How many of you spend your vacation at home doing chores? How many of you regularly skip vacations and work nearly every day of the year without a break? While sometimes bigger projects like painting are worth saving until you have more time off, if your only alternative to skipping vacation to avoid home projects is staying at work you are not doing yourself any favors.
Health wise, and mentally we benefit from checking out of the daily routine to decompress. Spending any vacation away from work is a good beginning. However, if you can step away from home too, and experience something new, you come back refreshed, and that is what vacation is supposed to do.
You don’t have to take your whole two weeks at the same time, but devote at least a week to an away vacation. With time away at a hotel and different food than the home kitchen, you are treating yourself to new experiences. Cruises, Land Tours and Resorts in varying degrees can transport you to new experiences and new places.
But if you are like most of us, you may have experienced a poor vacation. Hotel reservations that got screwed up, or air travel disruptions that caused delays. Maybe that driving vacation was going great until the car decided to die. Don’t let those times mess with you. Stuff happens, and the key is to find vacations that minimize the bad experiences.
Take cruising vacations as an example. We all hear about the ships that hit bad weather, miss ports, or have mechanical problems. The difference is the cruise lines make up for these very rare inconveniences. After 30 some cruises without incident, I found myself on a ship leaving Los Angeles that found the need to be towed back less than 24 hours later due to mechanical problems. It took 2 days to be towed back, and yet it was the healthiest cruise I’d ever been on with mostly fresh fruit and vegetables eat, and lots of sleep. We got a full refund and a free cruise for next time. It was an experience I would never want to repeat, but I ending up on the winning side of a bad stroke of luck.
Many people skip travel insurance, and yet it is inexpensive and covers delays, cancelations, lost baggage and medical costs to name a few, and one more thing that can save your vacation from disaster. How about taking tours on your own that get you lost versus professional tours with guides that don’t get lost and don’t lose you?
Now while I love to cook, I hate trying to decide where to go eat at each meal. I can nickel and dime a vacation into a rather miserable experience for my whole party. This is why I love resorts with meals included, or my favorite vacation on a cruise ship. The only work I have is packing and getting myself on the ship. After that they take care of everything and I get a real vacation.
If you have never had a really good vacation, or you wonder if you have paid too much for ones in the past, you may need a new Travel Agent. I would love to help you, so stop by my website – www.JimLoriTravel.com and you will be routed to my Cruises Inc. website. Call me or send me an email at jhopkins@cruisesinc.com and let’s put together your next “Real Vacation” – One you will remember!
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