Best vacation? I'm in the midst of mine...

I have to echo the comments about the South Pacific. Spent five weeks traveling solo around Australia and New Zealand following my semester in Australia in 1994 and I've wanted to go back ever since the day I left.

 

Spent 10 days in Japan in 2001 when my brother got married. Didn't visit Tokyo, so I think that's probably why I enjoyed it so much. Tokyo would have been too easy to like and feel comfortable. We stayed primarily in Kanazawa and Matto, and saw a lot of neat stuff. The food was among the best and worst I ever had. My brother took me out to a little bar that wouldn't have passed any American inspection, but sumbitch, the food was incredible. So was the beer. And the Japanese know how to party. I've never had more booze in one week than I did over there.

 

Two weeks in Australia.
(Full disclosure -- it was a travel junket paid for by Australia Tourism, so itinerary was set by someone else. But it was an "adventure" type holiday, activities were amazing)

A week in Alice Springs:
- Tour of Desert Eco-park, including coolest live bird show I've ever seen
- Camel riding, with meal of kangaroo and camel meet after (camel meat tastes like prime rib - delicious)
- ATV tour in desert
- Harley Davidson tour (I was a passenger) out to desert, with champagne / cheese and crackers near a billabong
- Four-wheel drive tour in desert ( 8 hours, and I was wickedly hungover)
- Ballooning at dawn -- breathtaking, with full breakfast picnic after

Flew to Cairns for a week:
- white-water rafting trip
- Helicopter out to a boat on the Great Barrier Reef, spent the night at sea, scuba diving and snorkelling
- Helicopter back to Port Douglas -- beautiful five-star boutique hotel
- Horseback riding, including on the beach near where Capt Cook ran aground
- Tour of Daintree national park
- Dinner at a restaurant where Bill Clinton dined, which has a plate on the wall signed by Bill, dated Sept 11, 2001 (he dined hours before the attack -- very eerie to see the date under a President's signature
- a day of golf

On return, had a night layover in Sydney -- walked the Rocks district, had a couple of glasses of win in the shadow of the opera house.

Oh, and because flight was paid for, flew first class

 

When I was a fairly broke college kid, I asked my parents that my only Christmas/birthday gift be a trip to the Bahamas for after Christmas holiday break. My dad worked for airlines, so me, my mom, a high school friend and her mom all flew down there for free.

But before I'd left school for Christmas break, a very casual guy friend said to me, "If you end up going to the Bahamas, give my buddy Adam a call. He goes there a lot."

And I barely took the guy's number, thinking, yeah right.

Turns out Adam went to Princeton, and when we got to Nassau, my friend twisted my arm to give this "Adam" a call.

Keep in mind, this is pre-Atlantis Bahamas.

So I give Adam a call and say hey I'm George's friend from school. We're staying at (2-star cheapy hotel). So Adam says my buddy who goes to BC and I will pick you up in 20 minutes in the casino of your hotel.

20 minutes later this gorgeous blond guy shows up in his boat with his friend. He whisks me and my friend off on a boat tour of the Bahamian Islands. Then he takes us to his waterfront estate on Paradise Island complete with staff, chefs, pool, hot tub, guest house, boats, water skis, jet skis, spear fishing equip, etc etc.

The next 4 days were among the most fun, amazing, romantic, alcohol-fueled, sun-soaked days of my entire life.

If you're single and you ever have the opportunity to meet someone cool while on vacation... I put it up there as one of the great experiences a person can have in life.

 

Unless it's Aruba.

 

Best was a solo road trip to New Mexico my junior year of college. The dorm closed for a week, I was 1,200 miles from home and didn't want to go there anyway, so I packed up my stuff and headed west.
Drove across Texas the first day and slept in the car at a rest area outside Fort Stockton. It was a full moon, and since there is less than nothing on I-10 between about Kerrville and El Paso, I occasionally turned off the headlights and was able to see perfectly. Laying in the backseat of the car, once in a while I'd see some lights reflecting on the interior. They'd be from a car on a side road that was probably 5 or 10 miles away.
Spent the next two days driving up to Carlsbad and touring the caverns. Then went to the tourist trap that is Roswell, got bored with it and headed to Fort Sumner to see Billy the Kid's grave. Came back and did another afternoon at the Caverns and headed home, spending an afternoon in San Antonio along the way.

It wasn't as glamorous as going to Panama City or South Padre. The reason I went alone was because no one else wanted to come (one group of friends actually went to Panama City, another went back home). But it was awesome in the feeling of total self-reliance and freedom I had. I literally had nowhere to be for a week. I was completely on my own. If something happened, it was on me to get myself out of it (a lesson I took to heart the following year when I tried to recapture some of this magic). It's been 15 years and I can still recall almost every minute of that week.
It was one of the most liberating trips I've ever taken. I've always wanted to go back and visit Southeastern New Mexico on a similar vacation, but I'm scared it could never live up to that first one when the whole world was in front of me.

 

Great story, Batman.

Wow! I've never thought of that. The parallels between my trip and hers... The big difference was that my guy was a friend of a friend.. Natalie met a psychopath while out and about. The other big difference was that my guy "Adam" was A-MA-ZING-ZING. We continued to date for awhile after that trip, but it didn't last.

Still the best vacation I've ever had...........................

 

Mr. Lugnuts must love that story.

 

Mr. Lugs is the best man I've ever known. He'd be the first to tell you our honeymoon had some logistical snafus such as a hurricane hitting the island. We had a romantic trip to Vegas several years ago.. In which I got sick and ended up in the ER. We haven't had good luck on vacations. We have had good luck on marriage.

I'd rather be the best man than the best vacation.

 

You dated a guy who owns a water-font estate with private chaefs and domestic servants on Paradise Island, and he was 'A-MA-ZING-ZING.'

But you didn't marry him?

Rich people need love, too, you know.

 

My mother used to ask me that question.

I broke it off with "Adam" to date a beautiful, crazy, brilliant guy at my own college. That very intense relationship lasted 4 years and included getting engaged. We loved hard and fought hard and had a blast.. But I can assure you we'd have gotten divorced if I'd married him. So we broke off the engagement, and I met Mr. Lugs a few months after that. A year later I was Mrs. Lugnuts. No time to think about reaching out to Adam, who was really just a fling. I sensed Adam was a wee bit of a player anyway. Mr. Lugs was the right man for me to marry. He was the for keeps guy.

Most of the guys I dated.. If we'd gotten married... would've ended in divorce. I drive people that fuckin' crazy. Mr. Lugs has the patience, for what reason, God only knows.

Now tell us your love life.

 

Typical story: boy meets girl; priest and a rabbi walk into a bar; train leaves Chicago heading for New Orleans at 87 mph ....

You've heard it all before.