There are a class of people that view vacation as a verb. This class of people thinks the most relaxing thing to do away from their job is to exert themselves strenuously in exotic locations. They yearn for the opportunity to drip sweat in new and fabulous places. Fortunately, we have a name for these people, Insane.
On the far other spectrum, there are those that view vacation as a condition. This class of people thinks the most relaxing thing to do away from their job (or, more likely, retirement) is to completely avoid exerting themselves at all in exotic locations. They yearn for the opportunity to have their, quite likely large, posteriors hauled about in a motorized go-kart in new and fabulous places. We have a name for these people too, Senior Citizens.
Myself? I belong with the class of people that see vacation as a place. It's a place of exotic locations full of new bbq'd food I don't have to cook. This place can have a moderate amount of activity to let my heart know that blood pumps through it, but not enough so that I can experience a full-on Marine boot camp. Vacation is the place I'm going to imagine what the "good life" is for when I win the lottery or settle in full-time as my wife's kitchen-bitch. It's relaxing, full of fun things I choose to do, and enjoyable. Which brings me to our current conundrum, what to do on vacation?
My wife and I have had the desire to go to Italy for some time. While the global economic collapse has been slowly hastening the demise of the Euro, thus making our U.S. dollar worth something there, it ain't dead yet so the affordability meter pushes us outta that realm this year. Enter our next choice: Iceland! Iceland had everything my wife desired from a vacation. Some museums, pretty naturey stuff, and foremost, a non-tropical climate zone! We were set...until the Volcano gods spewed ash all over the place. They're fun to visit when they aren't exploding was my guess. Not to be defeated, I came up with the winner of this year's retreat: Alaska!
Alaska has everything. It has old-timesy cheesetacular costume-appareled guided tours regaling the hey-day of gold-panners and brothels. It has cultural tours, totem exhibits, and museums from some of the local tribes. It has puffins, and whales and grizzlies, oh my! Also, despite popular belief, the cfc's emitted from the 80's hair bands has not hastened the dissolution of the glaciers and, in fact, there are literally dozens of things you can do to/on/around them.
The problem comes with what to do. Being a vacation-is-a-place kinda guy, I like the ones where a helicopter flies you up on top of a glacier where you hike a little bit and then climb on the back of a sled and command your own dog-sled team. This, then, to my mind should be followed up by a nice excursion where you lounge on a Catamaran as it glides you out to climb on the back of whales for a photo shoot. A little bit of exertion and a little bit of being carried about is perfect to me. My wife, however, has a slightly different bent. She's a vacation-is-a-place kinda gal with a streak of vacation-as-a-verb kinda gal. The first one sounds grand to her, but then she wants to follow that up with the Muscle Milk Extreme! excursion where paramilitary ninjas suit you up, take you on top of a glacier, throw you off and demand that you climb the jagged sheer cliff of the glacier and hike through a blizzard wearing a hoodie to rendezvous for evac under a full moon at dawn. Also, the ninjas charge you a lot for making you do all the work, which is shady behavior even for ninjas. Pointing this out to my wife made her call me the Senior Citizen title which is unfair and, "HEY, kid, Get off the lawn!!"
