Thoughts after break

Kim and I just got back from our mid-semester break. I enjoyed it a lot: we spent the week in LA, and we got to see a bunch of family and friends in the area. (Hi, donaithnen, shelleycat, and thaisa!) We had a bit of time to just kick back and relax, but most of the time we had at least some plan for the day. Happily, I felt like the balance was pretty good.

That's got me thinking about what I look for in a vacation. I'm not usually the "lie on the beach" sort: I can do a pretty good job of relaxing at home. (This is one of the many ways in which my sister and I are different.) If I'm going to go to the trouble of traveling somewhere, I want to make the travel worthwhile. (I don't want to be over-scheduled, but I like feeling as if I've accomplished something with most days.) That often involves people: the chance to see people I care about is important to me, and for better or worse I have friends and family scattered all over the place. That's what this trip was all about.

When I do travel somewhere for the sake of a place rather than people, my urge is to explore: to see a bunch of nooks and crannies and places that most people don't find. That's a part of why Kim and I honeymooned in the Canadian Rockies, and it's the reason that I clamber up obscure staircases and turrets when visiting old castles despite a fear of heights, and it's why my one experience with a Caribbean cruise (a family trip just after college) involved more time winding along island paths than it did lounging in the sun. (Again, big difference from my sister on that one.) The same often goes for historical or cultural sites: it's worth seeing the important ones, but I like to visit some interesting but obscure ones, too. (One day, I swear I'll visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in the LA area.)

I'm not sure what the point of all that is, but hey, it was on my mind.