The Perfect Vacation Length
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Hello, and welcome to Slate Money Travel. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios with Emily Peck of Axios. Hello. With Elizabeth Spires of the New York Times. Hello. We are going on holiday. And we have one big question, which is, how long should we go on holiday for? Eight days. A week. Okay. I'm also going to just follow this up with the next question, which is,

What time zone are we going on holiday to? Oh, if it's a new time zone, then I might have to update my days of optimal holidaying. So I'm staying within my time zone. Yeah, same.

So I have this theory that the world is full of amazing places, amazing people, amazing cultures, incredible things to see. We only live once. We have to maximize our lives to whatever extent that we can. And so statistically speaking, while there are lots of great places to go in the United States, there are orders of magnitude more wonderful places to go in the rest of the world. It makes sense that we should and can be traveling globally.

And just speaking for myself as an old person, jet lag is a bitch. And so I think that while a one week holiday, you can possibly get away with it if you're

staying domestic like number one don't stay domestic and two yeah you you really want to give yourself more time than that if you're going somewhere else i did read um in the research that you should give yourself a day per time per time zone that's by the way this even applies domestically if you're flying from like one coast to the other in the united states that's at least for me like enough of a distance that the jet lag is a thing and you want to get over it i

I mean, I think the key thing is to factor in your travel times into your vacation. Like, don't say like, I'm taking a week vacation, but then it's eaten up by two, three travel days. That's not really a week long vacation. No one enjoys sitting in an economy class plane seat for 15 hours, you know,

Yeah, I mean, that travel time is in no way, shape, or form a pleasant part of the experience. The whole point is to have a pleasant experience, so try and

allocate time to the pleasant bit, not the unpleasant bit. Yeah. And always give yourself, if you can, I think buffer like that. So you get back and you recover one day. Maybe you even have a second day after that before you go back to work. Yes. Don't fly back on the Sunday, fly back on the Saturday, give yourself the Sunday to unwind and get ready. Yeah.

Yeah, that's kind of something my husband and I started doing when we would go on vacation. We'd have a buffer day, but also come in early and then have a nice dinner out the night before you have to go back to work just so that you have something to look forward to and you don't just come dragging back into your house and it's miserable because you're like, oh, I just have to get up and go straight into work tomorrow. And so much of the vacation is like it's mental mindset, like it's

It's the anticipation of going, thinking about going, talking about where are we going to go? What are we going to eat? What are we going to do? The longer you can make that last, I feel the better. And then it's also on the back end, it's like doing what you're doing with the buffer day and the night out and like having pictures and like having the, keep the conversation going about that great time you had. Like that's all part of it too. So it doesn't just, it's not just the few days that you went on vacation or week or weeks. It's like this whole new thing.

like lived experience you've had that you have forever? I do think that if your aim slash goal is relaxation, if you want to just like, if you're having a stressful time in the big city with your stressful job and you want to just do nothing and relax, it often takes a week to get to the point of actually I know I'm relaxed.

And the second week is the relaxing week, not the first week. And if you spend the week getting to that point of being relaxed and then immediately you're back to where you started, I don't know how worth it that is. I think there are two different factors, though, that can change that. One is do you have children or are you taking them with you?

because then the sort of like relaxation period. There's no such thing as relaxing with kids. I used to do three-day weekends in Miami by myself, though, 10 years ago, because I would just sit on the beach and do nothing. And that's exactly enough time for me to start getting bored

And just literally talk to nobody, sit on the beach, eat good food, go to sleep, get up, do the same thing. And that was enough because I wasn't responsible for anybody else. No, I think that's exactly right. That when you start getting bored is...

when the vacation starts. And then you have to push through the I'm bored and then you get into the sort of now I'm in my zen happy place. I don't know if I can push through I'm bored. Like that really turns me against a place. Do you have a tip for like getting through it? Like what do you do? I don't do a lot of relax and do nothing kind of vacationing. That's not my kind of travel. Yeah. So I do have this other theory which is the perfect length of any vacation is two novels.

That by the time you've read your second novel, now you're like in the zone. Right. So you go to your employer and you're like, I need to take Infinite Jest off. I did read Infinite Jest when I was on vacation in Belize. And it was great. I was lying in a hammock on the beach and it was just like the perfect vacation. That does sound great. But wait, the thing...

I know why you would maybe prefer to travel versus like a relaxing kind of vacation where you're laying on the beach. But does travel that's not of the laying on the beach variety have to be chaotic or hectic? Like, I like going to a place and like it's low presh, like quiet.

You just wake up, you have an amazing breakfast. Maybe you go to do one thing, a museum or like one tourist spot and then that's it. So that can be relaxing and amazing as long as you don't like load your itinerary up. That's why you need more time, right? To like know a place. So, you know, for instance, let's say you're in Madrid and you obviously need to go and see the Prado, right? Which is the greatest museum in the world. Um,

Don't do that thing where you're like, I need to see the entire Prado in one day. You're in Madrid for a week.

Go two days or three days. Like, check out the Goya's one day, check out the El Greco's another day, check out, you know, Gannica a third day. And then give yourself time to do nothing. Remember the wonderful institution of the siesta. Take advantage of it. Read your novel. Read your novel. And when I was in Japan, I think probably the highlight of my trip to Japan in many ways was when we...

like rented a little house on a canal in Kanazawa, which is my favorite town. I love Kanazawa for eight nights.

And we just parked it in Kanazawa for eight nights. And there's a few little things to do in Kanazawa. There's a beautiful garden. There's an art gallery. You can take day trips up into the mountain and go for little day hikes or whatever. But there's nothing hectic about it. And that's enough time that when you find an amazing restaurant, like there are many, many of in Kanazawa, you can go back a second night. And at that point, the chef knows you and you get a little bit of a relationship going. And

Yeah, that's not a beach vacation. You know, it's definitely an urban vacation, but it's relaxing and it's chill and there's no stress and that is

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I like when I was in my 20s, you go visit your friends in like other cities. And I never thought of it as traveling or being a tourist. It was just like I was going to see, you know, Jen. And Jen did this and that while I was there. And that was like enough to give you a vibe of a place. And I feel like that's how travel should be. It shouldn't be like I'm going to...

this city and I have to do these 20 things and we're going to race around. It just sounds so awful. Checking things off lists is just stressful and don't do that. Don't do it. Don't do that. Yeah. I still haven't been to the Statue of Liberty. Me neither. I've been in New York for 28 years and I've never been to the Statue of Liberty. I haven't been either. What? We should all go. We should do a slate money from the Statue of Liberty before France takes it back. I do think that

the one day per time zone to get over jet lag thing. Like if you're going to go somewhere, you should really make sure you have time past that. Like you've got over your jet lag and then you can enjoy it, you know? So if you're going, and especially by the way, I think this is the other thing, which I cannot emphasize enough, especially if you're an old like me, flying East is a motherfucker. Like it is so like, especially flying to Europe,

You wake up in the middle of the night. It's terrible. So give yourself time to just get over jet lag. When I went to Zambia with my sister, we gave ourselves three days in Doha just to chill out and do nothing. Of course. And then we went to Zambia. Incredible. You're like, I know you're not like international travelers, but like spending three days doing nothing in Doha, which is a very, very boring city.

It's great. And then like one of our days was we went into the desert and we saw the Richard Serra installation. And that's like we did one thing that day. And it was a great thing. Why wouldn't you just fly to Zambia and stay there for three days and not like do anything? And then like why a separate place? Well, because there are no direct flights to Zambia. So if you're going to change in Doha anyway, you know, it's probably...

nicer to hang out in a luxury hotel in Doha than it is to be stuck in some random place in the circuit. That makes a lot of sense. Anytime you're going to have to switch planes, maybe that should be like a guide. Switching planes is a great opportunity to chill. To chill. You do not need to rush from one gate to another. That's really smart. So how long, if you're going somewhere and you're there for like...

Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks. Where's the line between this is a vacation and, oh, I guess I'm living here now. Yeah, the line is, oh, that's a good question. I spent four months in Berlin, but I was working and it never occurred to me that that was a vacation. I was just like, I'm a blogger.

I can blog from anywhere. Why not blog from Berlin instead of blogging from New York? And that worked out great. Do you remember those days? I guess I wasn't really truly appreciative of Reuters. And I was just like...

I went up to my boss and my chin, do you have any problem with me blogging from Berlin for a few months? It's like, no, go for it. Like, wow. I feel like people don't do that anymore. I was able to, I did that at fortune. I was in Cambodia for two months and I was like, Oh, I'll write something about micro financing while I'm here.

But you weren't working like every day. No. Yeah. I mean, that's what the pandemic was. A lot of people moved to different weird places, not weird, different destinations. I believe the term of us is digital nomad. The digital nomad was created in 2020, but born then from nothing and went to Mexico City and is now dying. And thus, yeah. Now they're all moving back. Well, they flourished for a while.

But yeah, as the only, you know, foreign-born person here, I can say, like, number one, there is a whole planet to explore. Explore it. And number two, take some time. I know it's hard, though, with, you know... It's hard. The amount of vacation that American corporations give is de minimis. It's not ideal. I feel like it's really hard to get a combination of good holiday time in and also work full-time for an American corporation. Like, it just...

You can't do both. I mean, the expectation too, like you're saying it takes that second week to really relax. Like most jobs now of the professional sort, you're not really, they say you can check out and not check Slack or email, whatever, but they don't mean it. They do not mean it. And so, you know, that you do that at your peril, I think, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's why, that's why the vacationing classes are all retired. Yes. Yeah.

Not all. Or rich. Super rich. Or super rich. You know you're rich when you can afford to take a three-week vacation. Yes. Or several of them. Or a couple. Yeah, exactly. All right. I think we've solved this one. Thanks for listening to Slate Money. Thanks to Merit Jacob and Shannon Roth and Jessamyn Mollie and the whole enormous crew at Slate for producing this thing. And we'll be back on Saturday with a regular Slate Money.