Vacation As Diva
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
I need a vacation. I say that with no equivocation whatsoever.
I want to relax in the sun, preferably by a beautiful body of water, and clear out the mental detritus of the past couple of years. But alas, circumstances being what they are, I’m having great difficulty coming up with a respite plan that meets my usual criteria. You see, the problem is that when I vacation, I vacation as a diva.
Now I’m not trying to say that I jet off to far away lands in my private plane, to be waited on by my adoring staff. That would be vacationing as a super diva. No, I am not there. I’m just an ordinary diva who flies coach when she has to.
There are, however, certain things I look for when I travel:
1. Peace & Quiet: The whole point of a vacation is to relax and renew, right? So traveling to noisy, stress-inducing locales, like say, Disney World with a 4 year old, is likely to have me return home with greater stress than when I left. Thus I attempt, as best I can, to find off-the-beaten-path areas full of P&Q. Now, I’m not going totally off the beaten path, like say, camping in the wilderness (or camping any other place). But I want to find places that aren’t full of everyone plus his/her second cousin.
2. Novelty: I must immediately explain this one. I don’t mean going on vacation to see a novelty attraction like the world’s largest ball of string. I am not that diva (truthfully, I don’t know many divas who would visit such an attraction).
What I mean is that I enjoy going to interesting places that I’ve not visited before. Again, I’m not talking about Paw Paw, West Virginia (a place I have visited several times, in truth). I mean like Albufeira, Portugal, Guadaloupe, Moorea, as examples. If I need a passport, there’s a beach and I haven’t been there before, I am so there! (Well as long as there is little chance of political strife suddenly breaking out since that would take away from #1 above.)
3. The Fewer Americans The Better: So I totally get that this makes me sound totally like a country-hater who should move to France, start smoking, and wear berets. Please don’t get me wrong. I love my country. I’d just like to be apart from my countrymen and women when traveling abroad. Americans can be so…American. There can be an insularity and…well I’ll say it…superiority to some American travelers abroad that makes me pretend that I am, in fact, from France. (My accent is good enough to fake it.)
I remember the vacation I took to Guadaloupe with the Irish guy I was dating at the time (the one who after me hooked up with his current lifepartner, John, who he has been with for the past decade…but that’s another story). Guadaloupe is (or was at the time) one of those places where you had to speak French in order to make it there. There were some English-speaking tourists, but the majority of the tourists were from that frequently-mentioned-in-this-post country, France. The guy and I had this hit us like a brick at the airport when our resort shuttle was nowhere to be found. We were pulling out long forgotten French from the nether regions of our cerebral cortex like crazy. Then we had to contend with the fact that Parisian French is different from Caribbean-accented French. “Répétez s’il vous plaît” soon became our catchphrase.
The first night there after managing to find our way from the airport, getting to the resort, having to change rooms because they had given us twin beds (!), stumbling down to dinner, blundering through ordering, then trying to find our way back to the room, we passed an American (!!) fussing at the front desk clerk. He was increasingly escalating because of her inability to understand him given her poor English. “Isn’t there anyone in this goddammned place who can speak English!” he yelled loudly in full pique. The guy and I passed him attempting to look confused and very French. We did not want to be associated with this American. I mean, come on. There is a bit of hubris in being angry that there is no one in a French-speaking country’s tourist resort that caters to French-speaking people, who speaks good ol’ American English. But see, a lot of Americans traveling abroad can be like that. Everyone should speak English and there should be a hamburger on every menu. Groan. Leave your comfort zone. Try something new. And if you are traveling to a place that doesn’t normally have a big American (or British or South African) tourist trade, then bring someone with you who does speak the language!
I will admit that I can get a little American while traveling abroad with regard to one thing: breakfast. It’s my favorite meal. And sometimes you are in places where their idea of breakfast is NOT what you’ve got your mind ready to eat. Breakfast in both Beijing and Salzburg was…interesting. But I don’t blame the country. I don’t demand to have some home fries made right away! (That would make me a super diva, or Oprah.) I do, however, pout, ever so slightly, and eat my bread and raw fish (OK, I’m making that up) and dream about the waffles I’ll have when I return stateside.
So again, the thought of a Florida vacation filled with Americans makes me want to stay home. And what is this sudden issue with Florida I seem to have? Hmm…
When we had two incomes, it was much easier to take the Big Diva Vacation. Club Med Portugal, Club Med Punta Cana, we were so there. They have Petit Club for the kidlet and French people! (Yes, you are sensing a theme here.) I could and did justify the expense because it was a medical expense: vacation in support of my mental health.
But since we’ve been on one income, it is much harder to justify the Big Diva Vacation as medical expenditure. My initial hope was that we would soon be back to double incomes and could then take Z on the BDV. Yet this has not happened. And the kid is so vacation crazy these days that I’m afraid she’s going to try to stow herself in my luggage on my next business trip. She wants to go anywhere, even if its the Motel 6 down by the airport.
So what to do, what to do? Do we stow our passports and travel to Florida (shudder) with all the other Americans (shudder shudder) to visit the Disney state? She’ll be thrilled, but I’ll probably need a medication adjustment.
Is this the only answer, friends? What say you all?