My goal with this blog is not to give advice. I don’t want to tell you what to do, I only seek to inspire you to go out and discover. However, I truly believe this one piece of advice is so important that I will break that rule. Maybe you’ve already got your bags packed for your trip this summer, and maybe you’ve already gone and come back. But, just in case you are someone who is sitting on the fence and has never been abroad, or you are someone who rarely takes a vacation, this post is one of the most important ones you might read in regards to travel. 

Vacation comes from the Latin root: vacatio meaning “freedom, exemption, being unoccupied.” According to the stories, the term started being used in the 1300s to describe “freedom from obligations.” Universities had vacacions when professors and students were exempt from teaching/studying. Eventually it made its way into our vernacular to mean that we are off from our duties. The same root word vacatio gives us “vacant” meaning empty, and “vacuum” meaning “empty space”. So a vacation is supposed to be an “emptying” of your schedule from work and “emptying” your house by leaving. It’s supposed to be a time to relax and to be at leisure. To be truly free. Why is it so hard to do that?

The Relationship Americans have with Vacations

For a myriad of sad reasons Americans are always short on time. Pretty much everyone I’ve met in the USA, whether in Northwest Arkansas, or in Dallas or Austin, or in the Carolinas or in Colorado, is constantly rushing. There is always this sensation that “I’ve gotta go. There is this thing I’ve gotta do.” Company policies here, as well as our culture, don’t prioritize leisure and relaxation as much as we prioritize productivity. Which results in only like 3 paid sick days per year and one or two weeks paid vacation. If you want to request non-paid time off it has to be approved by people who are also always short on time and who also don’t know how to take a vacation. 

The result is that if and when an American finally chooses to go on vacation they take the same strategy of their daily lives into their trip. They try to cram as much into it as possible, always rushing from one place to another. We go somewhere else thinking “I’ve gotta do this, I’ve gotta do that, and I’ve gotta do that other thing.” We go on ticking as many boxes as possible. We treat our vacations like our to-do list, and we act like a successful vacation means we did all the things we set out to do. Even though we are away from work and away from home, we’ve given ourselves more tasks. We give ourselves no margin, which means the pressure is always on. There is a better way. 

Where the Advice Came From

In 2019 my mom, my sister, and I took a one week trip to Italy. None of us had ever been to Italy, or to Europe before. I had heard that everything is close in Europe, so I had planned an itinerary that included 5 cities in 7 days. Then I went to my friend Darrell. Darrell runs a website to help make travel as easy and enjoyable as possible. He is a very experienced traveler, so I trusted his advice. I asked him what he thought about my itinerary. Darrell did not beat around the bush. He said “I really don’t recommend you do that because everything takes longer than you expect it to take. If you do this you’re gonna spend all your time going from place to place, instead of really being somewhere. So”, he said, “I recommend that you take your time. Visit one spot and really enjoy that spot. Really get to know it.” 

To be honest, I was skeptical at first. The advice of doing less felt a bit restrictive, it almost felt less adventurous. But I trusted his advice and his experience. So I limited our trip to only two cities, Venice and Cinque Terre and we spent less than one day in Milan since the return flight was from there. But that ended up being a fantastic trip for us. Now that I’ve been to Europe many times I can confirm that Darrell’s advice is fantastic advice, if not the best advice for traveling.

Factor in the Frictions

There are two myths that I hear often from Americans about Europe. First, that everything is close in Europe, and second that, since there is more public transportation, that getting around is cheap. In 8 years of traveling to Europe I can confirm that neither of those are true. 

Europe, or at least the parts that most Americans travel to, is a little less than half the size of the continental United States. But that is still half of the continental United States. That is a huge area! Italy is about the size of California. Our train ride from Venice to Cinque Terre took 7 hours. That’s over half a day. I once drove in a car from Vienna, Austria to Feldkirch, Austria and the trip took over 9 hours. The whole was gone. Flying from Nice, France, to Paris takes 2 hours. Americans are used to driving one hour commutes each way every day and even longer distances on weekends. It might not sound like much, but these numbers are just “Travel times”. The time you’re actually moving. We forget to factor in all the other bits of friction. 

Let’s take our trip to Italy, for example. We landed in Milan Malpensa. From the airport in Milan to the Central Train station took 45 minutes. But that’s just the time we were sitting on the train. You have to consider that we had to find out where to board the trains at the airport, and then we had to walk there. That takes time. We then had to buy the tickets. That also takes time. When we got to Milano Centrale, we had to find out “Where do I buy a ticket for Venice? And which platform will I need to take to get to Venice?” And then we had to wait for our train to depart. Depending on where you are going that might be every 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or every hour. You also have to ask the question “what happens if I miss the train?”

When we left Venice, we took a 7 hour train to Cinque Terre, but we didn’t realize that we had to change trains. We missed our transfer and we had to spend an extra two hours getting back on track. Even though I’ve now got a lot of experience, and I am fluent in multiple languages, these kinds of things happen often, they are not fun, they are stressful. If you go from one place to another every day, you will increase your chance of things going awry. Then, most of your time will be taken up by these kinds of frictions, and most of your memories will be stressful rather than fun. 

Transportation is Expensive

Alright, there are some people to which money is no object, but I’m betting that if you’re reading this blog post, chances are you are conscious about how much your vacation is gonna cost. With that in mind, I’m gonna let you know that trains in Europe are not cheap. They might be cheaper than renting a car, or flying from place to place, but it’s not free. 

A trip with more stops is more expensive. More transport and more lodging = more expenses. It’s not just the cost of the new AirBnB in every new town, it’s all the other small fees that add up. And how long does it take to check in and for the host to go through all the rules with you? If you are rushing, you are worrying about when you have to go and pack up, and clean the BnB, and rush to the train station, and hopefully make it to the connecting train, etc. 

To add to this, let’s say you pack in a very tight schedule of transportation from one place to another. If you miss one connection your whole plan is ruined. That means you will have to buy another ticket, or you might even have to get an unexpected hotel room. Now you are down the cost of one ticket either airplane or train or bus, plus the time that you have to wait for your next connection. Therefore the more you go from one place to another the more expensive your trip becomes and the less time you spend actually enjoying your vacation. 

More places does not equal more experience because you end up just passing through. Let me ask you this: Would you rather spend the majority of your time on “vacation” sitting in an uncomfortable place while carrying all your crap or would you rather spend time at your destination, enjoying the view, sipping on a drink of your choice? 

The less that you schedule, the more margin you have. 

You want to give yourself a margin. On our trip to Italy, for example, we landed in Milan at around 9 am. When we got to Venice we had a lot of difficulties finding our BnB. We didn’t make it to our rental apartment until 3pm and we were very tired. Jetlag hit us hard, but since we had a loose itinerary and we were staying in one place for three days we allowed ourselves to take naps and to sleep as much as we needed. Then we could walk out and about when we were well rested. We gave ourselves the time to explore and see the sights we wanted and then some. We had time to get lost. We had time to pivot. We gave ourselves the margin to be able to do that.

You give yourself margin by scheduling less on your trip. I get it. You’re on an international trip and it’s expensive to get there, and you don’t know when you’ll be able to go again. It feels like you have to take advantage of the opportunity, like you have to squeeze all the juice out of it. It’s tempting to pack your days full of stuff, but that is exactly the problem with Americans. We are doing too much, and that is the opposite of vacationing.

Remember our definition above? Vacatio? Emptying your schedule from duties? The paint of a vacation is to have no duty. You can have a goal, but not a responsibility. You can have options of what to do with your day, but not obligations. Be free to go to a cafe and sit there as long as you flipping want. Be free to go on a hike and find a spot that you love and sit there as long as you desire. Get dinner with your neighbor. Play soccer with the locals. Jump on a trampoline with strangers. Walk into that public DJ set. Allow yourself to be pulled into a story. Be still enough to be invited into the place where you are. 

If you are rushing then you are no longer on vacation. 

If you are rushing then you are no longer on vacation. You are not allowing your mind to turn off. You are not allowing yourself to relax. And that is really what this is all about. I want you to stop rushing because I want you to have a good good vacation. Vacations are so good. That’s why God invented the Sabbath! It’s a time to celebrate! It’s a time for you to empty your mind of your worries. A vacation recharges the soul. It changes your perspective. It can help you heal. It can help you get closer to God. 

A vacation doesn’t have to be expensive. A vacation doesn’t have to be stressful. When you go on vacation I invite you to leave expectations behind. Leave your to-do list behind. I invite you to stop and simply sit down and sip on that Aperol Spritz and enjoy what you have at the moment. I invite you to really be there. Do it for your wife. Do it for your husband. Do it for your kids. Do it for yourself.

Darrell’s advice doesn’t necessarily work if you’re traveling somewhere for an event, like a wedding or for work, but if your goal is to have a vacation you enjoy, and you truly want to relax, and you really want time that you and your family and friends will remember then please take this advice too. Because when you are rushing you lose. 

A few personal tips for a good good vacation:

– As a rule of thumb: If it’s a day in which I’m changing locations I don’t count it as a vacation day. 

– Jetlag is a real thing. It can severely hinder how you enjoy your trip. Plan for it. Do research on how to combat it, but do give yourself time to sleep and get rest.

– I only give myself ONE must-do per day. Better yet, I make a list of things that I can do, but that are not required, that way every day I have options, rather than obligations. 

– The cheapest modes of transportation I’ve found are buses, and shared rides. Omio is an app that I use to compare transportation costs between bus, train, and airplane. Sometimes the Flix Bus app is the cheapest option. Shared rides like BlaBlaCar are also an option. 

• P.S. I have never been to Asia. I don’t know if the apps mentioned above apply, but the the lessons in the stories above do still apply the same, if not more. 

I hope this story is encouraging to you. If you know somebody that you think this might be encouraging to as well, go ahead and share it with them!