Travel Tips for Foxes, part 1 - Planning Vacations
Travel Tips for Foxes, part 1 - Planning Vacations
Hello, hola, olá, salut, ciao, tere, geia sas…
The languages of the world, the places to see, places to be, people to meet, things to do, things to eat...the reasons we travel. And oh the things to eat! Some people dream of basking in tropical sunlight, palm trees, and margaritas. Not me. Oh wait, yes to the margaritas! And to spanikopita, focaccia, tagine, raki, vinsanto...I could go on and on forever. Nom nom nom nom nom!
This weekend, I’m sharing my method for planning great vacations. And I am talking GREAT vacations. The kind of vacations that our minds wander to when we’re not actively focused on something else. The kind that are packed with memories that make us smile and relax immediately upon remembering. The kind that stories are made of.
Whenever I plan a trip, I think first of all the delicious foods and beverages I’m going to try. It’s a small miracle that I don’t need to be rolled home at the end of every vacation. For me, the only rival to a foodie trip is a nature adventure where I’m drinking in views instead of wines. All of my favorite vacations fit into one or both of these categories. Greece was a particularly good match for my vacation style, having the magic of gorgeous landscapes and seascapes, rampant wildflowers, sunsets, and excellent food, coffee, and wine.
view from our AirBnB
Oia, Santorini, Greece
caldera houses
Oia, Santorini, Greece
on the way to Vassaltis Vineyards
Vourvoulos, Santorini
open the door to great, foxy vacations…
Oia, Santorini
So, what’s the key to planning a great vacation? Indulging your desires.
Indulging your desires is not about going hog-wild and busting your budget or vacation time. Instead, it’s about planning your ideal vacation that maximizes your wellbeing and fun within the constraints of your available resources.
To plan an awesome, memorable, indulgent vacation, I have a foxy framework for you. If you’re traveling with other foxes, this is an easy way to have fun planning together and to make sure the vacation aligns with everyone’s desires.
Step 1: List Your Constraints
The constraints on your vacation are the boundaries within which the vacation must occur. Typical constraints include time, budget, and oftentimes destination.
If your constraints are flexible, state the range. For example, we considered Greece, Italy, New Zealand, and a few other destinations for our recent honeymoon. We added these places to our list. Time was also a constraint. We had 3 weeks available for vacation, but we thought it might be nice to have some time at home at the beginning and/or end of our trip, so we stated a constraint of 2.5-3 weeks abroad.
Step 2: Identify Your Desires
List your vacation desires, all of them. Activities, wellbeing, anything that would make your vacation more fun and/or fulfilling. Our desires were to relax to the max, wine and dine, and enjoy the romance. I also wanted to come home with gorgeous landscape photos that I could use as references for future paintings. Done and done!
Next to your list, briefly state the resources needed to achieve each desire. Time, budget, travel, guides, etcetera. This is a key component to identifying your desires and what it will take to indulge your vacation dreams.
Step 3: Rate Your Desires
Assign each desire a rating with respect to the other desires so that priorities become clear. The more honest you are with yourself (and travel companions) about how important each desire is, the more aligned your trip plan will be to maximizing your fun. Assigning accurate ratings allows you to be firm with your top priority and flexible with your lesser priorities.
Flexibility is important because travel plans often vary from expectations. If you’re flexible with your vision of the trip, seasonal attraction closures and other unfortunate happenings are road bumps rather than vacation-killers. We dealt with this when we realized that a beautiful gorge in Crete that we wanted to hike would to be closed due to excessive rain this winter. We still wanted to visit Crete, but decided that we would focus on other desires and get our nature fix another way.
Flexibility also leaves room for more fun! One of the great joys of traveling is indulging new opportunities and living in the moment. Because we couldn’t hike the gorge in Crete, we were able to explore other gorgeous areas of the island that we otherwise wouldn’t have made time for. Plus, although rain had closed the gorge, it also caused wildflowers to bloom EVERYWHERE. I could not stop taking photos!
Flexibility also enabled us to spend time on new desires that arose while we were in Greece. Namely, learning about Greek winemaking, and dancing to live music. I admit, it’s possible that the wine tasting facilitated the dancing...🍷💃🏻
Step 4: Plan Your Vacay!
Now that you’ve identified your constraints and your desires, it’s time to plan your vacation! Simply fit your priority desires within your constraints and see what remains. Sometimes your desires are simple and easily achievable within your constraints, leaving room for spontaneous adventures.
Other times, your lesser desires will need to give way to boundaries on time, features of your destination, or indulging your travel companions’ top desires. If you’re choosing between constraints, it should be easy to make a choice now that you know what your top desires are and what is necessary to indulge them.
When we were choosing between constraints, our honeymoon destinations, we whittled the list down to New Zealand and Greece. We did not have enough time to visit both and still achieve our priority desires, so we considered how our desires fit into each destination. New Zealand would be an epic outdoor adventure, whereas Greece would be a romantic wine and dine indulgence. Because we had determined that relaxation and romance were our top desires, we were easily able to choose Greece for our honeymoon and save New Zealand for a future vacation.
Step 5: Honor Your Magic Travel Ratio
This isn’t exactly a step, even though we should find a way to add magic to everything we do... this to be discussed in a future newsletter. But really, there is a magic ratio for travel. It’s a bit different for each person, so you’ll likely find that your favorite trips are with people whose travel ratio aligns closely with yours.
So what in the world is the magic travel ratio? It’s the ratio of travel time to destination time, and relaxation time to adventure time. It’s also the balance of planned versus unplanned time.
Some people like to bounce from place to place and take a quick hit of culture and sightseeing before moving on to the next destination. Everything is scheduled, perhaps by a third party or a guide, and all or most activities are predetermined and guided. Others like to minimize travel and settle in to live like the locals do. There are some plans to look forward to, but most time is left flexible for spur of the moment adventures or bulk relaxation. And then there’s a whole range in between - it’s a ratio, after all.
The final trick to planning a vacation ideally suited to indulging your desires is honoring your travel ratio. Honoring your travel ratio may mean that you don’t get to indulge every desire on your list. That’s okay! This will not be the last time you travel. Or, if you are certain you will never ever revisit a particular destination, perhaps some of your desired activities should be rated higher so you can fit them into your plans, despite your typical desire for more relaxation time. Or, save that destination for a future trip in which you’ll have all the activity and relaxation time you need. These considerations are why it’s important to identify and rate your desires for each vacation, particularly with respect to available time and destination.
Planning your vacation in line with your magic travel ratio will help you choose your destination, avoid stress, and maximize your favorite kinds of fun. Soak up that vacation magic, baby! All ratios are foxy, so plan the trip that suits you best.
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I hope this framework enables you to plan all of your future vacations to be super fun, memorable, and foxy. It’s been working for us for years! I’d love to hear about the trips you’re planning and those that you’ve enjoyed. Feel free to send photos and share stories.
Next weekend, I’ll be sharing a free worksheet in part 2 of Travel Tips for Foxes, to make your travel agenda easy to plan and track. Let me know if there’s anything in particular about travel planning that you’d like me to discuss, and I’ll make sure to address it! I may also share some photos from Crete, in case you need some more Greek eye candy.
Three cheers for my lovely foxes,
“Travel is not a reward for working, it’s education for living.”
PS - Thanks to all you lovely foxes who reached out last week regarding our roof leak and garage flood! Good news: repairs are underway and our abode remains a house instead of a houseboat.
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