First, pick a spot

How to Go on Vacation, Part One: Location Selection

Obviously, choosing where to go comes first. Now, if you're a minor living with parents, you must decide if these are, in fact, your real parents, and if you wish to be seen with them on their vacation, in a spot you presumably had little or no choice in selecting. But if you're choosing a spot for yourself, as I do, you have different issues.

I am not one for the relaxing sojourn vacation. I have only once or twice gone to places where the highpoint of the day is applying sun tan lotion, and I don't much need to return. The idea of sitting around all day reading books hardly strikes me as a vacation; the only difference between that and my regular daily life would be the caliber of the chair on which I am lounging. To me swimming is great on a hot day for about three minutes, then what are you going to do? (Ah, the paradigmatic "then what"!) On the other hand, I have enjoyed occasional short stays at Mohonk Mountain House, where one awakes whenever and then hikes for 4 hours, returning to a big lunch and then either hiking some more or playing golf. I can do that once in a while if it's summer, and it was a great place to bring the spawn when she was younger, as she could go off on her own and hardly ever be missed, and parents do look for that once in a while. Mostly, however, we trained our child to be a traveler, a skill at which she has most definitely outstripped her parents.

The vacation I prefer does include a lot of walking around. I am a naturalized New Yorker; I was raised in the suburbs, I lived on the West Side for a decade after college, I live in the suburbs now. I like nothing better than walking Manhattan, looking around, soaking things up, watching life go on, studying how the city has created and continues to recreate itself. I'm the perfect tourist, in other words, without even leaving home. We've come to look for that kind of experience on longer vacations. Where can we go to roam around and soak up something new, with maybe a little culture thrown in? One quickly gravitates to your basic European cities, most of which anyone who can do NYC on foot in a day can handle in a snap. London may be enormous, but most others are doable, on foot, from end to end, if you've got the inclination, which means that on any given day in most cities, where your goal is not to walk it all but simply to find one neighborhood and explore that, you're fine. Said exploration usually starts with something cultural. So, you'll head over to the local art museum, soak up culture for a couple of hours, eat, roam neighborhoods, pop into the odd church or cathedral or castle, stop in a shop or two, and the next thing you know you're heading for home hungry for dinner.

So you have to pick your countries, and the easiest thing to do is grab for the obvious. One would hardly start with, say, Aberystwyth, when it's a mite easier to simply tour London. One needs to get the major capitals and hot spots under the old belt before getting eclectic. The idea of Central Europe for this year stems from a trip we were going to take last year but didn't, substituting instead the American Southwest (also a fine area for exploration). Everyone seems to love Prague and Vienna, so they seemed to be required visiting. Budapest just happens to be next door, so you've got to go there too. Voila, you've got two weeks. Last year we were also kicking around visiting Kt in Tokyo, but all we had available were those basic two weeks, and the flight alone takes three weeks, plus two months of jet lag, so we'll save the rim for some other, post-employment era.

The down side of this year's trip is three languages, three currencies, and the natives' fondness for dumplings. Not to mention two weeks away from all of this (blogging, reading DMV, sending money to Nigerian diplomats, Tik attacking me at random throughout the house night and day). It'll be tough, but I think I'll survive.

Further rules:
1. Don't go to Disney or Vegas more than once every 5 years. You've seen it. Move on. (After 5 years however, all the cells in the body will have been completely replaced, and who can resist?)
2. Don't go back anywhere unless you've seen everything else, or you're only visiting for the weekend or for purposes of reentry.
3. Don't worry about language barriers. Most people in the US probably already don't understand you when you're speaking English, so you won't even notice the difference somewhere else.
4. Take as many trains as possible. European trains get you where you want to go, and you can look out the window and see Europe pretty much everywhere. Buses will do if there's no train to where you're going.
5. Go when most people don't. Spring and Fall, when people are in school, is the best. Mid-summer is the worst, because everyone else is there too. With their kids.
6. Find one neighborhood per day with one big cultural thing in it, make that your starting point, and don't bother rushing there first thing in the morning because it will still be there later on, guaranteed. By the time you see what there is to see, eat, roam and rove, you'll be back at your hotel for a little rest and then ready for the high point of the day: dinner!

If you can't tell, I'm pretty much ready for this vacation...