What do you consider a vacation? Does your trip need to be a certain number of hours or miles away? Do you need to be gone for at least three or four days for it "to count"? Or as long as you are off work or school for more than two days, is that enough of a vacation?
I was a pretty spoiled child. We went to the beach for a week pretty much every year in addition to going to another place or two for a day or more. When I was in high school, my family had a house in Ocean City, Maryland, which meant several weeks at the beach. And for about a year, my family also had a house on Indian Lake (near where Flight 93 crashed), so we had many weekend getaways there as well.Yep, rough life I had.
But as an adult, I never felt the need to go away every year. And once I got married, we often went several years in between "going on vacation." In fact, during our 13-plus years of marriage, the only week-long trip we have taken was to Disney for our honeymoon. It took us 10 more years to actually leave our house for four whole nights!
Since our last vacation was those four nights at the beach three summers ago, I recently told Brian we needed to go somewhere this summer. Since I am not working, we cannot afford to take (or justify, anyway) a long trip, but I see no reason why we should not leave our house for a couple of nights. Brian, however, sees it differently. He reasoned that because we aren't going to go away for four or five nights (what he considers a vacation, apparently), why not just stay here and take advantage of the many things Pittsburgh has to offer. There is the zoo, Kennywood, Sandcastle Waterpark, the Gateway Clipper boat rides, the Carnegie Science Center, the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the Warhol, The Heinz History Center, the Frick, sporting events, the incline, various shows and plays, and parks and pools. The list goes on and on.
And, as much as I hate to admit it, the man has a point. Pittsburgh, as I am often reminded (whenever I am not sitting in rush hour traffic) is a great place, full of so many wonderful things to do. Some places, like the zoo and parks, we go to every year. Other things, like the museums and sporting events, we try to space out since they are not as much fun for our kid.
But as great as many of those things are, they are just not the same as going somewhere.
So, I managed to convince Brian that we should try a nearby (two-plus hours away) resort that my aunt recommended for just two nights. Is that a vacation? Not exactly. And certainly not to many people.
But getting out of Dodge for a couple of days and enjoying the food that others cook, beds that the hotel staff makes, and the lake and other amenities. Well, that is vacation enough for me.
I was a pretty spoiled child. We went to the beach for a week pretty much every year in addition to going to another place or two for a day or more. When I was in high school, my family had a house in Ocean City, Maryland, which meant several weeks at the beach. And for about a year, my family also had a house on Indian Lake (near where Flight 93 crashed), so we had many weekend getaways there as well.Yep, rough life I had.
But as an adult, I never felt the need to go away every year. And once I got married, we often went several years in between "going on vacation." In fact, during our 13-plus years of marriage, the only week-long trip we have taken was to Disney for our honeymoon. It took us 10 more years to actually leave our house for four whole nights!
Since our last vacation was those four nights at the beach three summers ago, I recently told Brian we needed to go somewhere this summer. Since I am not working, we cannot afford to take (or justify, anyway) a long trip, but I see no reason why we should not leave our house for a couple of nights. Brian, however, sees it differently. He reasoned that because we aren't going to go away for four or five nights (what he considers a vacation, apparently), why not just stay here and take advantage of the many things Pittsburgh has to offer. There is the zoo, Kennywood, Sandcastle Waterpark, the Gateway Clipper boat rides, the Carnegie Science Center, the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, the Warhol, The Heinz History Center, the Frick, sporting events, the incline, various shows and plays, and parks and pools. The list goes on and on.
And, as much as I hate to admit it, the man has a point. Pittsburgh, as I am often reminded (whenever I am not sitting in rush hour traffic) is a great place, full of so many wonderful things to do. Some places, like the zoo and parks, we go to every year. Other things, like the museums and sporting events, we try to space out since they are not as much fun for our kid.
But as great as many of those things are, they are just not the same as going somewhere.
So, I managed to convince Brian that we should try a nearby (two-plus hours away) resort that my aunt recommended for just two nights. Is that a vacation? Not exactly. And certainly not to many people.
But getting out of Dodge for a couple of days and enjoying the food that others cook, beds that the hotel staff makes, and the lake and other amenities. Well, that is vacation enough for me.
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