What was your best vacation ever?
— One where you went to faraway places?
— Visiting family?
— A random road trip?
— Simply spending time at home vegging out, working around the house on a project?
By far, my best “vacation” was our trip to Vancouver, British Columbia, where Kate and I married in 2004. The weather was perfect, we had a great, relaxed ceremony, enjoyed the city and the friendly people — and we took lots of pictures.
Second best was a trip to The Big Island and Oahu in 2002. Gorgeous weather, incredible vistas, The Big Island in particular, is otherworldly. I’d go back in a heartbeat.
Now the flip side: what was your worst vacation disaster?
Mine is after the jump…
My “worst” isn’t anything spectacular, but it was memorable.
It would be that same 2002 Hawaii trip, at least a small portion of the beginning of it. A description from my diary:
Bugs! There was a giant palmetto bug (aka fucking flying roach) in the bathroom. That nearly made me flee right there. Ron [the proprietor] caught it though. Later, as I start unpacking my stuff to take a shower, I notice lots of flying bugs, mostly small ones that I don’t recognize. I hope they don’t bite. Let’s put it this way — I’m not taking my stuff out of the Spacebags. I am glad I have everything, even toiletries, in Ziplocs so I don’t bring any “wildlife” home.
[The next AM…] It’s about 7:30 now and there’s a hula class, but I am just too damn tired to go. I go take a bath. As I get out, it starts raining again. Not too heavy though. I am standing there at the mirror and what do you know, that giant 2.5 inch F*cking Flying Roach (FFR) crawls out from behind the mirror! I whack it with a big bottle of soap on the counter and it goes belly up, squiggling. I decide to be sadistic and put the bottle on top of it. Since the bottom of the bottle is recessed, that bastard is trapped under there. Hahahahahaha. I will leave it there for housekeeping to find.
66 Responses to “Qs of the day”
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Best Vacation: Visiting my best friend John and his family in Florida. It was early March and I was living in upstate NY (Rome). I left snow and temps in the twenties for sunshine and temps in the upper sixties. He kept asking me if I wanted to do something special while I was content to sit by the river, watching it flow and occasionally reading my book.
Worst Vacation: Not real sure there is such a thing but if I had to choose, it would be when I was a GI, stationed in Hawaii and came back to my hometown for Christmas. It snowed and I put my mother’s car in the ditch on New Year’s Eve.
BTW, when I was in the islands, they called ‘em “flying cock-a-roaches.”
Oh, this is surely impossible - best in what way?
One of the best vacations I ever had, in a certain kind of way, was the time I went to San Francisco for six days over Christmas, because due to ructions at home I had nowhere else in particular to go, so I decided I would make a virtue out of necessity and go somewhere I had always wanted to go and not care that I knew no one there and wouldn’t be going with anyone. It was the first time that I had done that - vacationed absolutely alone - and while in some ways I was lonely, in other ways it was completely fabulous: getting up as early as I liked and going out for breakfast and then walking - I think I walked over most of the interesting bits of San Francisco in that week, including the whole way through Golden Gate Park on Christmas Day. I heard the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus sing their Home For the Holidays concert on Christmas Eve. I really had a fantastic time. But on the fourth day I also thought I was going to burst into tears if I didn’t get to have a friendly conversation with someone who knew who I was. (Only briefly. I went into a nearby diner and had apple pie and coffee and felt better.)
Another of the best vacations I had was the time I had 10 days on a tour in China: I’d lucked into some money and decided to spend it on just that - a guided tour through Beijing, Xian, and Shanghai. Wonderful, if guilt-making: I’d never been a rich tourist in what is still in many places a very poor country. But I got to see things I’d read about for thirty years - read about initially with no expectation that I ever would see them.
And yet another was the week I was in Arizona and spent a day walking the Grand Canyon, quite alone - down the South Kaibab trail, along the plateau, up the Bright Angel Trail.
Plus there are vacations that were special because of the friends I met, or because of the person I spent it with. But those are special for personal reasons…
I can’t say that I’ve ever had a “worst” vacation, but my best friend, on his last trip to visit us at the shore, arrived many hours late when the plane was struck by lightning, everything electrical went out, the plane plummeted several thousand feet, and everybody thought that they were going to die.
Could I count 1996, when I cancelled two weeks of vacation because things wer so busy at work (and I had no special plans), and pushed everything back until October. Then, with just a couple of weeks to go before an extended vacation, the batcher at the main plant had a heart attack, and I had to replace him. I wound up taking a whole two days off of work that entire year.
Best vacation: In the late 90s, I developed a sudden urge to see the Bay of Fundy. So I got some maps and tourist information from Nova Scotia, plotted a route, and made reservations. I spent a week and a half traveling from Yarmouth to Parrsboro, staying mostly at B&Bs, hiking and watching the tide. I enjoyed myself so much that I’ve been back half a dozen times.
Worst vacation: in the early 80s, my ex was teaching a mini-course in Oakland, and I went along so we could have a vacation in San Francisco. It was the summer when AIDS was first identified as a syndrome, but nobody knew what caused it or how it was spread. As a result, tourism was way down, and despite the fact that we were consequently able to get a good deal on a hotel room, there was a pall over the entire city. Then, during the mini-course, I was spending days working at the Berkeley library, and I decided to get in touch with an old friend whom I’d recently come back in contact with, only to find out that he had died in a rafting accident a few weeks previously.
BEST: Oh, so many! But none as entertaining as the…
WORST: The Odyssean saga of trying to get to Italy a few summers ago. Here’s an abbreviated list of all the things that went wrong.
1) Three hours to get through LAX security.
2) Five hours on runway due to bad weather in Chicago; passengers are finally allowed to “deplane,” causing us to miss the one 20-minute window in which we might have been allowed to take off.
3) Having missed my flight to London, I am cordially invited to spend the night on a cot in O’Hare’s terminal 3. There are approximately 25 cots for eight million stranded passengers. The terminal is so cold that total strangers are sleeping huddled together, and although there are plenty of blankets to go around, some airport official has decreed that only people with cots can have blankets, nearly prompting the Great Blanket Riot of ‘03. We are awakened at 4 a.m. and told to get off the floor.
4) After 22 hours at O’Hare, I get on a plane to Heathrow. I had asked the surly American Airlines attendant in Chicago to be sure that she had transferred my suitcase and my vegetarian meal to the correct flight. Needless to say, she had done neither, so I had nothing to eat on the flight and no luggage when I got to London.
5) After filing a lost bag report at Heathrow, I have one hour to take a bus to Gatwick for my last connection. The baggage door on the bus breaks in mid-trip and we are stranded for an hour. At this point I start to cry, figuring that the fates are doing their damnedest to tell me to STAY THE HELL OUT OF ITALY.
6) One week later I finally recover my suitcase (and all its broken contents), which the wise folk at American Airlines have apparently been trying to deliver to a man named Charles who lives in Liverpool.
On the bright side, I DID make it to Italy just in time for the deadly heat wave.
I love travel and miss it so much! (since starting grad school, not so many opportunities or $$ for it). There are so many best vacations, usually involving me sleeping on a friend’s couch or floor in some fun place. Probably the best was the summer after I graduated from college, when my best friend and I went to Europe together. We traveled around western Ireland (Galway and Donegal), made friends with the cute spanish boy who worked the hostel in Donegal, then went Paris, where we wandered around and lived on fruit and bread and the most heavenly croissants and fruit tarts from little bakeries. Then she left for Ghana for a year, and I went to the south of France to visit a close friend I’d met while studying abroad in Ireland the year before. We stayed with her grandmaman in a tiny Provencal village; it was entirely idyllic. then I went to Germany (Frankfurt and Hamburg) to visit two other friends I’d met while studying abroad. Nothing is better than having locals to show you around and welcome you to a place. They both had parties when I came, and showed me around, and it was awesome. I had so much fun. I then spent the next year paying off the debt from that trip, but damn, it was worth it. (Of course, it took me a year because I was working at a homeless shelter and making $80/week plus room and board, so it wasn’t *that* much debt).
All my other best travel experiences involve either visiting friends or hiking.
Worst travel experience - had to go to Cornell this January to do research. It was 5 degrees and blowing icy wind the whole time. The only place to park was a 15 minute walk away from the archive (not normally something I’d complain about; I walk 25 minutes to work from home every day), and I’d forgotten to bring long underwear. That SUCKED.
Worst — It’s a tie between 2 adults and 4 children driving from Oklahoma to California in a Volkswagon bug in the late 60s, and the time we wound up at a place called “Slabside” in Missouri which cost $1 per day for cabins — in which the bed not only broke when Dad sat on it, but a big cloud of dust went up; there was a big hole in the bathroom wall with a wasps’ nest inside; someone had burned wood inside the electric oven; the floors bounced when you walked across them. But it was right on a clear, rock bottomed river, so it wasn’t all bad.
Best? Probably the trips to my grandparents’ house in Illinois. Best yard and house ever to play in.
Best: First time I took my daughter to the beach. Star fish, shells, freezing water. Fog so thick in the morning that it is impossible to see the water unless you are standing in it.
Worst: Sydney olympics- my guest steals my best friend’s money, so my best friend leaves, then I find out that she is stealing all my money and possessions. I’m starving and penniless. I have just enough money to get back to the house we are staying at. They get in a fight and I am left abandoned, wiithout even my purse, in the middle of a strange city in the middle of the night. I slept in the casino toilets until the trains started running again.
Best: A week-long trip to visit my then-SO’s grandparents in Montclair, California during my junior year of high school. We left on Christmas Day, so I didn’t have to endure boring post-gift-and-meal hang out time with my extended family. His grandparents are delightful and kind and amazingly generous. We did typical stuff like Disneyworld (or land or whichever is in Cali) and Universal Studios. We also went to Santa Barbara to see more family. We were very much in love and we would have been content to just sit around the table with his family and tell stories.
Other best: Weekend in Paris with two girlfriends while we were studying in France last semester. None of us had been, so we wanted to do touristy, yet appealing things. We got into the Louvre for free, went to two other museums (Musee d’Orsay and Musee Pompido), lived on baguettes and vodka, took tons of pictures, did the catacombs and Eiffel Tower and Versailles and Notre Dame and ate (according to the NYT, I later found out) Paris’ best falafel (in the Jewish quarter, for those interested).
Venice two years ago with my parents, spouse, and children. It was specacularly beautiful, astonishing, world shakingly different. It was a joy to see my children take it all in, and to spend that time with my parents. We never had a good meal, and my daughter’s feet were so sore that every afternoon I had to sit with her and ice them, and one daughter lost her “blankie” and the six year old lost her sketchbook into which she had lovingly drawn such wonderful sights as a “BCENE” (bikini) seen on an advertisement on the vaporetto. But it came at a time when my spouse and I were so ground down by our anger over the Iraq war and the raping of the country by Bush and Co that we were just in a rut, unable to really think or move forward. Going on this trip, entirely arranged by my mother, just kind of broke us out of that stasis.
Worst vacation? pretty much any time we visit my spouses parents.
aimai
I’ve been stranded too many times, lost luggage, had visa with wrong dates on them etc. to really be able to classify The Worst in my mind….
Probably the most memorable was the time I was on a camel safari to the Outback and we got rained out and stranded for 3 extra days, started running out of food and needed to have a food drop…. First time I ever came back from a holiday to be met by the media at the airport.
There was also the trip to Venice during November where I discovered exactly what “aqua alta” meant–tried going down for breakfast and discovered 8 inches water in the lobby.
Dude, I grew up with those giant, flying cucarachas. I don’t like them, but they don’t phase me.
My worst vacation was September 2001 being in Hawaii with the airports closed and not knowing when or if they were going to open or how I was going to get back to the mainland where I lived and worked. I had it easy compared to the people in the WTC and on the planes, but boy was that freaky couple of days.
Best? Hard to say. I’ve been lucky enough to have gone on several enjoyable vacations.
Best: Either spring break touring Italy (I nearly wept in the Colosseum, being a classics major and Latin dork since age 12) two years ago, or the three weeks I spent in Spain with my family, visiting relatives I hadn’t met and seeing the ancestral homestead as well as Madrid and Barcelona.
Worst: New Year’s a couple years back; what was supposed to be a huge weeklong party instead had me deathly ill with the worst flu I’ve ever had and still being dragged along on Fun Activities, the aftermath of said vacation actually including the messy end of my friendship with the hostess. (Because, apparently, I’d been sick on purpose and deliberately ruined her fun. WTF?)
Hmmmm, haven’t been on one in almost ten years. The PITA factor tends to ruin most of them for me, but:
Best: Skiing trip to Utah with my father’s brother and family. Been twenty years since that one. It was one of those rare years when Utah didn’t get a lot of snow, but it was a blast anyway.
Runner up: All the times visiting my grandparents in Florida when I was a kid
Worst: Trip to the UK my family took when I was fourteen. I was jet-lagged the whole time I was there. My father dragged us to every damn cathedral in the country. Bad food, crummy accomodations, dull, dreary and awful.
I grew up with them too, and they freak the hell out of me. Always have, always will. I HATE roaches, the bigger, the worse they are, and when they’re flying at my head I can’t stop myself from shrieking. It’s one reason I hope not to re-settle on the gulf coast ever again. Yes, I will let something barely 3 inches long determine where I (won’t) live. Gimme blizzards any day.
Ian - what’s the “PITA factor?”
Best: A week of driving around Ireland with my fella and stopping wherever we pleased. A few days in the Dingle-Galway area were especially memorable, but everything was great: food, drink, sites, people. We spent Paddy’s Day in Dublin, meeting friendly drunk Aussies everywhere.
Worst: Any travel that involves my religious (SBC) aunt/uncle/cousin. They are perpetually drag-assing late, are fearful of EVERYTHING unknown, so they eat at McD’s every day, no matter where they are, and they think that travel=souvenir shopping. Ugh. Happily, this rarely involves me these days.
Betsy: PITA factor is “Pain In The Ass” factor. Another wonderful acronym.
My best vacation was actually not really a vacation but a work-related experience. In 1994, I spent 7 weeks in Crimea. This was 4 years after the fall of the USSR and I experienced a place that was largely untouched by western commericialism. In fact, our group was the first American group to visit Sevastopol since the 1917 revolution. As remote and disconnected from western life as the city was, I encountered people wearing California Tee shits and baseball caps and when they found out I was from California I had damn near had a permanent entourage. The people I associated with were unforgetable and it was truly a once in a lifetime experience. I spent much of the time mapping a Greco-Roman era city (a professional experrience I will never forget) but had more than enough time to experience the peopel and culture of a place that is impossible to describe. Suffice to say that I fell in love with Crimea and its people.
I returned in 1995 and the experience was as near perfect as the year before and had I not myriad personal and professional commitments I would have extended my stay indefintely. Anyone looking for a truly unusual vacation I would encourage a visit to Crimea but avoid Yalta, which was largely westernized by 1995 and I can only imagine what its liek today.
best trip: a few years back dog (7-yr golden) and i packed tent, sleeping bag, and plenty of self-rolled smokey-treats in the car and spent 3 weeks bouncing from national park to national park in the northwest.
worst trip: my last trip to the dentist (first cavity).
Pam, next time you encounter a palmetto bug, call me and I’ll lend you Dixie. If she can catch them, they die.
And we have to clean them up, as long as Mikey’s not there, because he will stand next to the corpse and growl as if he had anything to do with it. (Mouse dead in mouse trap, Mikey smells him and comes over, growling in front of cabinet doors, no one can get the freaking mouse out because Captain Idiot thinks he’s a killer.)
She loves to do it - I even got her to come upstairs once and kill one in our bathroom.
The south sucks sometimes - we used to have palmettos in my elementary, middle, and probably some parts of the high school. And a strict, “no Dixie” policy. Discrimination, sez I.
She’s a dog, sez they.
Dictators!
Onto the Qs…
Worst - going to St. Louis six flags with grandma. It has an awesome water park, and she’d said we’d go two days in a row, so we could be dry one day and wet the next. But she didn’t buy the two day pass. So the next day, she said we could do whatever we wanted. (just my sister and I - this is my dad’s mom, she’s gotten less repulsive, but the trip to the library the other week was long enough to get me in trouble. “I gave up religion for lent.” Grandma wasn’t angry, just my mom for not respecting her beliefs and being so close-minded and on and on. She really thinks I’m going to hell for not saying I believe in God.)
We were wiped out and burned, and the hotel had cable and we had our own room in the non-smoking section, so we said we wanted to stay there all day. And we did. We watched VH1’s I love the 90s - the first time it aired, to pin down the year.
That made her mad, naturally, though she didn’t tell us,w e just found out after we’d gotten hom that she wasn’t paying X dollars a day for us to sit in the hotel. We found out from dad, not from grandma.
The trip up and down sucked the suck out of suck. I had to ride in the back - I couldn’t sit next to her for 6+ hours! - and I get nauseated when I ride in the back for too long. She also smoked in the car, but had the window open. Gah. I only went because hello, 6 flags, and if I didn’t, Becky couldn’t go and she wanted to. That was the last time we went on a trip with her.
Best - god, too many.
Any camping trip but the last one where Becky’s friend Hollie (her dad can’t go camping on account of Vietnam flashbacks, and Hollie’s a fmaily friend, so she loves to go camping with us) was pregnant, sore, in pain, and keeping the first part a secret and fighting with Becky every day. She went home early. We only camp 90 or so miles from Memphis, not natural cmaping, at campsites with a bathroom and showers over there and a swimming area of “Lake Placid” (we saw the movie before coming out the first time - easter 2001 - and got a big kick out of that). I have so many great camping memories, I’m going to have to blog about them at my place.
But I’ll leave with an aw moment - Dixie knew mom’s tent (I slept in Mom’s tent and so did Becky the first time Dixie came) had a weak spot in the zipper, and she headbutted her way in. We ended up sleeping next to each other.
And when we took Jasmine, before she died, I got up at 6 or so, before almost everyone else and, naturally, had to pee. Well, our choice campsite is number 1, at the top of the hill and the bathrooms are at the bottom (the last time we went camping, my mom forgot her BC pills, had a painful period, and we were camped across the road from the bathroom - happily, squirrels stole the food of the idiots that stole our spot). So I walk away, nice and quiet, so beautiful, and she barked. The entire time.
As for cleaner trips, in June 2004, we went to Alabama’s Gulf Shores. Despite a wicked sunburn someone got on the first day (Becky said, “Kaitlyn, you’re so red!” And suddenly, I was. And suddenly, I hurt. I should have killed her.) it was still amazing. A beach at night is so cool! And we stayed in a huge suite in a building where some people lived. There were a couple pools, cable tv, and I brought my Mad Magazine crate.
When we left, we went out of our way to take a ferry - amazing.
Before we got to the hotel/condo/ awesomenes - we had a small balcony outside our room, Becky and I, and there was a huge one outside the living areas… so fucking awesome.
Anyways, before we got there,we toured the USS Alabama. The crate that Vietnam POWs were kept in still creeps me out. The pest part, though, was touring the boat. We got lost and separated and it started raining, and I was up 7 levels and so wet the dye of my shirt leaked onto my skin. It was awesome. We so want to go back.
Like all our best trips, it only involved my mom’s family. My mom, my sister, and I came from Memphis. Aunt Jenny and Uncle Floyd (Jenny is mom’s older sister) came from Nebraska. Jenny’s oldest kid, Dale paid for the suite for 4 days - thousands of dollars - and he and his wife came with their baby boy who got better protection from the sun than his soon to be 16 second cousin.
As for transportation, it’s always driving. And since I had my thyroid removed, I can’t read in a moving car, so I depend on radio, scenery, or sleep. But I still bring books along! *stuck in traffic in missoura* I pull out a magazine and read and then I’m nauseated. Yes, it was Mad, but still.
It is rare for me to have a bad vacation. Last summer, we went to nebraska to pick up Becky and Natasha who’d been there since my graduation - aunt jenny and uncle floyd came down here and it was decided they’d go back up there. So mom and I went up with Tasha’s older brother Daniel. He’d matured a lot (he fell in the lake while we were camping once, and I was blamed because I was older, really need to write out all the camping memories. ) and was less annoying.
We also took all 3 dogs in the crate in the bed of the truck - no canopy. They only got a little water, no food, so no poop. But we had to walk them at every rest stop, which was good for us as well.
It did kinda suck, because Aunt Jenny has a leaky old farmhouse, so the AC only works if you’re directly on top of it. And there was one bathroom, no where near any bedrooms. I can’t tolerate heat normally, and I’d just gotten my first Lupron shot and was having marvelous hot flashes at the tender age of 17. I slept on the vent one night.
And Dixie killed 2 of aunt jenny’s chickens, and she makes money from the chicken eggs, but she said don’t worry, she’d been thinking of killing the second one (it got out, Dixie chased it, and it died of fright and exposure because it hid from her under chicken wire.) The first one died because it came into what had been its yard until this dog arrived. Aunt Jenny has 2 chicken yards - one’s small and the only one the birds can enter from their house. The other is attached to that one by a gate, and if you walk through the henhouse, the back door. Well, aunt jenny has no fenced in area for her two dogs. And our dogs didn’t take to being tied up. So they got the big chicken yard. One chicken didn’t like that and wanted it back and lost its life.
We got to set off illegal bottle rockets, I got to meet my cousin Sabrina and her kids, I got to swim at an awesome water park in Hastings, I found some great books at antique/junk/comic book stores in various towns.
I also go to collect the eggs! It was so awesome.
Two bad things - it showed me the racism of my family. Uncle Floyd - “I’ve worked with blacks and Indians and they’re both bad.” About their pomerian, “He has n*gger hair.” And my second cousins and their father called each other their n*ggers. And then complained about the ‘racism’ where they lived - on a reservation in South Dakota. Apparently, an Indian kid can choose whether to go to school or not, but Sabrina’s kids can’t.
It showed me I could never live there, not even in Kearney or Lincoln. The state is so boring - no trees when we drove anywhere, so everything seemed longer than it was. It’s alsio dead. Aunt Jenny’s town isn’t quaint, it’s dead. The only businesses were a hair place (call her at home, she works in another town), a bar that served food, so minors could go in, a car place, a place that sold gas at one point, and a library open twice a week. And a post office.
It also showed my mom that she was better off in Memphis, with her sister in Nebraska. Yeah, houses are cheaper there, but they disagree on a number of things - especially about raising kids - that she knew she couldn’t live near her. I’m glad she found out before just flatout moving up there.
She wants to like Nebraska, but she likes the convenience of living near Memphis - 24 hour pharmacy for when there’s a pesky kidney stone and you don’t get out of the ER until 2 am, for example.
I also loved going to visit my dad’s father and stepmother - we continued to do so after the divorce (without dad) until grandpa died in January ‘03.
It was never fun with dad, except we were young enough to go to 6 flags Georgia and Discovery Zone when there wasn’t one here and before they went out of business, I think. We had root beer floats almost every night (most trips were during the summer) and always had the best sandwiches with cheerios every morning. Grandpa had diabetes, and lost his foot. Becky and I painted the toenails on his first prosthetic leg.:)
The Marine who’d been to Vietnam in the early 60s loved his grandkids and hated his son, my dad. I still miss him (cancer).
We had one good time with my dad - going to Opryland when it was still a theme park. It was pouring rain, and we got yellow Opryland ponchos that did nothing, but we had such fun. My dad and I rode this water ride a million times, we never had to get off, there weren’t many people there. It was cool.
Best: When I was studying in Spain I flew to Munich for a weekend to meet an acquaintance of mine who was studying there. The two of us and two of his friends rented a car and tooled around Switzerland for four days. It had the potential to have gone really badly (I knew the one person not well and the other two not at all), but it was amazing. We spent the whole weekend switching between English/Spanish/German and climbing mountains and generally being goofy.
Worst: When I was 13 my dad took me and my grandmother (who was descending rapidly into Alzheimer’s at that point) to Greece to visit family. The afternoon we arrived, we all went to the hotel to take naps. I was sharing a room with my grandmother, but instead of watching her I fell asleep, and she wandered out of the hotel and had been gone for an hour before either my dad or I woke up and noticed she was gone. Plus, it was July and probably 115 degrees out, and she’d left her purse in the room. Luckily, we found her a day and a half later and she only had to stay in the hospital overnight.
Best: In 1999, a 10-day road trip with a UW Geology class to go see geo- and paleo- stuff. We went from Seattle up to Republic (fossil digging) into Canada, then down into Montana (Glacier National Park), one more overnight in Idaho and then home via Pend Orielle with its ripping landscape. The best parts of the trip were in Alberta: we hiked up to the Burgess Shale quarry (13 miles, 1200 foot elevation gain; thoughtIwasgonnadie); wandered through Dinosaur Provincial Park (bones! bones everywhere!); and capped it off with a visit to the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum. Oh, and then there was the Hamburger Mutiny in a tiny Alberta town called Patricia, when we kind of hijacked the van and found the most amazing burger joint/bar, and stuffed ourselves on buffalo burgers, ribs, homemade bacon-and-corn chowder, salad and french fries.
Worst: Late 90s, a week in L.A. for a mini family reunion. Had a ghastly fight with my mother over trivia that escalated into screaming and then she pulled The Silent Treatment Martyr act the rest of the week. We haven’t spoken since - except once, when Miami got hit by a hurricane, and I called to see if she was okay. She told the relatives I hadn’t bothered to check up on her - a stupid, typical lie that cemented my resolve to write her out of my life.
Best: A trip i took on my 16th birthday with my father to upstate NY. The highlight of the trip was supposed to be the baseball hall of fame in Cooperstown, and in a way, it was. But, mostly the highlight turned out to be the snow. Being from Texas, i don’t get to see real snow very often, so when it started snowing while i was inside the museum, i was entranced. We went from Cooperstown to Niagara, and saw the Falls from both the American and Canadian sides, while it was still snowing. It was one of the most beautiful sights i’ve ever seen. Then we drove to Canada and spent the night just outside Toronto, just so we could say we had slept in Canada.
Worst: I guess the Christmas following my first semester in college. I had caught what my doctor called “the crud” just before finals (some sort of upper respiratory infection, i think), and i had just gotten over it when i went with my family to Mineral Wells to visit some cousins. I had absolutely no energy the entire stay, slept through almost everything (including part of the Christmas morning present-opening), and then decided to leave early so that i could have a couple of days to rest before i went to Memphis for a bowl game (i used to be in the TCU marching band, go Frogs). As we were driving home, my mom berated me for not spending more time with the family during the vacation, and for leaving early. Ack.
One other worst that had some perks - June 2003. I’d been stuck at home due to my hyperactive thyroid and the surgery all but 2 or 3 weeks of the previous school year. (9th grade)
And my uncle and his kids were living with us, or thinking of it, because my aunt had walked out on him. (4 years on, she was wrong, but we understand why - he went from his mom to the military to marriage. As soon as he could after the separation, he went to Iraq. he wanted to go. He got married a couple years later and he’s always about to leave her)
So it was stressful at home.
My mom’s rich aunt and uncle (both teach at stanford, Uncle Don worked on one of the first cell phones) paid for a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco and back to Memphis. The return date was a month after the departure, in hopes that I would love it so much.
I hated it. I showed up Saturday evening, and had a flight homeTuesday morning. Her son, Earl, who’d come to our house that spring, understood why, but he wished I’d stay. He took me to the airport.
Why? They and their house are very cold, distant, and uncomfortable. I cried all the time. Plus, they had a fountain outside the front door, and no visible radios, so while I was reading, I kept having to pee!
It was just too uncomfortable.
When I got back, Mom let me in on a family secret.
Everyone went there around my age during the summer - I mean her and her 4 brothers, her sister, and her sister’s kids. I was 14 going on 15 and had just discovered the Beatles.
The only good part? There was an old MAD paperback in the den, where the TV was - I wanted to watch the Simpsons sunday night. Aunt Mary also loves Harry Potter, and had all 5 (that’s right, the 5th had just come out) in hardback. More than one collection - she thought I’d take them home when I was done because I loved them.
I read the 5th one in less than 2 days, much like I did with the 6th one when I had to spend 4 lovely days at a psych ward last April.
No one had lasted more than a few days, but I had the shortest stay on record. I did enjoy flying, I had to change planes in Denver. Aunt Mary bought me a cellphone - that returned to her house. My sister thought Denver was in Texas for the longest time.
The onyl one who really liked staying with them was my cousin Sabrina, because Aunt Mary likes to buy things for relatives, so they went shopping all the time. I got a wooden coyote, he’s beautiful.
We think my sister will love it there, but she’d be lonely.
I don’t want to say it was worse because Aunt Mary truely loves us all. She’s offered to pay for everyone’s college, and she sends my mom checks from now and then. Mom thinks she’ll buy me a laptop for college. Even though she works at stanford, she wants to pay for our education at any institution but Stanford, at least as undergrads.
Betsy,
As a current Cornell grad student, I’d like to apologize for our bad weather (it’s still snowing) and our dreadful parking.
Best vacation: probably the honeymoon. It’s been all grad school since then, and poor + busy = not much travel. Hubby & I took the train from Eugene OR (home at the time) to Seattle, then the ferry to Victoria B.C. Stayed in a B&B there, left only to take long walks, look at gardens, go to see Shakespeare in the Park, and drink at little pubs while watching the Tour de France on big TVs. Paradise.
I don’t take enough vacations (see above) to rank a bad one, so I won’t comment on that.
Worst vacation: Thank you American Airlines!
I flew from Tulsa to Indianapolis in 13 hours. I could have driven there in that time. I was told that my flight to Dallas was delayed because of bad weather.
Directly across from the gate was a 52 inch plasma screen showing the weather radar with no weather between Tulsa and North Texas. My fellow passengers are phoning their friends/relatives in North Texas and confirming there are no storms.
The flight to Chicago was delayed due to an alleged divot on the runway.
On the flight back I was forced to spend an evening in Chicago. I’ll forever treasure the urine stenched halls and broken toilet seat in my room at the Airport Hilton. I’ll never forget the extra $30 the Hilton billed my credit card above and beyond the room voucher when I charged nothing to the room.
If you want a memorable vacation fly American Airlines.
(Nothing against Chicago - My exposure was confined to a part of town that happened to suck.)
Bruce from Missouri and Ian: Instead of PITA, you can just call it the aggravation factor. Not as colorful, but acceptable in “polite” company. :})
Good - that one that started with a week and a half canoeing up in Maine, followed by a flight to Dallas - then a ride to LA, the back across the country thru Utah and Colorado. I can even tell you what I was doing the day Ronald Reagan asked how he could possibly remember what happened on some day in August 1985. I was in a van between Van Horn, Texas and Phoenix. Eat me, conservatives.
Crappy - Going to Virginia last year, only to get a call about halfway from someone who had to stay behind that our house got relieved of our stuff while he was at work. That call was at 1:30 in the morning - we left at 4am.
Least pleasant 900 miles I’ve ever driven.
Best: A month after moving in together, my partner and I drove from Oakland to Ohio and back for a family wedding. We covered 15 days, 18 states, 8 national parks, and 8,200 miles; some environmentalist I turned out to be. Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, Dallas, the Ozarks, Memphis, West Virginia, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the World’s Largest (Concrete) Buffalo in Jamestown, ND, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD, Bad Lands, Yellowstone and Tetons, Portland, and wrapping up with the world’s tallest trees and grey whale watching in Redwood National Park. And I got to sleep at rest stops in a ‘98 Golf with my future husband! Oh the stories we get to tell our kids. “Did you know that your mom and dad used to be COOL?!”
Worst: Thanksgiving 2006. Cooking and cleaning for three days straight (with my sister and our partners) to feed an ungrateful family who for the most part refused to eat anything I made because it was vegan. Fine, no delicious vegan pumpkin cheesecake for you!
My best vacation was after graduating college, my brother and I went on a 5-week trek about Europe. The worst disaster occurred on the same trip, though, when our luggage got stolen in Brussels. You can read about the ordeal here.
The best two would be:
1990: Honeymoon in Wine Country (convertable and all)
2002: Travelling Western Oregon and camping in Central/Eastern Oregon with my two sons - we even found an eohippis fossil in the the walls of Blue Basin in the John Day Fossil Beds the day after the first rain storm in months! (fortunately, we rented an SUV - which we actually drove off-road - and slept in it all warm and dry).
Oh, us in Nu Ing Land here are about to have “april vacation”. I am flying out to Chicago for a three-day conference, and my husband and boys are trailing in the minivan (via Fallingwater House and The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame). I will return with them via Toronto and Niagara Falls.
do wish us luck/petition the weather gods on our behalf.
Best: Ironically, you already listed my two favourites - the Big Island and British Columbia. In fact, the BC trip to Vancouver and Whistler from 2001 inspired me so much I figured out a way to move here from Illinois!
Worst: Snowstorm between Montreal and Toronto circa 1992 on the way to the inlaws. Stayed in fleabag hotel after the highway gets shut down. Then several days of the ex’s family….oh the humanity!
Best: 10 days exploring Arches, Bryce Canyon, Goblin Valley and the north rim of The Grand Canyon - so freaking cool.
Worst: Nothing dramatic, but I was young, broke and had only 5 days of vacation coming to me. I rented a bunch of DVDs and headed out to a friend’s cabin in the woods for a bit of loafing. I got horribly sick the second day and spent the rest of the vacation in bed, shivering. The worst part was that I still felt like crap when I had to go back to work.
Worst: in Arcadia National Park with my partner. On the way there, we passed many signs advertising all-you-can-eat lobster dinners for less than 10 bucks.
“Oh, no,” I said, “let’s buy our own in the harbor.”
Which we did. It was raining when I attempted to squeeze that living lobster into the pot. The pot was too small and the lobster wouldn’t stay put. After I finally managed to incrementally boil it alive, I discovered that when you split them open, you are splattered with green goo. Still, because we killed it, we had to eat it, however wet, goo-splattered, and horrified we were.
The Best: Maybe a week in downtown Toronto. We felt so safe, even at 3 a.m., so we walked and walked. And everywhere we went, folks pushed free food at us, which had us feeling like treasured guests rather than tourists to be pumped dry. We had one day where we stopped at 5 restaurants and ate for free at everyone.
We didn’t do the vacation thing much as kids because the money wasn’t there. Couple times to Atlanta to see the Braves play back in the ’80s. We once got lost in Atlanta - big shock, I know - and y’all, I saw things I never knew even existed. I grew up in a little rural community where one would have to drive many a mile to see a more-than-two-story building. We went to New Orleans once, too, and walked around all day. That was boring, though; there’s only so much of New Orleans my momma thought was fit for her boys to see and I can sorta see her point.
Mostly, we went up to Coleman Park on Pickwick Lake outside Iuka. My folks love to fish, so we’d go and camp for a few days, usually two or three times a summer. I hated every minute of it. I hated camping. We grew up in the goddamn woods anyway, so all camping brought to the woodland experience was a lack of a decent bed. No privacy, because the campground was full of yay-hoos doing the same damn thing we were but with alcohol. Fishing’s fun but sitting rock-still in a boat for six hours with your parents? No thank you.
My folks bought a cheap camper when I was 10, and by the time I hit 13, I was such an obnoxious pain in the ass that my folks finally relented and let me stay home while they and my brother* went up to Coleman. All by myself. Now, there were no kids in the community where I grew up except for my cousins, and they usually spent summers at various camps. So, I was all by my lonesome for five days, and all I had to do was check in with my mommaw and mow my part of the yard (we had a big yard). For the first time in my life, no one was telling me what to do and nobody cared if I spent all day reading in my bedroom. I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Boy, I liked that. I didn’t know how much I liked it until I got to do it, and to be quite frank, it’s a little disturbing to think about how much I still like it and the inevitably results of such an attitude, but what the hell.
Not long after, though, someone stole that goddamn camper off the lot where it was stored. Two hundred campers and someone stole what was undoubtably the most broke-ass looking camper on the lot. Go figure. In any event, that was that. We never went camping again, though we did make day-trips to fish at Pickwick Lake. I’ve never gone much for vacations since, but I do dearly love taking the occasional week off and locking the rest of the world out. Bothers Momma to no end and it’s no doubt part of the reason I couldn’t form a lasting romantic relationship to save my life, but that’s how it goes.
* My brother was the quiet one who hated all this shit as much as I did (though he likes camping now) but took the path of least resistance and went along for the get along. In recent years, we’ve discussed how I was always the hard-ass about things (which made for a lot of fun, because my folks are stubborn as old mules, too) but, as often as not, I’d get my way and was occasionally right. My brother said he knew that all he had to do was keep quiet because I’d not only do all the work but I’d catch all the hell, and he’d still reap the benefits. Sneaky little shit.
Best? Oahu. Hands down. For reasons that cannot be detailed outside of erotic stories.
Worst? Far more interesting:
Class trip to Industial west Germany.
13 hour flight. I’m stuck in the window seat of “No leg room, no insulation, no blanket” International Airlines, otherwise known as Lufthansa. Have to pee by hour .5. Get to pee approximately 45 minutes after we land. German customs refuses to stamp my passport (Super boo)
Greeted by Evil Janine, who will spend the next 10 days stealing my clothes and hiding anything I might use to groom myself, such as a toothbrush. Also having noisy sex in top bunk with Creepy Scott.
Find out by lunchtime Day 1 that my bank card has been demagnatized by airport security. Will spend rest of trip smuggling breakfast rolls and unbelieveably minature cans of orange soda into my purse in (vain) attempt to stave off starvation caused by having no money and staying with Evil Janine the anorexic.
Highlight of touring is visit to local nuclear power plant. (I have zero interest in powerplants that I can tour in english, a language which I do at least speak with some fluency. I dare anyone to try to follow a tourguide waxing lyrical *in GERMAN* about a power plant)
Lowlight of tour: stuck in a train with a dozen or so professional smokers trying to admire extremely barren scenery only to discover that I am, in fact, *admiring* a “Cemetary for homeless, nameless people” - which in german is all one (extremely long) word.
Moment when I resigned myself to my own impending death: Evil Janine driving her 1/3 size of normal compact car, the “Blue Roach of Doom” on the wrong side of what I believe was in fact the Autobahn while doing her level best imitation of Steve McQueen.
I now have a life-long ban on again setting foot on German soil.
Best: Eight days in Peru, including a four-day hike/camping trip across the Inca Trail. When we started the trail, I understood why we (a group of twelve) needed twenty porters. I didn’t understand why we needed two guides until we hit left the gentle slope for the Endless Inca Stairway. I remember stopping every five minutes to admire the Andean view and to curse the Incas for having lived in this enticing and breathtaking but forbidding environment. (”What the fuck were they thinking?!”) And I thought I was in reasonably good shape until I saw the porters running past me (seemingly with ease) carrying the whole camp plus some of my stuff. It was tough, it was gorgeous, and it finished with sunrise over Macchu Pichu. It made a hell of a honeymoon for me and the Mrs.
Close 2nd: three days in Edinburgh (including a day trip to the Highlands) followed by three days in London, again with my wife. She makes travelling to special places that much more special.
Worst: I can’t say I’ve ever had a bad vacation, but a recent exit from NYC (Manhattan is cool) was complicated by Continental Airlines’ refusal to answer their phones, forcing us to make a trip to the airport to find out that we wouldn’t be able to fly out for at least 48 hours. I’d say it’s time for some airline re-regulation, but not until the federal government is back in reasonably competent hands. We rented a car and drove home.
Best: Since being in charge of my own life, I’ve loved all of my vacations–Cozumel was nice, I’ve enjoyed all of our camping trips (even the ones where we’ve had torrential, record-setting rains), but I’d have to say my favorite trip was a week I had in Turkey back in ‘00. I’d spent a few months there the year before, but hanging out in Kas for a week, sea-kayaking over sunken cities, hiking in the mountains, getting drunk in the local poolhalls… cok guzel.
Worst: Hard to say — I was often miserable on the vacations we took when I was a kid. Probably the family reunion out in Oregon for people I could only describe as “family” in the loosest sense. Yuckie.
Best vacation was a couple years ago when I went to Amsterdam during the semester break. The whole week was great, but the Saturday of that week was perhaps the best day of my life. I spent the morning wandering throught the Van Gogh Museum, went to a concert by the Rotterdam Philharmonic in the afternoon, and had an amazing Indonesian meal for dinner. It was a day of pure beauty for all the senses.
The highlight of that day was the orchestra. I had gone to the free Wednesday afternoon matinee concert (a student percussion trio) at the Concertgebouw, and as I was leaving I tried to buy a ticket to see the Concertgebouw Orchestra but they were sold out, so I had to settle for the Saturday afternoon matinee, which was the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
The concert was magic. Mahler has long been one of my favorite composers, and when I got to the hall, there was a program change: they were no longer playing Mahler’s tenth, but were instead going to play his first symphony. Now, it had been a dream for years to hear Mahler’s first in the Concergebouw, so the program change was literally a dream come true. It was one of the most emotional experiences of my life. By the end of the symphony, I had to clutch the arms of my chair to keep my body from heaving in sobs. Tears were streaming down my face, and when I closed my eyes, all I could see was white. It was cathartic.
Best day and best vacation ever.
Best vacation as a young person, driving a rattletrap Datsun with totally fried piston rings (it burned a quart of oil about every 70 miles) from Texas to Ontario, where on a wonderful warm sunny summer afternoon I met a gorgeous red-haired English girl, we took a ferry to some island in Lake Ontario and had a tryst (OK, we rutted like crazed weasels) in a secluded glade at the water’s edge.
Best vacation as a somewhat more mature person, I’m with Pam, my first trip to the Big Island. Davening kabbalat shabbat at the end of Chain of Craters Road during the rapid tropical nightfall with fiery red lava tumbling down the hill past us - hey, I’m not even a believer but that was pretty darned spiritually fulfilling.
Worst vacation, again, I’m with Pam - on a subsequent visit to the Big Island, getting food poisoning from the fish tacos at a restaurant in Waimea renowned for that dish and being so sick I couldn’t leave the hotel room for 48 hours.
Best either:
One week in Wyoming riding horses all day every day out in the middle of beautiful nowhere, followed by one week at Grand Tetons and Yellowstone.
Or
Two weeks in Italy - Rome, Venice, Florence, Sorrento, Capri, etc. Sitting by a canal, watching the gondolas go by, sipping red wine, eating a cabrese salad in Venice, ah … life is good.
Cara-he, you tell a good, gruesome story!
Best — hard to tell. Probably the week in New Mexico and Arizona, just bumming around the sights and thinking deep thoughts. Even nearly getting frozen to death when my rental car locked me out turned into a good story.
Worst would probably be me and pregnant spouse visiting relatives, interrupted by unexplained illness, horrible weekend ER visit, emergency c-section, blah blah blah. Of course, that would have been just as horrible during working hours…
Hm.
Best: probably San Diego for my best friend’s wedding. Left Chicago (105 degrees) for 82 and gloriously sunny, did virtually nothing but sit on the beach and drink margaritas with my college buddies for three days. Brief break to actually attend wedding in the mountains, followed by more margaritas. Hells yeah.
Worst: New York, when my boyfriend was looking at grad schools. I’d lived in New York, but he planned the trip. So, we wound up staying at some godforsaken rathole that pretended to be a student hostel… communal bathrooms with random homeless dudes living in them, some hooker’s shoes under our bed, bare light bulbs falling out of the ceiling…stains (and not food stains, either)… so instead of passing a fine afternoon at the Met, I was frantically calling every hotel in town hoping for a vacancy. We hopped hotels each night and dragged our suitcases everywhere. I freakin’ hate New York.
Best - San Francisco on foot. A friend in San Jose also picked me up a couple days and drove us around the bay, showing me all the really good non-touristy but great places to see and eat.
Worst - I can’t decide if it was the family vacation for a week where we just drove around Iowa, going town to town and doing little more than shopping; or if it was the camping trip to Wisconsin I made by myself where it was still freezing at night, my neighbors had loud monkey sex half the night, and waking up the next morning I found out my student loan payment went through 2 days before my EFT paycheck, and overdrew my account.
better a roach than the dead body i found in the shared bathroom of the tiny and gross hotel i stayed in in new york…
mmmm ok the whole story is pretty bad so ill tell it…
went w/ bf to new york for a hugh hefner benefit dinner that hes always invited to for winning the “hugh hefner free speech award” (seriously) in high school for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance (which resulted in him getting kicked out)…we walked around for 2 hours not being able to find it, so we go back to the only hotel we could find that was less than 50$ (and therefore extremely shady). later on ive just got a towel on and i need to go to the bathroom, which is 1 per floor, so i peek to see if anyones in the doorway. while opening the door, i manage to RIP OFF MY BIG TOENAIL since the space under the door is perfectly level for that to happen.
i manage to hobble to the bathroom while pressing on my toe and when i open the door the first thing i see is a dead arm hanging over the side of the bathtub (you totally can tell w/out super examination when something/someones dead). sooo we get the fuck out of there and mention to the desk guy that “somethings wrong w/ the third floor bathroom”. and since it seems walking is too painful w/ a half ripped off big toenail, we just go back to baltimore.
Worst:
This involves rural Indiana and in-laws (that should say it all). This was worse than getting hit by a tornado on a camping trip.
1. Asked to stay at a relatives to save money while visiting the in-laws for xmas.
2. Sleeping on a deflating air mattress in a house they refuse to heat over 50 degrees,
did I mention I have arthritis?
3. Said in-law host has turned into a Bush loving fundamentalist since we last saw them.
4. Spent the weekend having insinuations that I am evil and ruined my husband with my evil ways all weekend in between children and relatives fighting the entire time.
5. Got to spend xmas day in a house with no food and an elderly relative that was dumped on us. The house owners left to see their other relatives. Thank god for Chinese restaurants.
6. Spent most of the time listening to the MIL try to set up meeting with every high school girlfriend he ever had and his ex wife we both hate while we were there.
7. Having to deal with a spouse as stressed as I was.
Best:
Second portion of another xmas trip to see the in-laws.
This time I refused to go back unless there were some ground rules. We stayed in a hotel, we stayed for two days total, the hotel had to have an indoor pool and things for the kids to do. We also would only spend one day dealing with the relative insanity. I also said that any of the BS like last time and I never ever come back in the future. This got passed on to the sane sister in law that ran interference and did some talking to the problem in laws.
I spent most of the few days we were there at the hotel, with the kids at the hotel or needing to run just one more shopping errand or to go get a coffee at Starschmucks.
I was able to avoid being there for all but 3 hours!
The trip home was great though, it made the minimal headache worth it. We stopped in Wisc. Dells for a day with our kids at one of those big cheezy water park hotels. Not my idea of cultured relaxing travel. But the kids had such a blast and it was very low key. I also got to boil myself in a hot tub all night.
Creepyiest trip:
I used to live in Sacramento and frequently took day trips by myself on my Tuesdays off. I was going to ride the motorcycle to San Francisco for the day to go shopping. The bike that usually didn’t require much for maintenance suddenly developed a very odd tension issue with the chain. I spent a couple of hours messing with this delaying my trip. I finally got the chain working right an took it for a test drive just as the big earthquake hit. Had I taken off as planned I would have either been on the bay bridge or in a parking ramp when it hit.
Best vacation ever: Probably going to Paris for spring break. I paid for it on my own (splitting the hotel with my boyfriend), and found eally sweet deals on both a flight, and a hotel room with private bath for $40/night that was right on top of the Metro. There was art, and cultural icons, and a beautiful city.
But most memorably there was pain au chocolat every morning, and even the goat cheese and tomato baguette sandwich from the corner shop was delicious, and there was the most perfect and delicious meal ever, from the 15 euro prix fixe menu at the Cafe Latin (in the Latin Quarter). It was the Platonic ideal of grilled salmon, goat cheese salad, and creme brulee.
On another night there was all-you-can-eat fondue and all-you-can-drink wine for 15 euros. (This was back when the euro was about 1:1 with the dollar.) The wine was served in baby bottles, for some reason.
I could totally go back and just continue to eat my way through Paris.
Neck and neck for best: Going to the NC mountains with my boyfriend last October. The stress relief from just saying “Screw my homework” was fantastic. The weather was beautiful and we did two gorgeous hikes (Craggy Gardens and Chimney Rock), and then enjoyed the hotel sauna and hot tub in the evenings. And the day it was rainy, we spent in downtown Asheville looking at art galleries and shops, and eating good food. Just driving around there in October was absolutely gorgeous. (The peak leaf weekend was a week or two later, so we didn’t even have to pay peak prices, but it was still gorgeous.)
Worst vacation ever: Going to visit my grandmother at the beach just when a tropical storm hit. There was some question whether we would be able to leave, since the highway was flooded out. My grandmother was happy to see us, but it was boring to be cooped up in the house, and frightening to worry about flooding. Close second: going camping in the mountains when I was a kid, when it rained steadily for four days and was cold and miserable.
Best ever:
Believe it or not, I went to and fell absolutely in love with Philly. Used it as a base to travel around rural Pennsylvania which included a family style Amish dinner in Intercourse, PA.
No such thing as a bad vacation (yet).
Oh, that reminds me of a childhood vacation that was both best and worst. We used to go to the Poconos every year. When I was maybe eleven we went really early in the season, early enough that the trails hadn’t yet been cleaned up from the winter. We were hiking down the mountain next to a creek with lots of rocky falls. I stepped on a slimy rock, slipped and went sliding down into the water not far upstream from a waterfall. I had plenty of time as I was futilely scrabbling for purchase on slick rocks to wonder if I was going to go over the falls, smash my skull against the rocks and drown (I had a vivid, morbid imagination), and I got completely soaked on a chilly spring day, and caught a miserable cold.
On the other hand, I got instant folk hero status with the other kids at the campground and pretty much dined out (in an eleven-year-old way) on the story for the rest of our stay.
Worst: A New Years trip to New Orleans pre-Katrina with my wife, sister, and parents. By the end of a marathon 20 hour ride I was running a 101-degree fever. My sister decided to go cold turkey off her anti-depressants, and flipped out over my heavy snoring with the flu. My cousin never quite figured out that vegetarianism does not mean serve the shrimp-boil potatoes separately. On the drive back, everyone else was starting flu symptoms and my mom got food poisoning from this over-rated food-trough of a restaurant that she had been bragging about the entire trip. (Not quite as bad as a Cracker Barrel though, but the only place I’ve seen Sorghum-flavored syrup. As a fan of the real stuff, I was disappointed.)
Worst Vacation Ever: Five days hiking Vancouver Island’s West Coast Trail in early summer. Normally this would be a delightful vacation, but god, that evil sonofabitch, conspired to make it hellish.
Begin with packing for the hike. This is a school-arranged, mandatory camping trip, so they gave us a ton of crap to carry. I was a fairly experienced camper by this point, and had tried to keep my pack as light as possible: 2 t-shirts, 2 pairs of shorts, sweatpants, hoodie, anorak, three pairs underwear, and about a dozen pairs of socks. Toothbrush, toothpaste, sunblock, insect repellent (hah!). I was going to be funky by the end of it, there being a lack of water above 12C along the trail and me not wanting to contaminate streams with detergents. I can cope with a five-day funk. 3/4 length Therm-A-Rest (never, ever camp without one of these), sleeping bag, old dome tent left over from scouting days and Unidentifiable Funky Smell left over from scouting days. No fucking cigarettes. Probably twenty-five pounds with a water bottle.
Now the school stuff came. An unholy amount of the food we were given was in cans. Cans. You know how heavy that shit is when you’re bringing it home from the store? It’s that heavy when you’re humping it along a trail, too. Since I packed like a sane person, I had the most room in my pack, and I wound up with half the food for the dozen or so of us.
Poor planning on the school’s part made our group nearly entirely male. Three of the guys were native Spanish speakers with very little English. I knew some Spanglish from growing up in Texas, but not much. The Idiot Hippie Vegan Girl (more about her later) thought she knew Portuguese from when she’d spent a year in Brazil, and thought this meant that she could talk with them. She could not.
The rest of the group was made up of the keeners, the guys who got good grades because they did nothing but study. I got good grades because I’m a freak, and never studied. I was not a keener. I had more in common with the Spanish-speaking guys, who also had No Fucking Cigarettes, and we bitched about that.
Our intrepid leaders, hired for the occasion, were Manly the Uber-Hiker and the Idiot Hippie Vegan Girl. Manly the Uber-Hiker started our little adventure by mocking my lovely bright red high-top Chuck Taylor All-Stars. I had a pair of natural ones and figured I’d wear one pair one day while the other was drying out. Y’see, the only hiking boots I owned were brand new and no force in the ‘Verse was going to get me to hike five days in brand new boots. I tried explaining this to Manly the Uber-Hiker, but he wasn’t interested in listening, only mocking.
We were hiking from the south end up, which, I learned, is not the way to do it. The south end is in a town, which has restaurants. The north end, where we were picked up is the end of a gravel road, which has an outhouse. And nothing else.
Day 1: Rain. The west coast of Vancouver Island is some of the last unspoiled temperate rain forest in the world. Temperate rain forest is cold. And filled with monster huge brightly colored slugs. Pretty, if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t. It was a lot of up and down hiking across ravines carved by the eight million streams that ran down to the ocean. Occasionally we got to cross a ravine on a slimy moss-covered log. Yay! The Idiot Hippie Vegan Girl announced that since she was vegan, we would have to cook all our food to suit her. That is, we’d have to cook everything until it was done and then add the canned meat. She brought no food of her own, despite having different dietary requirements than the rest of us. So all our food was overcooked in the extreme, and bland as hell. I bitched about that, as did the three Spanish-speaking guys, and wished badly for a bottle of Tabasco sauce.
Day 2: Vindication! Manly the Uber-Hiker had left his oh-so-cool leather hiking boots too close to the fire and they shrank five sizes during the night. He can’t wear them at all! Fortunately, he has another pair. Alas, the other pair is hobnailed and uncomfortable to walk in for long distances! My Chucks, having also sat too close to the fire all night are a bit scorched, but otherwise Just Fine. I took considerable pleasure in that.
Days 3-4: The rain has stopped, and the scenery is mind-blowingly pretty. I wisely do not attempt to bathe under the waterfall near where we camped. Stream water that time of year is still mostly snowmelt, and it’s only just warm enough to be liquid. It’s plenty cold enough to induce hypothermia. There are still No Fucking Cigarettes, and, bizarrely, no caffeine to be had. We all want to kill everyone, starting with Manly the Uber-Hiker and the Idiot Hippie Vegan Girl. One of the keeners drops our last scrubby thing down an outhouse hole. We make very good time and get to the place where we’ll be picked up the next day before dark.
Day 5: Deliverance. But first, the asshole keener who dropped the last scrubby thing down the outhouse hole tries to make Cream of Wheat in the biggest pot we have, and burns it. There is an inch-thick encrustation. Guess whose job it was to do dishes that morning? Yes, you got it. I spend the time from then until the bus showed up chipping burnt Cream of Wheat out of the pot with a spoon. The bus smells of vomit, and always has since some kid with a hangover hurled into one of the heating vents years ago. It’s a bumpy three-hour ride back to civilization. When we get there, everyone else disappears, leaving me to finish cleaning up the rest of the cooking gear, which has to be clean before we give it back. I break off all of my fingernails and manage to jam fossilized Cream of Wheat under most of them up to the cuticles. It’s been five days with no caffeine and No Fucking Cigarettes, and I want to destroy the world. By fire. Because it needs to burn. Starting with Manly the Uber-Hiker.
Finally, I am free to schlep my tired, aching, narrow white ass off to my dorm. I spend the next hour and a half in the shower, trying not to let anything touch my fingernails while I remove the outer millimeter of my skin. I stop washing my hair only because I’ve run out of shampoo. But it’s enough. There are cigarettes in my desk, and I take them and a stolen Mountain Dew and scuttle off to one of the off-campus smoking holes.
This is actually what happened, to the best of my ability to recall events from twenty years ago. Really. I’m not even exaggerating.
I finally got the chain working right an took it for a test drive just as the big earthquake hit.
Karma and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
May of 2006. 10 days in France with Mrs DBK. 6 days in Provence, including cooking lessons at La Mirande. Avignon was wonderful. 4 days in Paris. Paris is stunning. Sigh. I could do a book on that vacation, so I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice it to say that the food, wine, countryside, monuments, all were wonderful. And the French themselves were perfectly nice and friendly, so screw all the BS you hear about how awful they are. If you aren’t a jerk, they won’t treat you like one. Be polite and learn a half dozen French words and phrases and remember to say hello when you enter someone’s shop. That’s all you need to do.
By the way, L’Monde d’Truffe (not sure if I spelled that correctly) in St Remy is a lovely store where they have all things truffle (the fungus, not the chocolate) and all things olive oil. I strongly recommend you stop there and do a little olive oil tasting. You’ll take home some amazing oils and vinegars if you do.
Worst vacation? About 17 years ago when a girl friend canceled out on our Toronto trip and I went alone for a long weekend. Got very bored. Toronto is a nice town but I would have enjoyed it more with some company. The girl friend and I did not last much longer after that. Thank goodness. Mrs DBK is a much more congenial and even-tempered companion and travels better than anyone I ever met, as long as we’re on the travel questions.
Most adventurous? You should have asked about the most adventurous vacation.
Best: Honeymoon in St. Lucia, private cabin and private, full-size pool on a cliff overlooking the ocean, next to a jungle gully. Amazing.
Worst: Against better judgement, went to Florida with someone out of guilt (was ready to end the friendship but felt i owed it to her for various reasons). Had to happy-talk self through trip, very stressful. The person we were staying with had to leave after two days due to a death in the family. We took a short overnight trip with a mutual friend and began fighting in the car and it never got better. She stalked away from us in the middle of the day, rented a car, and ditched us there. We made it through the rest of the couple days, me with my teeth on edge. When we were boarding the plane back, they asked that I check my carry-on due to a crowded flight. When we land, they’d lost my carry-on. With the keys to my house in it. I had to spend two additional hours with someone I hoped never to see again, desperately dialing around for someone who had a key to my house.
Moira: My god, just finished reading your entry. I’ll volunteer to go back and time and kill both the hike-leaders for you! Cans?!?! IDIOTS!
(On a selfish note, though, I’m happy to have the tip about hiking that trail–that’s within driving distance for us now!)
Best — Buenos Aires, Argentina August 05, Toronto, Canada February 07, Barcelona, Spain March 07, I travel too much!
Worst — Istanbul, Turkey, July 90 — spent 3 nights in quarantine before being let out due to stupid Turkish regulations re: yellow fever from Kenya. Kenya had been yellow-fever free since 1988, according to the British government.
Best vacation: Sanibel Island while I was in high school; I spent the entire ten days observing marine life, finding exquisite, small shells, and watching the western sky turn black every afternoon as a thunderstorm swept in. I collected live mollusks, observed their activities in a bucket of seawater, and then turned them loose; and found brittle stars buried a couple of inches deep in the sediment in a few inches of water by the shore. As for worst, Imaintain as an article of faith that “worst vacation” is an oxymoron.
Prolific Programmer,
Barcelona was my number two. Damn, but I loved Barcelona. Until I went to Paris, Barcelona was number one.
DWF: Thank you! I appreciate the offer, I really do, but it’s been twenty years. Now it’s just a really good story, and it makes people laugh. It makes me laugh too, especially when I feel like I’ve done a good job telling the story.
Absolutely go hike the Trail, or even just part of it. We did about fifty miles in five days, which is taking it pretty easy in hiking terms. The historical trail runs most of the length of the coast, but only part of it survives now. I don’t know what it’s like now, but the swampiest parts of it had boardwalks over them, making for really easy going. When you get down to the beach, it’s especially nice, kind of like Washington’s Long Beach without all the tourist crap. Take a kite.
Then go back to Victoria, stay at a hotel for a shower and a nap in a real bed, and grab dinner at a good restaurant. Or a not-so-good one. I’d try to arrange it so I was there on a Sunday morning for dim sum.
I would really like to know where all these abstinence only educations are taught.
Best vacation - Outer Banks, NC, 2003
Worst vacation - Cayman Islands, 2005. Hell in paradise. A big family vacation planned at a house to hold 13 people. Flew out on Saturday, and our bags didn’t make it. They didn’t show up until Tuesday. Our rental house was double booked, and we were the second ones there, I spent two hours tracking down the owner in the U.S. and having him promise a similar value home which didn’t happen. Eventually we were put into two houses half a mile away, the larger one not having central air conditioning. This was July. The Caymans are a Sunday law country, so we couldn’t buy clothes on Sunday, so we spent two days wearing clothes, washing them. No swimsuits, of course. I got sick on Sunday as well. Monday we ended up spending time and money buing a bunch of clothes. My dad started showing signs of illness - mostly dizziness, which we attributed to the heat, but which later in the year was diagnosed as cancer. Wednesday night there was talk about a hurricane, by Thursday it was a category 5 and tracking to be at the Caymans on Saturday morning, when we were supposed to fly out. The islands are still torned up from a hurricane in 2004 - this is not a place to be during a hurricane. We decided to cash our chips, and we literally booked the last flight out of the Caymans before the hurricane. The next day at the airport was bedlam as tourists and residents alike tried to get off the island. We spent 2 hours on the Miami airport tarmac waiting to take off before our plane left there. Best part of the trip was walking in the front door at 2 AM Saturday morning and declaring the vacation over.
DWF - we honeymooned in St. Lucia too. Was that the Anse Chastenet you stayed at? We were there, it was beautiful.
Also honeymooned at St Lucia. Windjammer Landing. Lovely condo-type place. Tiny kitchen, lovely living room, bedroom and bath downstairs. Bath was a kind of stone grotto. Love it. Also, loved that the place was all open, no glass or windows, really, and the banana queets (sp?) and bulbuls flew in and out (but surprisingly did not crap in the rooms). No AC, just he island breezes.