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Question of the Week: What’s your favorite vacation?

On Friday, I will board a plane and head off to Italy. (Trivia: Guess how many countries I’m actually going to visit while I’m in Europe!) It’s been four years since we’ve been on a proper vacation, and we’re looking forward to it. My wife’s families are Italian, and she’s always wanted to go to Italy, and as my daughter is nominally a senior (whether she actually graduates in May is TBD), we want to make sure we can go on at least one more vacation before she becomes more adult-y and might not be able to go on vacations with us. I haven’t been to Italy since I was 7 years old, so, I mean, it’s sort of my first time going, as well.

This is what Rome looked like the last time I was there!

We’re looking forward to it, of course, and we’re going to be very busy and see lots of stuff. On some vacations, you just want to relax, but we’re not going to some tropical island to sit on the beach, so we have a lot to do!!!! We’ll be there until the 23rd of October, and we won’t even go everywhere we want to – it’s a big country, yo! But we’re still looking forward to it.

I’ve been lucky enough to go to a lot of cool places in my life. My mom loved to travel, so she dragged us to a lot of nifty places, and my wife likes to travel, so we’ve tried to carve out some cool vacations during our lives together. We’re not quite as well-traveled as my parents – I mean, they went on safari in Kenya/Tanzania last year when they were 78 years old, and they went on a cruise of the Amazon the year before – but we do okay. So I’ve been on a lot of cool vacations. But my Question this Week is: What’s your favorite one?

This is really hard for me to answer. Back when I was a lad, we used to go to the Alps a lot in the winter, and that’s where I learned to ski. We went to Italy and saw Mout Etna erupt. When I was studying abroad in Melbourne, I went to Tasmania for a long weekend. In 1995, we went to New Orleans for a delayed honeymoon (we didn’t have any money when we got married!). We’ve gone to San Diego a few times during Comic-Con, but we went as a family, so it sort-of counts. We went to Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia, and both are cool cities. I’ve been to Disney World twice!

I can’t really narrow it down, so here are my Top Five:

1. Egypt, 2006. It’s such a neat country, and the temples and pyramids and ancient stuff is amazing, and we did a cruise on a very cool boat up Lake Nasser, and we had an excellent time. Plus, my wife took this photo of me, and I dig this photo of me:

Of course I’m talking!

2. England, 2018. This is the most recent big vacation we took, and we had a blast. We stayed mostly in London, but we did go to Paris for a day, down to Hastings to hang out with an old friend whom we hadn’t seen in almost 20 years, and we zipped out to Bath and Stonehenge. Plus, I went to York for the day, ostensibly to meet a professor who wrote the book on Merovingian France, but when we didn’t connect (I had no phone, so we made plans to meet, but missed each other), I just wandered around York, which is a cool city. A good time was had by all!

London!

3. Granada/Venezuela, 1999. We went on a sailing ship from Granada to Venezuela, and it was very relaxing and cool, because it wasn’t a huge ship, so it didn’t feel crowded, and we got to see some of Venezuela without having to stay in Venezuela. Look how relaxed we are:

I’m too sexy for my shirt!

We also like to joke that we get to places just in time. When we went to Egypt, Mubarek was still in power and he remained there until 2011, but after we went there, things started getting a bit dicey in the country. We went to Venezuela about six months after Chávez took over, when everyone still thought he was sane because he was, well, acting sanely. Things got noticeably worse not too long after we left. Even our England trip “counts” a bit, as less than a year after we were in Paris, Notre-Dame caught fire. We’re not sure if Italy electing a fascist in their latest election is our doing, but you can blame us if you choose!

4. France, 1985. My parents were friends with people in Germany, and they moved to Paris, so a few years after we moved back to the States, we visited them in France. The man knew French fluently (I’m not sure if his wife did, but I do know he did), so we were able to go around the city and not get looked down on by snooty French people for being ugly Americans (considering half of us weren’t ugly Americans, that was a good thing). We saw naked hookers on the ring road south of the Bois de Boulogne (I’m so not kidding; they were a major tourist attraction, it seemed), we ate at cool restaurants, and I crushed hard on their daughter, whom I had known several years earlier in Germany but who was now 16 or 17 (I was 14) and was super-hot. We played a good amount of table tennis in their rec room (not a metaphor, you filthy people!), and she kicked my ass, but I didn’t care! After we left Paris, we went south to the Loire Valley, then swung north to Mont-St.-Michel and Normandy. It was a very cool vacation.

5. Barbados, 1988. In between my junior and senior year, my family went to Barbados. There, I convinced 6-month-old Rihanna to go into music. You can’t prove I didn’t! It’s a nifty island, and we did some touring, but why I remember it so fondly was because one day we went on a cruise up the coast from Bridgetown on a (replicate) pirate ship. The rum was flowing freely, which I’m sure my parents didn’t mind, but the kids were allowed to climb up the rigging and swing out on ropes over the ocean and jump in, and it was fun as hell. I can’t imagine they allow that anymore – I’m sure some kid got eaten by a shark at some point so they had to stop – but man, that was a good day.

Now, if you ask me on a different day, I might have some different answers. But those were good vacations. I hope the one I’m about to embark on is as good! What are your favorite vacations? Don’t be shy!

22 Comments

  1. tomfitz1

    BURGAS: Quite the globetrotters, your family is.

    I don’t like to travel much these past 20 years, mostly because I’ve had two different dogs to look after. Now, that they both have passed on, who knows, I might do a little traveling when I saved up some $$.

    But I digress, to answer your question: There were two family vacations that I vaguely remember since I was much younger:

    1) Went on a tour of the Badlands in South/North Dakota, that had a western feel to it – had cowboys and Indians as we called them in those days.

    2) Went on a trip to the Magic Kingdom of Disney World in Florida just before the 80’s began – before EPCOT was built.
    That was fun. Some of my other family went back a couple of times since then, not me.

    1. Greg Burgas

      I have never been to the Dakotas – I’d like to, but it just hasn’t happened.

      And the first time I went to Disney, Epcot wasn’t around, but the second time, it had just recently opened, and I think that’s why we went back, although my parents would know if that’s true better than I would.

  2. Eric van Schaik

    I wish you guys a good journey.

    Here are some of my vacations:

    With my ex:

    Japan, 1993
    A girlfriend of her lived with her husband in Japan. We stayed 3,5 weeks. We visited Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo (including Disneyland Tokyo), Mount Fuji and a view other places. We went backpacking which was a lot of fun.
    We also visited a indoor baseball game which was neat.

    Bulgaria, Borovetz, 1995
    The first and only time we went skying. When we arrived at the hotel was the first time that day we saw snow. Later that week we got fresh snow and I was not to bad on ski’s.

    With my new wife:

    Egypt, Hurghada, 2019
    Our first vacation together which we survived. šŸ˜‰ Luxor was a place to behold. The vally of the queens, tomb of Ramesses to name a few.

    Azores, 2021
    It was one of the few places where we could go during the pandemic. San Miguel is a beautiful island. Apart from 2 rainshowers we had nice weather. We really want to go there in a view years.

    Rhodes, 2022
    This was our first time with my youngest 2 who hadn’t flown before. We had a nice hotel and good car rental. We haven’t seen all we wanted so we want to visit it again.

    Alone:

    Brasil, Rio and Curithiba, 2019
    A friend of mine moved to Brasil 24 years ago and from time to time he visits us and with our old team we play a game of tennis. In november ’18 after our match someone got the idea to have the next match in Brasil. We went from friday until thursday. Before we visited him we went to see Rio. Swam in the Copacabana, visit the Jezus statue and sugerleaf mountain.
    March ’23 I go again but this time with my wife. She got permission for a 4 week vacation. šŸ™‚ Hurray for us.

    1. Greg Burgas

      I’d dig going to all those places (well, not Egypt, as I’ve already been there), but especially Rhodes. Seems like an interesting place to visit.

      You’ve only been skiing once? Get on it, sir! šŸ™‚

  3. conrad1970

    I would have to put Antigua at number 1, a beautiful laid back vibe. Plus I met my wife there which is a big bonus
    On the other hand my worst vacation ever award goes to Jamaica. A total shit hole if ever Iā€™ve seen one, and you know how I feel about shit holes.

    1. Greg Burgas

      The Caribbean seems like a weird hit-and-miss kind of area – some places are superb, and others are really not. I’ve never been to either Antigua or Jamaica, but I’m not surprised you feel that way!

  4. Der

    I havenā€™t vacationed that much. When I was a kid we went to my momā€™s parents or to my dadā€™s parents. And both travels were just: wake up early saturday, and return by midday sunday(even if we took like 4 hours or more to get there) so yeah, shitty vacations all around with them(maybe whe had one or two different vacations but I donā€™t remember them

    When I started working that didnā€™t change, but I traveled from time to time, but mostly inside Mexico. Iā€™ve traveled the most with my wife, from pretty colonial towns(Guanajuato) to nice beaches(Cancun and others too). But the one I remember the most was not exactly a vacation but it will stay with me for a long time.

    It was when my father in law died. He was living in a little town in Oaxaca called San Pedro Tututepec and he had a heart attack(at the moment when my wife got the call we got a different version that he was mugged. That was not true) and we raced to the funeral. Well ā€œracedā€ to be honest

    The town is like 12 hours away from Mexico City, so we took a bus, and arrived just at the moment of the burial. But that was just the beginning of the ceremonies.

    I didnā€™t knew at the time, but they do a week long celebration. In fact, I think is longer than a week. But whatever. They do a week of prayers, at the end of those prayers the y do something that I donā€™t recall the name of. Something like ā€œThe rising of the shadowā€ or similar. There is a shadow in the name of that part of the rite. So imagine that, you are praying all night long(well, not me because I might be a lapsed catholic but praying all night is too much for me) and then go and march to the cemetery at 5 am surrounded by crosses, people and candles.

    Before I talk about the rest of the ceremony, let me tell you about this town. Itā€™s a little town in the top of a hill/mountain whatever you want to call it, but they are almost in a jungle, you are surrounded by tall hills and lots and lots of trees and greenery that itā€™s impossible to not gawk at everything around you. Then you get to the cemetery that is almost to the top of the town and you can see the sea very close because of course a beautiful jungle must have a sea nearby.

    So anyway, there you are, walking to a cemetery just before sunrise. You do some more prayers(or gawk at the scenery some more, your choice) and then off you go, to eat like a king for two days in a row.

    They spare no expenses it seems, but you eat a lot, then you drink a lot(I donā€™t drink alcohol, so that was a no for me) and eat lots of different food, from stews like pozole and something called ā€œbarbacoaā€(different from the barbacoa from where Iā€™m from to be sure) to lots and lots of things: tamales, tacos, more stews, some deep fried parts of a cow that I donā€™t recall their names but by god they were delicious and some more bread and other things. It was a blur of eating and talking, I donā€™t even recall if I slept or not those two days or how long did I slept but it was something that I havenā€™t seen in other places

    Imagine seeing an army of ladies making tortillas. That was their whole mission during those two days. They ground the corn, made the masa and made the tortillas by hand(just by slapping the masa between their hands. Thatā€™s an amazing skill I donā€™t possess and I consider myself a decent cook) and then putting that in a giant comal surrounded by a giant pile of burning logs. I was curious and approached the fire and I couldnā€™t get close to it, I donā€™t know how they did it but it was mesmerizing.

    And then they do it all over again the next year

    (The tradition indicates that you canā€™t put an altar for the day of the dead for the recently deceased. They have to wait a year before you can do that. So this ā€œletā€™s celebrate again the next yearā€ I think is a workaround for that. Pretty cool)

    That was my most memorable vacation but it was sadly not really a vacation but I saw a part of the life of a small town located in a beautiful part of the country. And even went to the beach too, obviously. It was cristaline water all around and almost no one there so that was nice too. Itā€™s a bittersweet memory for me(My father in law was very nice to me, so I have good memory of him but he didnā€™t knew his granddaughter)

    We want to go again, but is so far so we are waiting until the timing is right(and the money too)

    If you want to see, I have some pictures from that place:

    The view from the cemetery:
    https://i.imgur.com/Fnlle9O.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/6IGJgrC.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/mynKAK3.jpg

    the beach:
    https://i.imgur.com/YzgDpZ5.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/SPuHZ2P.jpg

    So not really a vacation but really nice place

  5. Der

    Oh I put a giant wall of text and the system sent it to moderation, boooooo!

    Nice vacations Greg, I would love to go to Italy or any part of Europe, maybe in a few years

  6. John King

    I have not left the UK often ā€“ just a couple of times while I was still at school.
    Of those occasions my favourite was my week in Legoland ā€¦ okay, the week was actually in Denmark with just a day or 2 in Legoland

    Most of my holidays were in the UK (with my parents and brother ā€“ sometimes with an aunt)- I’ll have to focus on the places (some I’ve visited several times and they blur together) rather than individual visits ā€“ my favourite UK locations were

    1) East Anglia (Norfolk and Suffolk) ā€“ especially the North Norfolk coast such as Cley-Next-the-Sea with it’s windmill and nature reserve. Every evening we would walk down to a bridge and see a barn owl flying. On some such holidays I would have a day trip to my old university city of Norwich.
    2) Wales ā€“ particularly remember a stay near lake Bala ā€“ visits to Portmerion (where the Prisoner was filmed), Mount Snowdon and Skomer Isle
    3) North-West England (Lancashire and Cumbria) ā€“ stayed near the border visiting the Leighton Moss nature reserve and the lake district, eating/drinking at a chocolate restaurant in Kendal.
    4) Yorkshire ā€“ staying at Robin Hood’s bay, visiting Bempton cliffs for the seabirds or York and seeing the Viking exhibitions
    5) South England ā€“ Devon, the Isle of Wight, the New Forest, etc. Good memories from when I was young visiting the Isle of Wight and seeing the dinosaurs at Blackgang Chine and the many-coloured sands at Alum Bay

    1. Greg Burgas

      I went to Legoland in Denmark when I was probably 4 years old (maybe 5?), and I barely remember it, but I recall some of it!

      I would love to tour all over the UK, but I really want to go to Wales – northern Wales in particular, but not exclusively. I don’t know why, but I’ve been fascinated by Wales since I was but a lad. And I’ve never been. šŸ™

  7. Der

    System sent my giant wall of text to moderation, so I’m posting this again in two parts I think

    Part 1:

    I havenā€™t vacationed that much. When I was a kid we went to my momā€™s parents or to my dadā€™s parents. And both travels were just: wake up early saturday, and return by midday sunday(even if we took like 4 hours or more to get there) so yeah, shitty vacations all around with them(maybe whe had one or two different vacations but I donā€™t remember them

    When I started working that didnā€™t change, but I traveled from time to time, but mostly inside Mexico. Iā€™ve traveled the most with my wife, from pretty colonial towns(Guanajuato) to nice beaches(Cancun and others too). But the one I remember the most was not exactly a vacation but it will stay with me for a long time.

    It was when my father in law died. He was living in a little town in Oaxaca called San Pedro Tututepec and he had a heart attack(at the moment when my wife got the call we got a different version that he was mugged. That was not true) and we raced to the funeral. Well ā€œracedā€ to be honest

    The town is like 12 hours away from Mexico City, so we took a bus, and arrived just at the moment of the burial. But that was just the beginning of the ceremonies.

    I didnā€™t knew at the time, but they do a week long celebration. In fact, I think is longer than a week. But whatever. They do a week of prayers, at the end of those prayers the y do something that I donā€™t recall the name of. Something like ā€œThe rising of the shadowā€ or similar. There is a shadow in the name of that part of the rite. So imagine that, you are praying all night long(well, not me because I might be a lapsed catholic but praying all night is too much for me) and then go and march to the cemetery at 5 am surrounded by crosses, people and candles.

    1. Der

      Part 2:

      Before I talk about the rest of the ceremony, let me tell you about this town. Itā€™s a little town in the top of a hill/mountain whatever you want to call it, but they are almost in a jungle, you are surrounded by tall hills and lots and lots of trees and greenery that itā€™s impossible to not gawk at everything around you. Then you get to the cemetery that is almost to the top of the town and you can see the sea very close because of course a beautiful jungle must have a sea nearby.

      So anyway, there you are, walking to a cemetery just before sunrise. You do some more prayers(or gawk at the scenery some more, your choice) and then off you go, to eat like a king for two days in a row.

      They spare no expenses it seems, but you eat a lot, then you drink a lot(I donā€™t drink alcohol, so that was a no for me) and eat lots of different food, from stews like pozole and something called ā€œbarbacoaā€(different from the barbacoa from where Iā€™m from to be sure) to lots and lots of things: tamales, tacos, more stews, some deep fried parts of a cow that I donā€™t recall their names but by god they were delicious and some more bread and other things. It was a blur of eating and talking, I donā€™t even recall if I slept or not those two days or how long did I slept but it was something that I havenā€™t seen in other places

      Imagine seeing an army of ladies making tortillas. That was their whole mission during those two days. They ground the corn, made the masa and made the tortillas by hand(just by slapping the masa between their hands. Thatā€™s an amazing skill I donā€™t possess and I consider myself a decent cook) and then putting that in a giant comal surrounded by a giant pile of burning logs. I was curious and approached the fire and I couldnā€™t get close to it, I donā€™t know how they did it but it was mesmerizing.

      And then they do it all over again the next year

      (The tradition indicates that you canā€™t put an altar for the day of the dead for the recently deceased. They have to wait a year before you can do that. So this ā€œletā€™s celebrate again the next yearā€ I think is a workaround for that. Pretty cool)

      That was my most memorable vacation but it was sadly not really a vacation but I saw a part of the life of a small town located in a beautiful part of the country. And even went to the beach too, obviously. It was cristaline water all around and almost no one there so that was nice too. Itā€™s a bittersweet memory for me(My father in law was very nice to me, so I have good memory of him but he didnā€™t knew his granddaughter)

      We want to go again, but is so far so we are waiting until the timing is right(and the money too)

        1. Greg Burgas

          Yeah, I saw your comment in moderation after it had been there a while, as I was away from the computer most of the day. I can only think it’s because of the links to the photographs. I fixed it, but hadn’t realized you had redone your comment!

  8. JHL

    I also did the Badlands as a kid. Also went to Mt. Rushmore on that trip, but the Badlands were far more memorable. Especially since we did a Bell 47 helicopter tour over them. That is the helicopter with the all glass bubble around the cockpit. Familiar to people old enough as the helicopter that they used on M.A.S.H. And the Batman 66 movie.

    Two other trips that stand out are catching the spring Sumo basho in Tokyo, and a work trip to Honduras. The Honduras trip was really a work/vacation trip. The work part was actually a benefit since I stayed at the estate of a family who owned a business that was one of my suppliers. It meant I was away from the resorts and had the opportunity to see parts of the country a tourist would typically never visit.

    1. Greg Burgas

      That’s a cool way to see the sights. And I think you mean that it’s the kind of helicopter on the cover of ABBA’s Arrival album. That’s the most relevant reference! šŸ™‚

  9. You know the drill: Burgas posts one of these annoying questions, and Green is compelled to write a blog post, but he can’t schedule it until early next week.

    I will say that most of the places I’ve gone were not vacations but work-related conferences. Some allowed us to have some fun (New Orleans French Quarter, San Diego Chargers game, Chicago Cubs game), but most were so controlled could have been anywhere (Orlando, outside of Nashville). Miami was the WORST; it was October, the lobby carpeting was wet from a storm, and it was very muggy.

  10. Darthratzinger

    My top two:
    1998 US and Canada: a friend and I visited a friend studying abroad. Spent a couple days in New York (went to a Rancid show as well as an Avail show, both were awesome), Rochester (with said friend and his girlfriend and family), drove through Buffalo and failed to find the Niagara Falls, spent a couple days in Toronto where we learned the hard way that Canadian beer is as potent as European beer (after two weeks of US beer, we were used to drinking it like water), resulting in one of two blackouts in my life, couple days in Boston and back to New York. My personal highlight was standing in a mall in NYC and asking a random suit-and-tie-guy wether there is a comic book store close by and he giving us detailed directions to his favorite store (here everybody believes that comic books are for kids), entering the place and almost kissing the ground. I had to buy another suitcase to transport all the treasures I purchased (mostly Giffen/DeMatteis-era Justice League, back-issues were hard-to-find here at the time).
    2018 Israel: my wife and I finally travelled there together. I had been in Israel a couple years earlier on an exchange program for people working in memorial sites and loved it (except for all the people with machine guns everywhere, which was kinda weird coming from a country where the police usually fires off less than one hundred bullets a year). We were there in November when the weather is miserable at home but you could go to the beach at night in shorts. Takeaways: everybody in Tel Aviv is working out all the time and everybody in Jerusalem is insane or an a…hole. My wife had studied Theology, so visiting places like Jerusalem, Betlehem or Massada were probably one of the greatest experiences of her life. I loved that she basically turned into me because on every tour she told me all the incorrect things the guide said. And the entire country is full of CATS, so I had something to worship as well:-)

    1. Greg Burgas

      Um … you know, Niagara Falls doesn’t move around too much. It’s not Brigadoon!

      Sounds like a fun trip – I dig Toronto, although I’ve only been there once and it was when I was a kid, so I didn’t drink. Although I didn’t ask my parents if I could, so maybe they would have let me.

      I’d love to go to Israel and especially Masada. That would be keen. My parents have been there, but alas, I have not, yet.

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