Is there such a thing as vacationing wrong? I suppose it depends on who you ask.
If you ask my husband, I have been doing it wrong for years because I simply cannot sit still. Ancient ruins? Let’s go. A castle on top of a mountain? Obviously. Hiking along a cliff? Sounds responsible enough. Jumping off rocks into the sea? Yuri just yells, “We have life insurance! Go for it!”
He has accepted that this is who he married.
Yuri prefers to vacation very differently. He wants to sit on the beach. Actually, let me correct myself. Yuri would much rather be sitting at a beach club next to the beach with a chilled rosé in one hand and an ice cream in the other.
He has absolutely no intention of participating in the beach itself. You can find him safely tucked under an umbrella because even the sun is a reckless life choice.
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Then there’s Sonia.
Give that child a bucket, a shovel, a fishing net, and recently, her new bikini because, as she keeps reminding me, “I’m a big girl now.” She has recently discovered that bigger girls wear bikini tops and now believes she needs one too. “With padding,” she announced.
I would like to officially report that I am unprepared for this phase of parenthood.
Growing up, I don’t remember taking many vacations. We simply didn’t have a lot of money. Most of our trips were closer to home. Camping was an adventure.
I do however remember one big trip to Florida when my brother and I were little. Disney. EPCOT. Busch Gardens. Tampa. Daytona Beach. Looking back, I realize what an enormous deal that must have been for my parents. I’m certain they saved for a long time to make it happen. That or my great grandparents foot the bill. Likely that.
I also remember they argued through most of the vacation. Eventually they divorced. So maybe they were still trying to figure out how to vacation too.
Perhaps vacationing wrong isn’t about climbing every ruin or sitting under an umbrella all day. Maybe it’s spending so much energy trying to have the perfect vacation that you forget to actually enjoy it.
The other day I was listening to Sam Vander Wielen’s podcast, On Your Terms. She was standing outside a viral pancake shop with a line wrapped around the block.
She stopped herself and asked one simple question.
“Do I even like pancakes?”
I laughed because...fair. Why was she really there? Because everyone else was.
We’re all products of influence in today’s world. Ironically, my entire career was visual influence. My job was literally convincing people to click on things they probably weren’t thinking about five seconds earlier.
I’m still ridiculously easy to influence.
Show me a beautifully filmed bowl of pasta in Italy and suddenly I need carbs. In Italy of course. Show me some obscure travel gadget that’s supposedly going to change my life and fifteen minutes later I’m explaining to Yuri why we absolutely need a collapsible titanium spoon that folds into a flashlight.
When it comes to vacationing back in the day, we just got in the car and went.
There were no “Top 17 Hidden Gems You MUST Visit Before You Die” in the 90’s. Not online anyway.
No influencer telling us where the locals eat before immediately telling the other 4.7 million followers where the locals eat. No perfectly curated Google Maps list. There wasn’t Google.
In 1998, I was working at APAC TeleServices in Dubuque, Iowa. Yes, I was a scamfluencer before scamfluencers existed. My glamorous job was calling people during dinner to sell accidental death and dismemberment insurance because they happened to own a Sears credit card and were now eligible.
Somehow people still answered the phone back then.
One night around 10:00 p.m., two coworkers and I piled into my friend’s tiny Nissan after our night shift and decided we were driving from Dubuque to Los Angeles.
That was the plan.
Actually, that was the entire plan.
We had no idea where we’d stop. No clue where the best food was. No “must-see” overlooks. No viral coffee shops. No secret beaches. No itinerary color coded down to the bathroom breaks.
We just...left.
We didn’t even have the internet.
Cell phones? Nope.
GPS? Absolutely not.
Looking back, I’m amazed our parents didn’t file missing person reports by day three. Then again, maybe that’s why I spent my evenings trying to sell accidental death insurance. Turns out we were the target audience.
Instead, we had a Rand McNally road atlas, a cooler full of Diet Coke, a bag of chips, a few duffel bags, and the confidence that only people in their twenties possess.
We wandered through Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, San Diego, and Los Angeles.
We got lost. We found weird roadside attractions. We ate at random diners. We took wrong turns that somehow became the best part of the trip. We didn’t have Instagram. We had a multiple 35mm cameras we’d develop when we got back home at Walgreens.
Sure, movies had convinced us we needed to see Hollywood and the Sunset Strip. Everything else? That was just life happening.
Looking back, I think that’s the part I miss most. Showing up without a checklist. Without feeling like every moment had to become content. Without worrying if we’d somehow “done” a city correctly. Sometimes the best memories are the ones nobody told you to have.
Over the years, I was lucky enough to travel a little more.
For a Midwesterner, saying, “I’m going to Mexico,” carries about the same weight as announcing, “We’re headed to Florida.” Although, if I’m being honest, I’d pick California every single time.
Back then I worked with a woman named Sandy who took an annual trip to Cancun with her best friend, Linda.
One year she invited me along.
So there I was, in my twenties, spending a week at an all-inclusive resort with two middle-aged women who had absolutely perfected the art of vacationing.
They made the plans. I simply followed.
The moment we stepped off the plane someone handed me an ice-cold beer.
I remember thinking...
Hold on. Is this legal? What magical country have I entered where strangers greet you with alcohol before you’ve even found your suitcase? America could never.
It was also my first real experience being surrounded by another language. Every trip I’d come home thinking, I’m going to learn Spanish. Every single trip. Then life would happen.
These were the days long before Rosetta Stone, Babbel, Duolingo, Preply, or the other 4,372 language apps that now remind you daily you’ve missed your lesson and are personally disappointing an animated owl. Back then, if you wanted to learn a language, you mostly bought a book and hoped for the best.
On one of those Mexico trips, I decided to go swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. Yes...the Gulf of Mexico. It will always be the Gulf of Mexico.
Sandy was happily reading a book while sipping what I believe was her fourth Miami Vice of the afternoon. Linda was...well...doing whatever Linda did, which was usually somewhere between “having a great time” and “where did Linda go?”
Meanwhile, I was apparently auditioning for a Discovery Channel special. A huge wave picked me up and slammed me straight into a massive rock hidden beneath the water.
I remember that instant flash of panic still. The waves kept slamming back and forth and I was feeling trapped.
Well ... clearly I survived. Otherwise this story would have taken a very dark turn.
The next morning, though, I was in the shower when I happened to look down.
Something...
Something wasn’t right.
Let’s just say there was an alarming amount of red in a very personal area. By alarming, I mean it looked like I’d smuggled a cherry Popsicle into my swim trunks. At that exact moment I briefly wished the ocean had just finished the job because now I had a brand new problem.
Who exactly was I supposed to tell?
There was no internet. No Google. No smartphone. No ChatGPT. No Reddit thread titled, “Has anyone else bruised...well...there?”
I just wanted my mom.
Instead, I had Linda and Sandy.
The funny thing was I felt completely fine. Everything functioned normally. It just looked...aggressively patriotic. So I did what any 20 something would do on a trip with his co-worker. I quietly pulled Sandy aside.
“I need to show you something.”
Those are words nobody ever wants to hear. Especially from a single twenty-something man. I am fairly certain I permanently altered that woman’s dating standards for life.
She looked.
Paused.
Made a face that suggested she’d just witnessed a crime scene.
Then calmly said...
“Yeah...we should probably go to the pharmacy.”
We bought what was almost certainly cortisone cream, I stayed out of the water for the rest of the trip, and eventually everything returned to its factory settings.
You’re welcome for sharing that story.
That was vacationing wrong.
If you think the universe learned its lesson...oh no.
The following year we went to Cozumel. This time I got food poisoning. Not the cute kind where you’re under the weather for an afternoon. The kind where your hotel room becomes your entire vacation.
The beach? Never saw it.
The pool? Heard good things.
The buffet? Absolutely not.
I barely made it onto the airplane home.
After that, Sandy and Linda never invited me on another trip.
Honestly... I don’t blame them.
I had become less of a travel companion and more of a vacation insurance claim waiting to happen.
Fast forward a few years and I still hadn’t left North America until I met Yuri. He had traveled all over Europe and couldn’t believe that at 35 years old I’d never been. To him, international travel was normal. He’d lived between San Francisco and Los Angeles, studied in Italy for six months, and spent years hopping around Europe.
To me? Canada felt exotic.
We chose Italy for our honeymoon, and yes, this trip was absolutely influenced.
Not by TikTok. Not by Instagram. Google was still doing the influencing back in 2016. We hit Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, and Venice. We checked off all the places everyone tells you to see.
And honestly? They were worth it. Yuri also took me to some of his favorite places from when he lived in Florence, and for me there was one moment that completely stopped me in my tracks.
Michelangelo’s David. Pictures don’t prepare you. You turn the corner and suddenly your brain says, “Well...that’s absurd.” It’s one of those things I genuinely hope everyone gets to experience at least once.
That trip woke something back up inside me. We traveled whenever we could after that until 2020, when the world collectively decided nobody was going anywhere.
Ironically, we’d visited France four times in 2019. So when travel finally opened again in 2023, there was only one place I wanted to return to.
France.
One trip turned into a house purchase and then somehow...
Voila! We moved here.
Today we’re back from a little holiday in Costa Brava. Platja d’Aro, España, to be exact. This trip wasn’t influenced by anything except my imagination.
Close your eyes and picture the Spanish coastline. You’re probably imagining turquoise water, little coves, boats bobbing in the distance, families eating far too late, and someone drinking sangria before noon.
Congratulations. You just experienced our vacation. There were no excursions. No itinerary. No checklist. No viral pancake line. Just...time away.
We’re incredibly fortunate to live only fifty minutes from the Mediterranean and about two and a half hours from Costa Brava. For never having visited Spain before, it felt almost ridiculous that it had taken us this long.
Before we left, a friend said something simple. “Life is worth living. Go. Have fun.”
That sounds obvious. It’s amazing how often we need someone else to remind us.
Now, I know not everyone can jump in the car and spend a few days on the Spanish coast. I never forget how fortunate we are. What I’m most thankful for is that Sonia gets to grow up with these experiences.
As we packed up to leave, she looked at the sea and said,
“Daddy...the sea is so beautiful. Thank you for bringing me here.” Then she gave me the biggest kiss completely unprompted.
As a parent, those moments don’t announce themselves. They just happen. Somehow they become the memory you take home.
Besides, in about eight years she’ll pretend she doesn’t know me, so I’m cashing that kiss in while I still can.
Yesterday I finally did something Yuri has been encouraging me to do for years. Absolutely nothing. I sat in the sea for hours with tiny fish that swam around my legs. Every now and then I’d look back toward the beach. Yuri was asleep under the shade exactly where he’d intended to be all along.
Sonia had wandered off to play with two little girls from Spain. None of them spoke the same language. It didn’t matter. Children solve language barriers in about thirty seconds while adults write books about communication.
Nearby, one very confident woman had decided gravity was simply a suggestion and was giving her coastal raisins one more glorious season in the Mediterranean sunshine.
Honestly? Good for her.
And somewhere between the fish, Yuri snoring under the tent, Sonia laughing with children she’d never met, and Señora Free the Nipple living her absolute best life... there it was.
I didn’t need another castle.
I didn’t need another cliff to jump off.
I didn’t need another hidden gem that the other six million people on Instagram had already “discovered.”
I didn’t even need pancakes.
What I needed was for my nervous system to finally unclench. Perhaps that’s what vacationing right actually looks like. Not doing more. Not spending more. Not squeezing every ounce out of every minute because someone online convinced us that’s how memories are made.
Maybe vacationing right is simply finding the version that lets you exhale.
Mine usually involves sprinting toward another medieval ruin while Yuri yells, “We have life insurance!” This time though… I stayed in the water.
Turns out my husband may have been right.
Please don’t tell him. He’ll never let me hear the end of it.
If you enjoy following our little adventures around France and the occasional questionable life decision, come say hello on Instagram at @Le_Simple_Sudiste.
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Now go restack this before an influencer convinces you that you’re vacationing wrong.
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