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I had a dream once, I remember it quite well. I was living on barge with my sweetheart. It’s what we did for a living - he was a river barge captain, we delivered freight via the canals of Europe. It's funny that my subconscious should settle me with so much contentment on a boat - after all, I get seasick and am a little claustrophobic. But on the barge of my dreams, I was supremely comfortable. It was roomy and conditions were seldom rough. We had a nice cabin and a good kitchen and there were lots of windows. The best part about it was that while we were always off to somewhere new, we were also always at home.
Peripherally related, I also remember a conversation with my stepmom after she'd returned from a retreat. I'd arrived to visit my Dad while she was gone, she arrived home a day or two later with that post vacation mixture of relaxed and excited. I made some remark about how retreats weren't for me. "Don't you ever want to get away from it all?" she asked. I thought about it for a while and decided that actually, no, I didn't. "Get away from what?" I said, thinking about our trans-Atlantic lives, my freelance job that lets me work at home, our unbelievable adventures...
It's difficult for me to think about vacation in that classic 10-day-junket-to-[pick one: exotic, sunny, beachy, cultured, your choice]-location sort of way because travel is such an integrated part of our lives. But if I do set my head to it, I know that yes, sometimes I do just want a break, a weekend in Vancouver, Canada, or a week in Kona on the Big Island with nothing to do but take pictures, play the ukulele, and eat mangoes. Sign me up.
But when I think "dream vacation," I think big. If I could have anything I imagine, anything at all, I would go for unlimited resources and a good chunk of time, say, three to six months, no, longer still, with no booked agenda and a bottomless credit card that someone else has to pay for.
I'd head to the airport with one small bag, [camera kit, lightweight laptop, swimsuit, change of clothes] my husband, and I'd book the first flight West to Hawaii. As soon as I felt fully stocked up on Aloha, I'd opt for Fiji, then New Zealand for a few weeks of vagabonding in a camper van, Indonesia to see the temples of Borobadur, back to Vietnam and Cambodia, Thailand to spend some time working with the elephant rescue foundation, and oh, my brain is already running off to China and Japan and maybe Korea because I know nothing about it and then, for the finish, India, traveling by first class rail, drinking hot chai from glasses while the country side rolls by. To go flashpacking with plenty of dosh and plenty of time, that's my dream vacation. Big deep sigh here.
That's not, I realize, everyone's idea of a vacation, and I'm all too aware of the intermittent fits of exhaustion, frustration,and utter over-stimulation to be experienced in the midst of all that. But to have the money to do that sort of adventure, the possibility to stay in nice places while still wandering the surface of the planet with not much more than a small backpack, that's my idea of the dream vacation. Don't get me wrong, when I see the ads that show happy, thin, attractive people in beach chairs, I think, yeah, I could do with some of that. But if I could truly have my dream? A beach chair isn't going to do it for me.
What about you? What if you could go anywhere, do anything? What's YOUR dream vacation look like?
- Blah Blah Blog says Australia
- Scrapper Days wants Vegas in Hawaii (that sound you hear is me screaming, but to each her own)
- Carmen's Creative Chatter says Ireland, or maybe Costa Rica
Pam blogs about travel and other adventures at Nerd's Eye View. Photo: the writer, hard at work on her Hawaii guidebook at Polihale Beach on Kauai.
