should miss a single tourist destination. So many people do that and end up completely spent.

I like to strike a balance so you can do some things at a relaxed pace. If something you’re doing is especially enjoyable, you can just relax and enjoy it, because you don’t have the river boat tour scheduled across town in 45 minutes.

Americans and Brits

I would like to hear more about OP’s hairy ass.

I've always said you never know how much you can hate someone until you travel with them.

No vacation I ever had was worse than having to go in to work.

I got pushed off a cliff in Nova Scotia. They didn't mean it but still.....

people who cram every single moment of their vacation with activities and sight-seeing think they are so superior to everyone else.

Anything involving camping.

OP doesn't know how lucky he is to be able to take any kind of vacation like the ones he mentioned. I haven't gone away on a vacation in years.

I went on a cruise once, never again. Hell is other people, and the inability to get away from them without throwing oneself overboard.

No matter where you go, the airport and the plane is vacation hell. Long lines everywhere, tight seats, noise and crying toddlers... Hmm.... What could be worse? Star Trek's teleportation may be centuries away but cannot come soon enough.

Being with people that can't, or just refuse to ever relax. I don't want to do nothing, but I also don't want to be hiking every day or never just having some chill time. I like to have fun and that can be staying in for a movie night or fun and game time with others... or just cocktails and good conversation on the lanai.

Which may explain some of those "fell overboard" deaths r32. Instead of looking for the one person responsible, you may just have to arrest pretty much everyone onboard for General Annoyance.

Yeah overactive people. I generally hate people so it was against my character to go...but a friend paid for it. Went to a huge resort in Miami. I'm a pool person and they had the nicest pool I've ever seen. Everyone I went with was going here and there and rushing about. I sat in the pool ALL FUCKING DAY. Just watching them wore me out. I spent the whole 10 days wet, buzzed, tanned, and sleeping. One of the best times I ever had. Well at least when they left for the day.

A river cruise with middle aged couples from hick towns. Long dinners forced to talk to strangers.

Beach resorts that are swarming with families and the hoi polloi. Especially if you are trapped on an island or far from civilization. Never again.

Friends did India on their own without a planner or tour group. Sounded like my idea of hell.

Ski vacations. I hate skiing.

[quote] I spent the whole 10 days wet, buzzed, tanned, and sleeping.

10 days in Miami sounds excessive, but glad you had a good time.

BLack flies in Maine? Must be in the woods.

OP, I'm afraid I have to start with a comment on this ridiculous equivalency:

[quote]A seaside holiday in the Caribbean or the Maldives

The Caribbean is a trashy place full of trashy white Americans getting drunk & sunburned. The Maldives are one of the most stunning places on the planet, and sunburned drunk Americans are thankfully priced out of the place, aside from the occasional tech bro. (Not that I like high prices, mind you, but I'm willing to pay extra for privacy.) If you simply hate beaches, that's fine, but aside from both places having generally white sand, the Maldives may as well be in another universe than the Caribbean.

I share DLers loathing of cruise ships – yes, even gay ones, but DEFINITELY anything Disney or Royal Caribbean – but to cite some examples of actual hellish circumstances:

1. Miami during spring break. I'd normally steer far clear, but my little brother was in college and had a massively rich friend with a huge yacht moored in the Florida Keys. I'd never been to the Keys, and I had no idea there's literally only a single two-lane road through it. Before leaving for the Keys, however, my TOTAL piece of shit rental car – which I'd had to book at some off-off-off-airport rental place because everything was sold out – literally STOPPED RUNNING AT 60 MPH on I-95. It was like someone instantly yanked the vehicle's power off. And it wasn't simply not being able to accelerate: the freeway was packed, AND the power steering AND brakes were also off, AND I had to somehow make it across three lanes of traffic to get to the shoulder!

2. Gatlinburg / Pigeon Forge. We were there less than 10 minutes. I said, "Nope," and literally turned the car around to head back to Knoxville. My (inbred redneck) relatives pitched a fit, but I know a white trash bonanza when I see one. (Also helped that I heard the N-word three separate times during the ride back, after stopping for gas & food.

3. Texas. Yes, I know DLers (and others) shit on it constantly, and for good reason. Nonetheless, there's a special kind of hell along the stretch of I-10 from just west of Austin all the way to the New Mexico border in El Paso. It's 450 miles of quite literally nothing but desert, and not even *interesting* desert like Arizona or southern Utah. (And if you're thinking about a side trip to Marfa, you need to plan it in advance, since otherwise it could be a two-hour waste of time.)

4. Any given crowded tourist scrum. Times Square. Leicester Square (since someone just mentioned it yesterday). Thinking about visiting the Trevi Fountain gives me hives. Coastal Italy or France in the summer. Any & all package holidays popular with the British, with Benidorm & the Canary Islands topping the list. Cabo, Cancun, Tulum, and most of the rest of coastal Mexico.

Carnival Cruise, or Laughlin, Nevada or Disney World

Anything involving a crowded beach or crowded pool.

Anything that involves waking up in the morning very early.

I did an awful gay cruise and a straight cruise, both times I was able to find plenty of solitude. Cruise with others? A different story.

R43 Writing a book, hippie?

Taffy, your brevity can suck my dick, and I am STILL traumatized by your giving-birth insanity!!!

OP - You and I are identical twins when it comes Vacation Hell. I like the "idea/concept" of the beach that we see romanticized in so many films, but once I get there, I'm like: "Get me the Hell out of here!!!" within 5 minutes. Being TRAPPED in a huge disease-ridden metal cargo container: NO THANKS. Disney? I'd rather go to the dentist.

r47 How was your gay cruise experience?

"The mountains." Nothing to do. Permanent dampness. No shops. Green and brown everywhere.

Children, children everywhere. In the pool. At the beach. In the restaurant. In the gardens. Making noise down the halls. In the room next to you. In the room above you. In the courtyard. In the cultural activities you want to visit. Loud, noisy, annoying, shrieking children.

A friend went to the Maldives on his honeymoon to one of those very expensive rooms on stilts over the water. They lasted three days as the constant sound of the waves did his head in.

If I got to a beach area it had better have some ruins to look at. I'm not a lay on the beach all day person. I prefer very quiet beaches if i do go. I hate the wall to wall beach chairs with strangers setting up right next to me.

Anywhere popular with Chinese tour groups.

I’ve never had a bad vacation - I guess I’m good at picking out good spots. And no, I’m not sharing.

Agree with OP, except that I'm an avid snorkeler (used to SCUBA dive when I was younger) and that was the only reason to visit hot, tropical islands. Otherwise, nothing to do there.

There are bad hotels due to misrepresentation

[quote] If I got to a beach area it had better have some ruins to look at.

I wouldn't want to look at ruins except maybe Stonehenge.

A cruise.

2 weeks with a new friend who turned out to be a miser

Thanks for the many good responses, and a few that I had overlooked:

Camping. I could do a rustic cabin in the woods sort of thing, but a Robber Baron's Adirondack Camp has much more appeal than carrying around little cans of food and making sorry little campfires and sleeping in tents, especially small ones. I like a little luxury, even/especially if I'm going to be stuck in the woods or in the countryside away from civilization for days.

'Anything involving tour groups' Yes! There are a few exceptions where an expert guide with specialized knowledge and insight can be great, but most of the time the guides are hacks and nothing remotely like that. I can last an hour but after that the bad jokes, the perky personality tricks, the tall tales passed on as truths, the invented (wrong) answers to dumb ass questions, the emphasis on stupid topics like ghosts rather than fact, the way the crowd (like putty in the hands) becomes as collectively stupid as their guide; the bad local recommendations; the genealogies, the long-winded stories.... I just can't do it with a regular guided tour.

R52's point about 'the Mountains' with nothing to unchanging subtle variations of the same landscape reminds me why I have to have some architecture and some history aspart of the mix. My parents loved nothing more than driving for many hours with nothing out the car windows but green trees and a paved road. I like 'scenery' only in small doses, as the nature you pass through en route to something more interesting.

And R43, yes, I have more than a few posh friends who have lived and travelled everywhere and they raved about the Maldives -- until suddenly they turned bored of the place. I just don't like the beach unless maybe it's a small isolated cove surrounded by cliffs a half-hour from a town with great restaurants. I like to think I do nothing well, but on a beach? But I can't. Not for long. I don't care how white the sand, how crystal blue the water, I need something more to amuse me for more than a few hours. And I hate that kind of generic Dubai 5-star world resort architecture and landscape design with all of those artificially constructed islands and coves. More land equals more time-share opportunities for investors, but not more interest for me.

For the most part, after being in the military, and moving around so much, I don't like to go beyond a five mile radius of my things. I have my house out in the country, a pool, two fishing ponds, my dogs, my tomatoes, my apple orchard, my raspberry patch, point being staycations are my thing.

Most of the Maldivian resorts are fine if you have a stack of books to get through or someone with you for endless bangin’ sex. And pray that the weather is good - it’s less reliable with climate change and I have friends who were stuck at their 5+ star resort for a week during a typhoon and were crawling the walls by the end of it.

I also liked the idea of climbing down a ladder from my room into a beautiful blue lagoon but frankly I prefer a few waves and a sandy beach.

The Maldives and Seychelles are also Honeymoon Ground Zero which is my idea of vacation hell.

How the fuck do people even get the idea to go to the Maldives.

Verst vay kay shun was - how you say ? - my honeymun. It vaz awful with orange man. He come near poosay with little dick, I say 'Get fuck out of here!'

Somehow, Trump and his third wife always end up in a thread.

R68 And they should - they're so damn entertaining ! Their dreadful marriage needs a purpose in this life - and it has found one...to entertain the masses ! Be happy, be thankful for their miserable marriage !

R66 The Maldives has a lot to recommend it if you like extremely luxurious resorts to which you can escape from where you happen to live, have plenty of money for spoiling yourself and enjoy - in the best resorts - amazing food and wine, perfect service and a few days of indulgence. I went a few times as it was less than five hours’ flying time from Singapore, where I was living at the time and I often wanted to GTFO of Singapore for a long weekend, and less than three hours from Mumbai - ditto.

Why wouldn’t people with even a little curiosity about the rest of the world consider it?

Having said that, having done it, I have zero interest in returning.

You don’t have a passport, do you, R66?

Yes, I have a passport, R70.

Well that’s a great first step, R71.

Now try using it to visit somewhere other than Tijuana.

Las Vegas was a nightmare to me. Way too crowded and obnoxious. The hotel had a casino in the lobby where all I could smell was cigarette smoke. You had to pay a lot for a lounge chair by the pool at the hotel. I got roped into a group trip a friend planned. The only respite was a nice underground spa in the hotel.

Benidorm. I was 17, and it was my first holiday without my family. I was coerced into going with a group of guys I knew including my cousin, who spent the entire fortnight as drunk as a skunk. Someone had backed out and they didn’t want to cancel.,

I had nothing in common with any of them. They were out all night at clubs, bringing girls back and noisily fucking their brains out. I had to go on the balcony to get some sleep.

During the day they were too hung over to do anything. I had my Spanish “O” Level and was keen to use it, so my days were filled with trips out of Benidorm. I even made it to Valencia.

Going home was a relief. They all looked like death warmed up. I had a beautiful tan, and had had a great time.

R74, Valencia’s great isn’t it. I fear it is becoming too popular for its own good, much like Barcelona and countless others.

Never been to Benidorm but I’ve gotten the impression it’s primarily for drunken tourists and retirees who don’t want to learn Castellano/Spanish.

Benidorm’s Old Town is very pretty, but the resort is horrible. I’ve never been back.

I like vacation with no husband.

[quote]The Maldives has a lot to recommend it if you like extremely luxurious resorts to which you can escape from where you happen to live...

[quote]Why wouldn’t people with even a little curiosity about the rest of the world consider it?

I can appreciate that others are attracted to Maldives luxury, but absolutely it's not for me. I've never had the love of water that others have. Beaches, lakes, sand...I can sit still in that setting only for a few hours. Beyond that my usual capacity for taking pleasure in doing nothing is taxed beyond limits. I already have the luxury of a relaxed life and in a place I love, with incredible beauty and rich culture. For me leaving that to sit on a beach or in a Maldives villa with the water lapping beneath me for a week...I'd very happily rather stay home and spend a week on a sofa watching TV. I don't have the itch to escape or to relax, instead travel is for some new inspiration, to explore new or revisit favorite places, foods, etc. For me, travel is about art, architecture, cities, and history first, and then natural (or semi-natural) landscapes a distant second.

The concept of 'Five Star' seems to have morphed from a rating into a sort of international identity/brand/standard of its own, for me a sort of bland generic concept of luxury. Hilton/Four Seasons/Mandarin Oriental/etc. with their uniform concept of Asian influenced minimalism and impeccably made beds, invisibly attentive service, and always a car at the ready to whisk you to...to the opera in formal wear and jewels, I suppose, throwing your heads back just slightly and laughing that soft laugh as rich people and captains of industry do. It's nice, it's just not my thing.

I'm a cheaper date. I love historic hotels and fantastic architecture and lobbies and huge rooms --but where the service is often a little more 4-star than 5, there are some occasional quirks, and there are not three internationally acclaimed sushi restaurants on premises. They will call a car for you, but unless you arranged it earlier, it's more likely a cab and you may have to wait a couple of minutes. They're astute enough to figure out that you've left your room and to send housekeeping in immediately, but not so slick that you never see any of the housekeeping staff. I probably won't call a taxi until it's time to go to the airport. I often prefer a really great 3-star local restaurant with local dishes and cheap wine to a 5-star fusion menu of the moment where a bottle of wine will cost more than the entire meal at the local place. For me, I prefer a beautiful historic hotel where I can walk everywhere and enjoy the sense of the place I'm visiting, not the brand identity of Four Seasons with a couple tiny nods to the geography.

Camping or any place without indoor running water.

Las Vegas or other (excessive) drinking, smoking gambling vacation.

Any trip where we are unsafe - we were really hassled in Jamaica and wound up paying the guys who wouldn’t leave us alone to go away and we had our room broken into (with us in it) in Tortola.

I dislike cruises, but I wouldn’t put them on the worst list.

Several years back some very close friends who owned a beautiful mountain vacation home asked me to spend a week with them there. We all drove up in their car. When we arrived at the house we came up the drive (the house sat far back off the road unseen from passersby) we noticed a car sitting in the drive right in front of the garage. We got out, looked around and saw no one. We went to the front door to unlock it and their keys wouldn't work. Clearly the locks had been changed. My friend's wife immediately called 911 and we waited. Two cop cars arrived and luckily one of the cops was familiar with my friends and knew they owned the house. The cops started banging on the door (one on the front door, one on the rear door) and finally after about 10 minutes this woman opened the front door acting as if she was offended that her peace and quiet had been disturbed. The cop who knew my friends demanded to know who she was and why she was in the house. The crazy woman said "well, it's my house so what's the problem". Cut to the chase, the fool had broken in weeks before and had been living there. My friends had never bothered to install an alarm system (BIG MISTAKE). They eventually had a system installed and had electric gates installed at the entrance. The cop told the woman "no you do not own this house". They rapidly had her in handcuffs and in the back of one of the cop cars while we went through the house to see what kind of damage she had done. Luckily the only mess she'd made was in the kitchen (she was a pig), and had only brought in all the clothes she owned. They hauled her away, had a wrecked come and haul her car away, and we gathered up all her clothes and threw them in boxes and stashed them in the back of the garage. It took as a full day to clean up the kitchen and anything else she could have touched. She stayed in jail for weeks before getting out on bail. The cops told her she could have someone else arrange with my friends to collect her clothes, but she was not allowed to go anywhere near the house or the owners. No one ever called or wrote and after 3 months they took all her clothes to Goodwill.

Anything involving Disney, especially in Florida. I can do Disney for a day, not longer.

Anything involving a bunch of drunks over the age of 50, especially in the desert or any campgrounds.

Anything involving hordes of children under the age of 12.

Aren’t the Maldives run by fundie Muslims?

Have you ever been in the Swiss or Austrian Mountains, R52? Beautiful, great architecture, and full of good food and interesting history.

R52 must find SCAT parties abhorrent as well…

R80, that was a loooong story.

and now it's a Trump thread. Kudos girlfriend. You are doing god's work.

“fundie Muslims”, R82? Datalounge never lets one down.

Being stuck in a car all the time. Seems a lot of people are content with never getting out of the car - basically sight seeing from behind the windshield. Ugh.

@R82

I like a happy medium when traveling with friends. I like to get out and see things, but I also like some down time to relax. I’m also not a sitting out on the beach all day type.

I had one vacation to NYC with some friends where one friend had come up with an itinerary for every day. It was nice to have someone plan everything, but everyone wasn’t expected to always join in. Some days I just went out on my own.

It’s true that you never know how it will turn out when traveling with people for the first time. Went on a trip with one friend who would never just fucking relax. Go, go, go the whole time. I needed a vacation from the vacation. A couple of years ago, I went on a trip with a group I’d never traveled with. I was a little anxious, but it was too good of a deal to pass up. We went to the beach a couple of times, and shopping and dinner, but also just slept late, read, hung around the pool, drank margaritas, cooked dinner at the rental, watched old movies. Everyone was just chill the whole time. I loved it. We are talking about all traveling together again.

In my MAGA red state when people are asked where they'd like to go on vacay they say "Gatlinburg" or "Gettysburg".

So, that.

oh god. even this turns into a trump thread. would you crazy gals just give it a rest? just one fucking day?

Las Vegas or even worse, Laughlin with all its cheap tackiness and sordid patrons. Heat, and at the river, flies. Smoking. Depressive scenes.

Disney, Six Flags, Knott's or any theme park with kids at any time of the year, summer or when they're out of school is worse. Cruises that allow kids for the same reason. Especially those that cater to kids like Disney or Carnival.

Road trips with anal retentive family members that "must" get at least 500-600 miles per day (this is a long day, at 70 mph it's over 7 hrs and usually you average around 65) which is a 9 hour day before stops. With stops it becomes 10.5-11. It's horrible. Then the "stop" is a cheap motel without a pool and Howard Johnson's or Denny's at best. At worst it's an AM/PM or an Arby's or a Buc-ees.

Road Trips.

I don´t like them. I was born without the American gene for them, and despite having done my share in years past, I hate them. I don't particulalry enjoy driving and hate big highways and driving for long periods of time. Anything over 2 or 2.5 hours drive seems a daunting task in my mind. The scenery is shit, the food worse, and to improve the prospects of either is to add many hours to the trip.

Even in the few beautiful driving trips in the U.S., along the Pacific coast, say, were of necessity rather than pleasure. To see a few things the only way to do it was with a car and with than many long hours of driving. At a point even memorable landscapes become e tiresome chore rather than a pleasurable adventure and I just want to arrive and be done with the 'getting there' part..

[quote] The scenery is shit, the food worse, ...

Huh? YOU get to pick your route and which restaurants you want to stop at. If the scenery is shit and the food is worse, that's your choice.

R83, Yes, many times, from Zermatt to Alpe D'Huez (where our rental car's clutch failed, and we had to descend in reverse, with my being "lookout"); from Interlaken to Chamonix; from Annecy to Courmayour. The Matterhorn is entrancing to me. Salzburg. Bolzano. Innsbruck. Everywhere Alpine, IOW. (You asked.)

But I prefer Nature in its place. Give me villages and small cities with appealing architecture and shopping and restaurants.

I do not want to camp in "rustic" cabins. I am probably in a minority, but I also dislike lit fireplaces.

Surround me with the Alps, but let me stay in a nice comfy Fremdenzimmer or hotel in Luzerne,like the one here, where I stayed twice:

R96, did you skip skiing down on the Italian side when you were at the Matterhorn? Good heavens, why? (Zermatt is admittedly lovely, but still.)

Lit fireplaces are already going the way of the do-do, which you'll likely be glad to hear. We've seen far too much of what can happen with excessive fire smoke in recent years.

Vacations are hell.

Packing, airports, trains, highway driving, hotels, check-in/check-out, traipsing and schlepping and lugging and hoping to find a cab that understands where you're going...I have a bad back, general anxiety, fear of flying and I loathe the entire experience of travel. For me it's simply increasingly painful, pointless and expensive.

I have my little garden and my books at home.

If I need to see Paris (been there, it was lovely, no desire to ever go again) I can read about it or look at images online.

Hotels have always been expensive. Since Covid, the prices have shot up and don't seem to be going down any time soon.

[quote]Surround me with the Alps, but let me stay in a nice comfy Fremdenzimmer or hotel in Luzerne

[quote]I do not want to camp in "rustic" cabins. I am probably in a minority, but I also dislike lit fireplaces.

R96 reminds me that I have zero interest in skiing, but that I don't mind spending a few days in a good ski lodge while friends experience skiing and the out-of-doors. Mountains are a similar thing; I usually prefer them as a distant backdrop. Maybe it was The Pink Panther and all those 1960s films set in ski lodges, but there is a primitive plesaure about the about being inside, lounging with some books and warm drinks with a roaring fire with a view of miserable cold outside.

Old people, and being old and old people problems. I travelled plenty for work and pleasure and now I prefer to stay home with my cats, Judy, Liza, Lorna, and Little Joe.

I'm so very happy for you, R101.

When I was 11 I went to Disneyworld with my parents and I thought it was lame and stupid. Never been back.

The older I'm getting the more I can't stand airports and flying on planes. It really irritates me and it's miserable.

I have no problem with airports and planes - my problem is with the other people who use them.

Ideal vacation…a nice place to stay within a comfortable driving distance and lots of friends around.

I’m saying this now because I just flew on several packed planes and I’m feeling like crap.

I stayed at a winery outside Lexington KY earlier this summer. Easy drive, great if not kinda boring city but plenty to explore. I slept in, kayaked, had one fancy meal and bummed around, checking out antique stores and coffee shops. Zero stress. Saw friends but wasn’t attached at the hip to them.