Tag: Vacation

Posted on

Bob Loves Cape Cod and So Do I

Bob loves Cape Cod.

Throughout the many years that I have been attached by the hip to my good friend Alex, we have always been born beach rats, jumping on any chance we could to get on the Parkway for about an hour and head down the Shore. Never ones to stay idle for very long, we like that it only takes 60 minutes or so to get to our favorite bars, surfers, restaurants and shorelines. Her dad, Bob, however, isn’t found at our favorite Shore very often. Instead, he’s usually packing up the Cherokee and going north, headed to his true love, Cape Cod.

2

Brewster Bay Beach

The only memories of Cape Cod that I had prior to last weekend were from the time that Bob lent his bayside paradise to my little clan and we stuffed into my dad’s pickup truck for a miserable eternity where we drove endlessly through a monsoon to a place that, to my untrained eyes, looked a lot like Long Beach Island only a hell of a lot further away.

So, when Alex invited me to Cape Cod for Labor Day Weekend, I was actually excited to go to a place I was sure I had missed out on when I was little and only had my weirdo parents to lead me around.

Upon arriving to Cape Cod and heading to Bob’s favorite hometown breakfast joint, Grumpy’s, and getting in the line wrapping around the building, I asked Bob, among the weeping willows, bayside bungalows and locally own cafes why Bob chose to keep this home in Cape Cod when he could have one at the Shore which he could potentially enjoy every single summer weekend. Being that Cape Cod is five hours away from New Jersey, it’s definitely not the most convenient of summer homes.

“At the Jersey Shore, you get up, go to the beach, go to the boardwalk. If it rains, you can’t do anything. In Cape Cod, there’s always something new and interesting to do. You don’t need a boardwalk to have fun.”

As much as I love the Shore, I had to admit, he had a point. I would soon find, throughout my long weekend in Cape Cod, how right he was.

After a rather friendly breakfast at Grumpy’s, Alex, our friend Megan and I headed over to the Brewster Bay Beach close to Alex’s development for an afternoon hanging out in the sun. Unlike Shore beaches, it had a decidedly untouristy feel, with people fishing and riding their sailboats all around. Although this made the beach not incredibly ideal for sunning with its seaweed-filled water and quick-moving tide, it was a close destination for some much-needed sand time.

7

That night, Bob and his wife treated us all to a grandiose dinner at The Pearl, a picturesque yet packed restaurant tucked on the Wellfleet Harbor, where we killed some time before dinner checking out the boats and snapping sunset pics. We came across a 19-year-old who had built a boat that was sitting on the harbor, which he used to go crabbing and sell his finds to neighboring restaurants. As we chatted with this happy yet dirty kid who lived his life on his boat in his bay, I really started to wonder if these were the people who were doing life right.

3

Wellfleet Harbor

Later, Bob dragged us all to his favorite local watering hole, The Woodshed, which looks pretty much exactly like it sounds. It’s literally an oversized shed/bar absolutely stuffed with people dancing poorly to a live old-man band jamming out in the back.

The next morning, we decided that we would take advantage of the sunny weather and head about an hour north to Provincetown, a notoriously quirky community that’s very reminiscent of Key West with its homey cottages, sparkling water and happy people.

We first hiked the 176 steps of the Pilgrim Monument upon our arrival, a tall monument built in 1892 to commemorate the Mayflower Pilgrims’ first landing in the New World in Provincetown in November 1620. From the summer of the structure, you get a very windy yet scenic view of the Provincetown Harbor. After our descent, we headed to a local bike shop, rented some bikes and baskers and prepared for a leisurely drive to and around the beach.

4

The Pilgrim Monument overlooking the Provincetown Harbor

We were sadly mistaken. First, we arrived at Herring Cove, a bright and untamed beach, where we simply laid in the sand in our already-sweaty clothes and enjoyed the sunshine and sand for awhile. Then, we hopped back on our bikes and ended up delving deep into the trails surrounding Clapps Round Pond and Province Lands Road. In our beach gear and flip-flops, we were embarrassingly unprepared amongst serious bikers flying up and down the hilly course that spanned several miles.

6

Herring Cove

Back in Provincetown, we arrived sweaty and sleepy, but night was descending quick which meant that it was high time for Commercial Street, the “Main Street” of the town filled with galleries, boutiques, packed seafood restaurants, dive bars and drag shows. Rainbow flags flew overheard the endless train of drag queens that paraded the streets, offering advance tickets for their shows. We gave in to their clever ploys and purchased tickets for Electra at the Post Office Cafe and Caberet, who went from Lucille Ball to Cher to Barbara Streisand and Elton John.

5

Commercial Street

Early next morning, we got in the car and drove to Hyannis,  home of the Kennedy Compound and also the locale for our Hyannis Whale Watching tour. Although four hours to spot a couple of whales was pretty hefty for someone who hates sitting still, it was still pretty cool to spot a couple of whales and their babies and imagine the heft that was underneath the water.

1

A humpack whale on the Hyannis Whale Watching Tour

Cape Cod is no Seaside or bar-packed teen beach destination. Instead, it’s a subdued yet thriving shore community that never needed cheap boardwalk games to have fun because it has real, unique attractions.

Posted on

The Waiting Game

I’m always waiting for something.

During the peak vacation months of summer, I crave the moments after I have booked a plane, reserved a room or simply made plans to crash at a friend’s shore house. I love pulling out my blue planner and marking down the days that I will finally be away and enjoying the anticipation of wondering what will happen, who I will meet, and all the excitement I’m sure to have. Time after time, I build up my trips to an unfathomable amount of fun, and to be honest they rarely ever live up to my expectations (although looking back in my highlight reel of vacations, they always do).

This is good.

Turns out, in research that doesn’t shock me, the largest jump in trip-bliss comes from the seemingly small act of planning the trip in the first place and waiting for it to come to fruition. Researchers from the Netherlands determined in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life that the anticipation of an upcoming trip can actually last up to eight weeks (so buy your plane tickets early).

And, oddly enough, it turns out that those in the study who even post-trip described their vacation as “relaxing” did not experience inflated levels of happiness after the trip was over. This means that the happiest they were the entire time was in the process of planning the trip.

This doesn’t mean that you need to have a vacation planned every eight weeks to experience this higher-than-baseline happiness. Instead, make it hometown-scale by arranging your weekend early and making plans with friends for later early in the week now. Find fairs, farms, museums, tours, cities and activities to do nearby where you live and decide that’s where you’ll be this Saturday. Pack your weekends so full of fun that you’ll forget it was just Saturday and Sunday and you’ll wonder how it’s humanely possible that you have this much fun every five days. 

Even if when I get to my destination the food kind of sucks, I fight with my friends and I don’t meet one single good-looking guy, I still always relish every week, every day, every moment before my trip, imagining the extraordinary memories we are sure to create. I like putting in the legwork and doing the research required to make sure that I see every sight and packed all of the perfect outfits. I need to have a full calendar so no matter how many days pass, there is always something new and exciting to look forward to.

None of my imagined memories happen. Never.

However, in a perfect sync with a life aboard the traveling circus, madder things always occur leading me to imagine, anticipate, and relish over and over again.

IMG_4379

Posted on

Long Live the Long Weekend

It’s 4:00 pm on a Friday in Advertising, and there is truly nothing else to do. Client mishaps have been mended, weekend ads have been approved, emails and calls have been returned, and people are literally spinning in their chairs, gazing out the window towards the sunny beaches to the east and tracking the Parkway traffic on their phones.

“Whatcha doin this weekend, Gina?” I ask my coworker, who is currently studying the screensaver on her computer, a snapshot of her timeshare in Florida. “I’m going to Disney,” she says casually concerning the resort that lies 1,000 miles away in Orlando, Florida.

America hates vacations. We hate wasting time, we hate having too much fun, and we hate not working, which is probably why Americans have the second to lowest average number of vacation days in a year at 16 compared to 20 other “rich countries.” Whether you’re 25 or 55, you’re already probably pretty aware that the average number of vacation days an American employee receives after one year on the job is eight and the average number they receive after 25 years on the job is 15. And the number of days employers are legally bound to provide them with? Zero. Now please tell me what the hell I am supposed to do with eight days.

graph

Seem stingy? Probably because it is, especially when you’re already getting frustrated with squirreling away the few vacation days that you do have and trying to make sure you can still make it to the doctor for regular checkups. On top of this pathetic number of vacation days, it turns out that only 25 percent of Americans even use the full amount of the days they are provided with. To paint a global picture, France tops the list (but not by much) by legally providing employees with 30 paid vacation days per year, followed by Finland, Norway and Sweden at 25 and trailed by Austria, Portugal and Spain at 22.

When you’ve got about two weeks of fun to last you for an entire year, you really need to work to make it count, which is why my friend Gina was, and is, taking plenty of long weekends – the new week-long vacation.

Until the United States changes its vacation policies and trends (which isn’t due to happen anytime soon since these kinds of work ethics are deeply embedded into our culture, but anyway) the long weekend is slowly becoming the new seven-day getaway. Because really – why are you going to use all those precious days in one shot (half of which you will spend bored with the family) when you can do it over and over again for two and three day snippets at a time, even if it means rolling into work Monday operating on four hours of sleep like I often see my dear traveling coworker do? (She chugs two coffees and gets going, no complaints).

IMG_5995

The Grand Cascades Lodge of Crystal Springs Resort in Hamburg, New Jersey

Just because you don’t live on the Amalfi Coast (well, maybe you do) or you don’t have the dollars to finance these types of grandiose trips doesn’t mean that your travel bug has to fall to the wayside. Instead of blowing all your days at once, put together day and weekend trips that will give you vacations to last the year… until you finally get that coveted job transfer to Paris, that is.

One thing goes without a doubt – planning a long weekend getaway is a lot more tiring and requires you to get a lot more creative than getting on a plane and picking up a guidebook once a year would be. You have to give nearby cities and landmarks a second look, clean out the car so you can fit all the kids, and squeeze all your errands into the weekdays.

But on the other hand – you’ll save money, have more fun more often, feel like you made the most out of your time, spend more meaningful time with your friends and family, pick up landmarks you probably should have seen a long time ago, and most of all, when your bored coworker asks you what you’re doing this weekend, your answer will always be exciting.

Posted on

A Pirate’s Life for Me

As a frequent cruiser, while wandering around various ships like the lost nomad I am, I often make friends with international cruise staff. More often than not, cruise workers are from countries where job opportunities are not as great, and having the chance to see the world, make money to send home to loved ones, and create lasting friendships with like-minded adventurous people is something that can’t be passed up.

However, I will also stress that this isn’t always the case. On a recent Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas cruise,  I met a Swedish girl who told me that she wanted to be a singer and dancer, but in Sweden, if you don’t follow the traditional career paths, you are often shunned by friends since there is a push to fit in and be “normal,” so working on the ship was her chance to meet new people and follow her dream of being an entertainer.

Regardless of why one works on a cruise ship, there are a ton of perks you literally get paid to travel, hang out with other kids who are fun as you, and meet people from all walks of life. Cons exist as well, of course – one being that working on one is really freakin’ hard. You work long hours, seven days a week, only pausing for a little under two months after each six month period. You have little time off in port and you live in close quarters with people who start off as complete strangers to you. You’re away from your friends, family, and children, which becomes a huge burden as you grow up and become a real-life adult.

Often when I go on cruises and meet these cruise workers, I ponder the pros and cons of the operation, since it seems like a pretty fun job and a great way to live in a college dorm again and travel the world. When it comes down to it though, I end up figuring that I’m probably not really cut out for such a life and I’m better off trying to find an easier way to see the world, have some fun, and pursue my career aspirations.

1

On my last cruise, though, I really wondered what the hell I was thinking. The last stop on many Caribbean cruises is Coco Cay, a small touristed-out island near the Bahamas where ships unload their passengers so they can hang out on the beach, play some water sports, and snorkel or scuba dive. Each time I visit this island, I participate in a fantastic hour-and-a-half long jet skiing tour, where one tour guide leads happy adrenaline junkies around some Bahamian islands, periodically stopping at points to see sharks, swim around, or look at starfish. It’s a really cool, fast-paced and independent tour that makes you feel like you just hit the jackpot at Six Flags.

Since my parents locked all my crap in a locker when they went jet skiing and I was stuck wandering around half naked burning like a lobster, I hung around the hot Brazilian tour guides (who did not even notice I existed). The snippets of conversation I heard went along the lines of:

“Yeah, when my seven month contract ends, I’m going to go home to Brazil for a week or two, but then I’m off to Mexico to cave dive and then to Australia for a few weeks of backpacking.”

I was stopped dead in my fried, red tracks. Had I been living on another planet? How had I dared to think that a life like that wasn’t worthwhile just because they had to work a few extra hours a week? The bottom line was pretty simple. I live in freezing-cold New Jersey, where I commute an hour and a half and get home around 6:30 so I can make dinner, feed the cat, plan my outfit for the next day. On the weekends, I go out; try to make plans with friends. This Brazilian dude conducts jet skiing tours in the Bahamas and then after seven months of sunshine, he goes friggin’ cave diving and backpacking. Who am I to say my 401k is more rewarding than that?

I’m not saying that I’m the newest applicant for Royal Caribbean (or Carnival, either). I’m not saying I’ll ever work on a cruise ship or volunteer to bust my ass seven days a week or make it seven months without seeing one familiar face. All I’m saying is that a little patch of life like that from a tanned, happy man can pretty quickly make you reconsider what you’ve been doing everyday for eight hours a day – whether it makes you appreciate a quiet life with family or a wild life on the open seas.

Posted on

Time Commitments

When one (unfortunately) arrives home once again and is greeted by armful by armful of happy friend, one is bound to come across many people who will say, “Yes, I did that too, during my summer session abroad!”

Wait… your summer session? Now, I totally understand if you have time commitments for the semester, financial problems (although from what I have heard, most people spend almost the same amount during their summer session as they would during a semester abroad, but that’s another odd issue entirely), or familial issues, but honestly, it seems to me that a summer session just means this – you got jipped.

If you’re not aware, a summer session tends to run about three to four weeks, sometimes going for as long as six, while study abroad sessions usually range from thirteen to sixteen weeks. Sounds like a big difference? That’s because it is. A summer session is a vacation. A long vacation, but a vacation at that. A semester abroad is an attempt at life.

Image

I remember when four weeks passed during my time in Florence (I happened to be at Oktoberfest at the time, if I remember correctly) and I looked around and said to myself, What if I had to leave right now? What if at this moment, I was packing my bags and being shipped back off to the Jerz?

At four weeks, one is barely adapted to life in another country, another world. One is still a stranger (and probably is still one at the three-and-a-half month mark, too). Many people subconsciously see this as a good thing- they don’t really want to totally assimilate. They don’t want their own habits to have to change, they don’t want to step too far outside their comfort zone, they just want to see a little bit just in time for them to get homesick and get back on the plane to be greeted by a tearful Mom.

When my own friends left for their summer sessions, a few weeks before I left for my semester in Florence, I was a little jealous. I was scared to go away for so long. Petrified, actually. It was like taking a too-big bite of cake when I should have only had a spoonful and now it was falling embarrassingly out of my mouth and everyone was staring. Even when I first got there, in between the moments of extreme excitement, I thought to myself, What have I gotten myself into? What planet do I live on? 

But just like anything else, we all get used to our new surroundings and we learn to adapt. We create our new selves and new homes, and when it’s time to leave, we will reach for our armfuls of our new friends too.