There are two types of people on holidays. One who will just get a taxi to the hotel and one who decides being in a foreign city unable to speak the local language with a heavy suitcase is a great time to explore an unfamiliar public transport system. Then these two people date.
Summer is for time off. It is the harvest season and it’s time to reap the rewards of hard-won annual leave approvals and that sun cream you bought at half price back in February.
Holidays, regardless of where you take them, are precious. We are free of time sheets, “as per my last email” messages, Slack, Teams, Hangouts and all the other detritus that comes with the onerous business of having to work for a living. We can relax.
We spend too much time in our working year doing things we don’t want to do, which is why we can get so strict about our holiday time
The problem is, as always, other people. Other people and their different definitions of relaxation will ruin your holiday. For every friend who wants to spend the evening in the hotel wearing robes sampling every foreign crisp watching Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares with subtitles, there is another who wants to seek out the most authentic local restaurant via the back of a stranger’s motorbike and a 40-minute trip up the side of a mountain.
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There is nothing inherently wrong with either idea – both have their time and place – but to the wrong person, each one would seem like a waste of a trip.
We spend too much time in our working year doing things we don’t want to do, which is why we can get so strict about our holiday time. We have spent too much money to wind up being stuck in a place we don’t like with bland food and people who annoy us. We can do that at home. For free.
So, before you set out it’s important to see if your travel values align with those of your companions. What’s more important to you? Convenience or cash? There are those who would sacrifice precious minutes of holiday enjoyment lugging a suitcase between dusty bus stops in order to save a tenner on a taxi. These people are sick and wrong but for various reasons they often become our closest companions. Love is love, after all.
But for many of us, holidays are for escaping the things that grind us down at home, like waiting for the bus and bringing lunch from home. To truly get away from it all, for me it’s worth paying extra to eliminate unnecessary friction points. Accommodation that’s just a short walk to the beach. Sun loungers so you don’t have to carry chairs across skin-melting sand. Air-conditioned transfers. A €20 taxi is worth so much more if it can stop an argument between two overheated and overtired people let down by a Google Maps “shortcut” to dinner that was actually an unmarked donkey track down a ravine.
But for some, holidays are a competition about how much you can safeguard precious cash from unnecessary expenses. Their preferred form of relaxation is being on high alert for things they deem to be “rip-offs”. This can lead to threats that touching the minibar causes bankruptcy and insisting everyone handwash their underwear in the sink because they would rather die than pay Ryanair for an extra cabin bag. These people are usually dads.
There are people who see travel as a vocation. Something beyond doping around somewhere new for a bit, trying some new food and taking it all in
However, with a bit of compromise, we can learn from each other. Public trains around Italy, for example, are quicker, cooler and more convenient than navigating traffic-choked roads in a cab. Paying for a guided tour to a popular attraction helps us skip the long queue and gets us a discounted entry. Our two kinds can find peace together.
Culture or the craic? There are people who see travel as a vocation. Something beyond doping around somewhere new for a bit, trying some new food and taking it all in. They see it as an accomplishment, as if anyone with a credit card limit big enough can’t book a few flights on Skyscanner these days. They’re easy to spot – they tend to call themselves travellers and not tourists. They will obsessively read blogs, looking to seek out the most enriching cultural experience possible. Standing in line for hours to buy a pastry from a famous artisan bakery staffed by nuns is enriching. Hiking up a mountain in 40 degree heat is enriching. Listening to a three-hour spoken word performance is enriching. What they don’t know is that taking full advantage of a drinks package at an all inclusive resort is also enriching. The other extreme is a friend who refuses to eat in places that don’t have a picture of chips on a laminated menu.
What you need is a happy mixture of the two. Friends who will take you to beautiful, empty beaches via a short walk with a stunning view, and friends who will also enthusiastically join in the aqua aerobics class at the hotel because they can extract craic out of any situation.
Which is what holidays are for, however you define your version of fun.*
*Except camping, that’s never fun.
