Alluring Holiday Plans

Are you in the process of planning your next holiday/vacation?  (I’m still using the British term holidays because it’s one of those British expressions that I just can’t break.) But don’t you think that the word holiday sounds festive, fun and loaded with anticipation? Are you already in the mood and have plans in place or do you need a boost? 

I can’t stress enough the importance of taking holidays/vacations. I wish that Americans and the American-owned companies that they work for would give them more emphasis. Having grown up in a Puritan work ethic and farming family, i.e. unless you were constantly productive, you weren’t fulfilling your role in life and on a farm, there is never a good time to take a vacation, I know that I never truly appreciated the importance of a holiday until I married a Brit who was used to taking at least 4 weeks of paid holiday time a year.  4 weeks!!!!  When we first met, I had over eight weeks of holiday saved up and no plans to use any until I met Steve.  His 4 weeks was considered trivial to our French friends who have a minimum of 6 weeks a year. To them, the idea that I’d not taken a holiday in years was just unbelievable.  They couldn’t comprehend not having 6 weeks of holiday a year and they wondered how on earth I could cope? Now that’s a very good question. What are Americans thinking; when most are considered “lucky” to get 2 weeks paid vacation a year until they can stay the course and build up to 3 weeks?

When booking your flights and tour options, have you considered airlines or tour groups that aren’t the first ones to come to mind or the most advertised?  When we flew to Peru, we booked our flights on Copa, a Peruvian owned airline, and booked our tours of Cozco, Machu Picchu and other local sites through a Norwegian company.  I know, the tour group from Norway doesn’t make sense but a lot of research went into both and it paid off big time.  Our flights were the best we’ve ever experienced and believe me; we’ve tried most of the airlines out there!  The tour excursions were absolutely perfect.  We had private guides every step of the way and couldn’t have had better guides or accommodation throughout the trip. 

When booking our trip to Japan, a lot of research went into a tour company. We chose one based here in the US, Samurai Tours, but the owner spends 10 months living and working in Japan every year so he knows, lives and breathes Japan.  He works with local tour guides who are exceptional. We rarely book our through a tour company but when visiting countries such as Peru, Japan, China, Egypt, Borneo or a safari in Africa where we know that language and culture will be a big challenge, we go with a tour group. Those trips were booked through Kuoni, a UK based company, and we can’t praise them enough. Once on the holiday, we can relax and enjoy the experiences during the trip and know that we are in good hands and that we have professional local guides who are bi-lingual. But we’ve also experienced the best of the best through the Norwegian and US companies for two trips.

We are pretty confined to day trips or a short 2-3 day trip through the rest of this summer, thanks to not a lot that I can find to eat in restaurants. So I’m now focusing on planning our Mexican trip to Cabo San Lucas in October and our Costa Rica trip in December. Meanwhile, I’m drooling over the barbeque smells drifting in from our neighbors’ patios and enjoying day trips where I know that I can get mashed potatoes or soup at a restaurant.

Think about your escape and where you’d like to go this holiday/vacation.  It might be worth it to think outside the box and consider alternatives that will give you great pleasure and lots of memories.

Check out these links to get you thinking about your next trip: www.hotwire.com, www.tripadvisor.com and www.applevacations.com.