What Is a True Vacation?

Happy 4th of July!

Now, What, exactly, is a vacation? To those companies who offer paid time off, leave, whatever it's called it is time away from work with full pay. How that time is used is entirely up the employee but what, exactly, is a "vacation?" Is it working on the house, planting the spring garden, going to see Grandma, catching up on Netflix or just laying on the beach for a few days?


For most of my adult life I've rarely gotten past the three-week vacation mark in terms of earned time off. I've had to squeeze in trips to visit the family over the holidays as well as weekenders to New Orleans and even London, England just to make it through the year. In each of those with so little time on the ground available to really relax and enjoy both people and place I would always come home as rushed as if it were just another day at the office. Anything in the way of big trips was saved for the end of the year when there were plenty of national holidays to tack on and stretch precious vacation time like breadcrumbs to meatloaf.


When I made it to four weeks I truly had no idea how I would use it all. The income doesn't always match the wish list of places to go and things to see and do, does it? I was actually reluctant to take time off if the only thing I could afford to do was sit at home. And herein lies a huge difference, so I'm told, between Americans and our European cousins where the latter would readily jump at the chance to get away from the office. Americans like me, on the other hand, can feel useless and worried for sitting around the house doing nothing while work piles up and we get behind with each passing day.


I've always maintained that a true vacation is being out of touch with those people, places and things that define both personal and professional life. Visiting the family over the holidays is exactly that, a holiday. Going to Greece for the first time? Now that's a vacation.


A key component of any vacation for me is being physically separated from everyday life but also in this day and age being electronically unavailable. No cell phones, pagers, smart phones, e-mail or internet. There is nothing going on back at the office that can't wait for me to return and I've left explicit instructions for coverage if my vacation coincides with a project deadline of some kind. Until I return, "I know you're on vacation but this will only take a minute," will never have a chance to turn into an hour-long conference call. From the beach. In Rio. With sand in my biscuits.


The longest vacation I ever took spanned three weekends but really added up to about 12 days in Australia and New Zealand. I was ready to come home and more than paid the price for it when I opened my e-mail inbox the following Monday but who goes to the South Pacific for only a week. It almost takes that long to get there (mentally anyway).


A vacation is being able to not think about office politics or projects, about letting go completely without feeling guilty about leaving in the first place. If, that is, you can get it scheduled at all.


Gotta go.

Bodrum and the Beach

Bodrum, Turkey is a site of exquisite Mediterranean beauty and loaded with significant history. Few Americans have ever heard of the place yet it is a popular enough destination for Europeans, only 4.5 hours flight from London. Europeans seem more willing to explore and enjoy out of the way destinations, even ones in the United States whereas Americans seem interested only in marquee destinations.

Want proof? When Americans think of a European vacation the vast majority automatically rattle off the usual big-splash suspects of London, Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Munich, the big city tours. When Greece and Spain come in to the conversation those destinations remain limited to Athens, Mykonos, Santorini, Barcelona, the Madrid region and possibly Ibiza/Mallorca. That's it. Their entire "foreign" experience summed up in to one or two destinations and whatever is within a day's drive or an hour's flight or sail from there. Oh how there is so much more!

For the sake of it just Google "British Holiday Companies" and see the endless list that pops up. Well established names like Thomson, Thomas Cook, Monarch and Direct Holidays. Pick any of their websites and just browse the destinations each one offers, many in competition with at least two or three other outfits and some including their own in-house air transportation. Thomson Holidays, for example, is affiliated with Thomsonfly, billed as the third largest airline in the United Kingdom.

A charter airline owned by a vacation company the third largest in the country? And where do they fly? Between the two sister companies there are listed seven destinations in Egypt alone, six in South Africa and 22 of the Greek Islands. Thomas Cook lists the entire country of Brazil as a destination but specifies 12 unique options in Bulgaria. Bulgaria? Not to be chintzy, Thomas Cook offers over 30 destinations in the United States, from Aspen to Cincinnati and Charleston to Portland.

The Europeans live in the big cities we want to visit so it makes sense they want to go someplace else, especially when we come to town! Spain IS Florida to most Brits, so long as it has an airport, some kind of accommodation to choose from and predictably bright and sunny weather with beaches and surf to enjoy they're all over it, from Sitges to Malaga, Alicante and back. Americans go to Egypt for the pyramids; the Europeans have already been so they hideaway by the sea at Sharm El-Sheikh, again soaking up the sun before heading north to home and the gloom of winter.

But back to Bodrum. Right by the Mediterranean, Bodrum offers a 13,000 seat amphitheater, a huge crusader era Castle of the Knights of St. John and the remnants of the Great Mausoleum, one of the seven ancient wonders of the world. All that plus sun and sand, too? Hell, few American vacation companies would even offer something this exotic and out of the way. American Express' website couldn't even spell B-o-d-r-u-m! The question is, how to get there on the cheap from this side of the Atlantic?

The airport code is "BJV" and airfare alone through Travelocity from Chicago for travel on July 1st and back on the 15th started at $2,111 round trip on Turkish Airlines with one 2.5 hour stopover in Istanbul. Expensive but far easier to get to than previously thought. To assuage any third-world visions of what this region of Turkey must be like, the airport is only 20 miles north of town, it opened a new international terminal in 2000, boasts a 9,500 ft. concrete runway and is served by some 40 different airlines!

By comparison, using the same days of travel, a roundtrip ticket from Chicago to London started at $878 on American Airlines. Searching Monarch Holidays from the UK, a seven-night Bodrum package including air leaving on July 3rd and returning to London on the 11th produced five pages of options ranging from $365 at the budget Delta Hotel to $1,750 per person at the top end Kempinski Barbaros Bay pictured above. That includes flights on Monarch Air, the house airline in operation since 1960 and offering Boeing and Airbus equipment to over 100 destinations worldwide, plus the hotel. Uh, and did you also notice the four extra days in London, too? Those hotel nights are not included but at the low end hotel choice the savings is still an amazing $868 over the Turkish Airlines fare alone.

Gotta go.

The New LAX

Los Angeles needs a new airport. There's very little new about that statement, to be sure, but the fact remains that Los Angeles International is fast running out of room to do what it needs to do in serving the 2nd largest metropolitan area in the United States. So we can concentrate on the uniqueness of "LAX," let's get the other airports in the area out of the way right up front.

Ontario, Burbank, Orange County and Long Beach are "satellites" that serve their immediate area with domestic and some international service to Mexico and Canada. None of them are big enough for much of anything else so the locals are accustomed to driving up to 70 miles to get to LAX where nonstops to Hawaii, Asia, Australia or Europe are readily available. These four have little hope of becoming another Gatwick or Orly for Los Angeles in the way those airports compliment Heathrow at London and Charles de Gaulle at Paris, respectively.

The terminal complex at LAX has been redesigned at least three times from the original concept, including the Tom Bradley International Terminal, the Delta Flight Center and various gate reconfigurations to accommodate the 777 and A380. Another redesign of over one billion dollars is underway to carry the airport for the next 50 years or so. What next? Let's say there will be and the 747s, 777s and A380s of the present day will all be long gone, outliving their usefulness by contemporary standards. Will airports even look or operate the same by then? Before this turns in to a commercial piece on Star Trek, let's go with the technology in hand and figure out what to do with LAX or figure out where to put its replacement.

Palmdale has been bandied about on numerous occasions. It is in the high desert with plenty of land around it that nobody seems much interested in. It is also a good 50 miles north of L.A. past the San Fernando Valley and right next to Edwards AFB, the reason so many seem enamored of the area. Edwards is an active military base that serves as protector of Los Angeles in case of attack, a shuttle landing site and an airplane graveyard. In short, though historically significant to American aviation (Chuck Yeager's breakthrough happened here) on paper it seems, it doesn't have much to do but has a ton of land and plenty of potential to turn in to the kind of commercial facility Los Angeles needs.

The government won't give it up without a fight, the locals don't want to drive there and no airline will support any move to pay for the kind of facility they constantly say they need but is not their responsibility to build. I don't live in the area so all of this is easy and academic to me. I'll put up with Los Angeles until a better solution comes along - some thought it might be El Toro but that hasn't happened either. I say do what the Chinese did in Hong Kong: Spare no expense, go with Edwards, build a freeway and high speed rail network to support it and let the future, unborn tax-payers finish paying for something that was always a part of their lives and therefore no big deal.

Gotta go.