Piet, Tay and I have been vacationing in southern Spain for the last 5 days and I’ve noticed something about how I schedule a day on vacation, versus how Piet does it.
See, most of my childhood vacations were spent at the beach. Usually it was Virginia Beach, but I’ve also been to Wildwood and Myrtle Beach as well.
While the majority of the time I was just with my parents and brother, there were a few times it was a larger family affair and my aunt, uncle, Gram and cousins went along as well.
And when we went to the beach, that’s pretty much what we did.
We got up, had breakfast, went to the beach, watched some tv, had lunch, went back to the beach and then had dinner.
Sometimes my mom took me and my brother to miniature golf or an amusement park, but mostly we just went to the water line and stayed there most of the day.
When I was little I loved the ocean and I’ve always loved to read so I rarely got bored doing nothing but going to the beach.
Piet, on the other hand, burns very easily and prefers things like hiking and canoeing and scenic views and walking. He spent most of his childhood vacations camping in France with his parents and sister.
So, over the past few days, I’ve noticed a definite pattern in how we each choose the activities to do each day.
Piet goes online or looks at our Andalusia guide book and picks some different things to do.
We’ve done a day trip to Cordoba, markets in Nerja and Torrox Costa, an out of the way, but lovely restaurant in Torrox, a trip to a donkey sanctuary and a trip to the lovely, tastefully touristic village of Frigiliana.
Those were all Piet’s plans.
My plans are mostly:
Um…there’s a beach, why aren’t we at the beach? It’s sunny and hot and beach, let’s go to the beach. Too sandy? Um, we can go to the pool? Too hot? Um, there’s a shopping mall in Malaga, no?
After that we could always go to the beach…
I?
Am a very beach-centric vacationer.
Which has been exacerbated by the fact that Tay did not inherit his father’s tendency to get crispy after 5 minutes in the sun.
Baby and Mommy get lovely tans in the sun, if sunscreen is appropriately applied.
Papa becomes a lobster if not continuously slathered in spf 60.
Because I don’t want my husband to internally combust and leave me alone with an 11 month old child and a stick shift Qashqai in a foreign country, I’ve been dutifully taking my allergy pills and motion sickness pills and petting donkeys (thank you anti-bacterial hand gel) and learning to get over my aversion to non-beach nature and animals taller than my shoulders.
And believe it or not, I’ve been having a really good time.
Just as long as I occasionally get to go to the beach.
A Patchwork of Daydreams 