This summer when I’m on vacation, I plan to do things a little differently.
There’ll be no ferry involved. No plane. No car with a roof rack.
There’ll be no suitcase, no map, no boarding ticket. There’ll be no guidebook, no travel journal, no carry-on bag. There’ll be no customs, no security, no passport, no wrestling with an overhead bin.
There will be a lot of, well, nothing. Or nothing terribly scripted, at least.
I won’t be eyeballing the screen at the departure gate, but I may be staring at the clouds.
I won’t be unpacking the swimsuit and shorts, but I’ll likely be wandering barefoot.
This summer when I’m on vacation, I won’t need to cancel the papers or shutter the blinds. If the neighbours conclude that I’m on holidays, it won’t be because I’ve asked them to bring in the mail, but because they’ll see me strolling down the street on a Tuesday at noon.
Oh, off to get sushi, perhaps. Or to buy a magazine. Or to collect rocks at the beach.
I’ll figure that out at the time.
This, of course, is the way you approach an improvised vacation. You don’t draw up an itinerary. You don’t make a restaurant reservation six days in advance.
You wake up when you want. You read the paper if you feel like it. You brew some coffee and bake some muffins. But only if you want to.
Won’t be the first unplanned vacay for this gal.
“Do you want to go anywhere today?” I asked the husband on day one of the last one.
“I don’t know,” said the husband. “Maybe we just get on a bus and see where it takes us?”
I considered the proposal. It sounded like a perfect fit for a non-holiday holiday.
And so we did just that.
We got on a bus, and got off in the city.
We wandered, and let our feet decide where to take us.
They led us to an art gallery. And a seawall. And an outdoor patio, where mojitos were on offer.
Hard to say where they’ll direct us to this year, but I’m looking forward to finding out.
The best vacations, it seems to me, don’t always include a suitcase. Every so often, the best of the best don’t even include a plan.
