RevGal Friday Five

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Vacations

1) What did your family do for vacations when you were a child? Or did you have stay-cations at home?

We visited family out of state. Or had a picnic in the mountains. After age 10, we had a little house in the mountains...actually a little "project" in the mountains that we visited all the time. This is a bit of a sore subject--like so much else with my siblings: they "never" had a vacation because Dad was self-employed and had four kids to support and so they never took "real vacations." The best story here is when they went to Hobbs, NM, and spent the night in the building Dad was building. It was a mortuary.

2) Tell us about your favorite vacation ever:

Our last trip to Maine, in 2001, was pretty awesome. We drove through Canada to get there, stayed 10 days or so, and drove home through New York, etc. Sparky had a blast, in spite of the "killer ducks" that pushed him in the lake, and it was a lovely, relaxing time.

3) What do you do for a one-day or afternoon getaway...is there a place nearby that you escape to on a Saturday afternoon/other day off?

I stay home. There is no scenery around here. [Yes, I'm spoiled.] Or, I drive to friends' houses.

4) What's your best recommendation for a full-on vacation near you...what would you suggest to someone coming to your area? (Near - may be defined any way you wish!)

Well, we live 60 miles from a HUGE CITY in the center of the country, so ... let's just plonk down there for tours, sightseeing, walking, sailing, theatre, shopping, you name it.

5) What's your DREAM VACATION?

I want to cruise the Mediterranean for 2-3 weeks, stopping in several Italian cities, and possibly even over to Greece and Turkey.

Bonus: Any particularly awful (edited to add: or hilarious) vacation stories that you just have to tell? ("We'll laugh about this later..." maybe that time is now!)

It's really not a vacation until and unless one of these happens. My favorite, for many reasons, is when I left our camera in the taxi we took to the port of Petraeus from our hotel in Athens. We'd been in Greece about a week at that point, with loads of photos in that camera. Beast called the hotel as soon as we realized it--they had called the cab for us--and they called the cabbie who checked and found the camera...and took it to the hotel where it was waiting for us when we returned to Athens a few days later. Unbelievable!