Poll What about... Vacation?

[Naira]

I am planning my summer vacation and I started wondering what is usual in other countries on the subject.

Here (in Greece) most people who can afford a vacation get two weeks off during the summer and usually spend it by going to the sea for a week and then back to their hometown/village for another week. Also, people will usually take 2-3 days off after Easter and spent those days with their extended families.

It is very uncommon to go on vacation during the winter, mainly because people here only think about the sea when they think of vacationing.

How about your country?

 

[auntiehill]

It depends on your job and your financial state. Most people can't really afford much of a vacation. How much time one gets off depends entirely upon one's job--I've never had a job that included any paid vacation. Hubby has a State job (at a university), so he gets quite a bit of vacation time. However, because he's so busy, he often struggles to find time to use it. We usually take off a week or two around Christmas, so we can visit our relatives and friends. His vacation is paid time off, mine is unpaid.

 

[Miss Chicken]

Totally depends on the destination. If holidaying within Australia one usually takes time off in the summer especially if you are a family as the longest school holidays are from just before Christmas to early February. However it is better to go to certain regions of Australia in spring or autumn. I tend to prefer to visit my sister in Adelaide in September (early spring) as in summer is far too hot.

If heading to the Northern hemisphere than winter here, summer there.

We have four weeks of paid vacation so it quite easy to fit in a 2 or 3 week trip in.

 

[Timby]

I have taken one legitimate vacation since 2005 (when I went on a road trip to Denver). Most recent vacation was May 2014, when I spent a week in Baltimore.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I get a fairly decent amount of vacation time. For the last few years I've gotten 4 weeks a year, starting in '17 I get five (due to my 20th anniversary).

I take it all in the spring and summer because I plan my vacations around baseball. Although, I would actually really like to see my favorite cities like New York and Toronto during Christmas season, but no way am I travelling during winter - the flight hassles would ruin everything...

 

[Tora Ziyal]

NYC at Christmas is totally worth doing at least once. Ask someone with experience what the least bad times are to fly, and go for it!

 

[Timby]

but no way am I travelling during winter - the flight hassles would ruin everything...

I moved to Baltimore the day Hurricane Sandy hit. You can survive a little snow delay here or there.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It would help if I could still take more than one week of vacation at once (they stopped letting us do that a while ago - now we can only take a week at a time). If I could do that, I'd be more receptive to weather delays and thus winter travel would be a possibility.

(I do admit that ever since I discovered the wonders of the United Club, being stuck at airports for hours on end is not quite the torture that it used to be... )

Although if I could take 2 or more weeks vacation at once, I'd really like to take a train trip. I am a huge train geek, but I never seem to have the time to travel on it for extended trips. Plus, the only Amtrak route that comes through Omaha actually terminates in Chicago...

 

[1001001]

I don't like to take long vacations. My job is the kind of job where no one else can do what I do, so the work just piles up while I'm gone, like newspapers on the front porch.

So I use my vacation time differently. I like to take lots of little breaks. I take a lot of 3 and 4 day weekends. I usually just stay around home, unless I go somewhere relatively close like Vegas or San Francisco.

In October, I'll be taking my dream vacation: going home to Los Angeles, and seeing a USC game on Saturday, and a Rams game on Sunday. It will be epic. But even then I'll only take 2-3 days off.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

My next dream vacation is Montreal (I have become very fond of Canada over the past few years and Montreal is next on my list of Canadian cities to visit).

I don't speak a word of French, but I've been told that's not a problem for tourists there.

 

[Pondwater]

None of the above. I'm lucky to get one day off at least once a week if that.

Eta:

I want to take nice trip from coast to coast.

 

[Kor]

I want to spend a couple of weeks driving old Route 66 and seeing the roadside sights.

Kor

 

[Pondwater]

I want to spend a couple of weeks driving old Route 66 and seeing the roadside sights.

Kor

Me too!

 

[MacLeod]

Actually visited a part of route 66 on my last which was to the USA a couple of years back. But I really don't go on holiday that often due to cost. Sure I take time off work but an actual holiday somewhere is not that often. But then again I'm not a sun worshipper and the dea of a holidat to a beach sounds utterly boring. I'd much rather see places.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Yeah I'd rather see places too, I would not like a week at one beach or a resort. In Australia it is often cheaper to fly overseas than to have a big holiday here and many people do that at least once. There is a lot of aus I have not seen because a week in Asia is half the price and twice as interesting.

 

[Timby]

Although if I could take 2 or more weeks vacation at once, I'd really like to take a train trip. I am a huge train geek, but I never seem to have the time to travel on it for extended trips. Plus, the only Amtrak route that comes through Omaha actually terminates in Chicago...

Yeah, but Union Station is a hub. So you'd take the California Zephyr to Union Station, and from there you'd take the Lake Shore Limited to New York. Total one-way travel time for that would probably be about ... oh, 26 hours, give or take, although possibly closer to 30 since Amtrak doesn't own most of the track on which it operates so its trains have to defer to freight trains, which can lead to delays.

 

[Captain Ice]

It would help if I could still take more than one week of vacation at once (they stopped letting us do that a while ago - now we can only take a week at a time). If I could do that, I'd be more receptive to weather delays and thus winter travel would be a possibility.

(I do admit that ever since I discovered the wonders of the United Club, being stuck at airports for hours on end is not quite the torture that it used to be... )

Although if I could take 2 or more weeks vacation at once, I'd really like to take a train trip. I am a huge train geek, but I never seem to have the time to travel on it for extended trips. Plus, the only Amtrak route that comes through Omaha actually terminates in Chicago...

Yeah, but Union Station is a hub. So you'd take the California Zephyr to Union Station, and from there you'd take the Lake Shore Limited to New York. Total one-way travel time for that would probably be about ... oh, 26 hours, give or take, although possibly closer to 30 since Amtrak doesn't own most of the track on which it operates so its trains have to defer to freight trains, which can lead to delays.

Or ride the train about 32 hours the other direction and visit Los Angeles or the Grand Canyon...

 

[Captain Ice]

As far as vacation time, I get two weeks paid vacation every year and about two weeks worth of sick leave. I like to take one week off entirely and go somewhere. The other week I break up and make into three and four day weekends for things.

For instance, Leprecon 42 is this Thursday through Sunday, so I'm burning a couple of vacation days to go.

 

[Nate]

I get just under 5 weeks (4 weeks/3 days) a year currently, which is a lot for the US. Plus a bonus week every 5th anniversary (year 5, 10, etc). Just hit ten years this past December.

We typically take our vacations in the spring or fall. This spring we did Berlin, Prague and Vienna and in the fall are visiting Madrid.

 

[Spot's Meow]

I get a little more than two weeks of paid vacation a year, but it just keeps piling up (it rolls over from year to year) because I don't really have many opportunities to use it. My husband has much less vacation time, in part because he earns less and also because he has been at his current job for less time than I've been at mine. So, I will take a day here or there to go on smaller extended weekend trips, but we have rarely done big trips. We did happen to do a big trip this year where I used a week and a half of vacation time, and that was definitely the longest vacation I have ever taken from any job.

So, even though I get the vacation days, I just can't afford a long vacation and/or I don't really want to travel without my husband. Most people I work with are in similar situations, where their vacation time continues to build until it hits a cap, at which point they just stop accruing it until they use some more. At the end of your career, you can "turn in" unused vacation time for a cash payout, but you have to pay taxes on it, so it comes out to a measly amount. Also, many of my co-workers don't take vacations because they are just too busy at work. In most places I have worked, there is really not enough people for us to completely fill in for each other when someone is gone, so once they get back the work has just piled up and they are usually overwhelmed for a couple of weeks trying to catch up. So many just don't take a vacation at all.

In terms of time of year that people take vacations, it seems to be all over the map. It really depends on where they're going, and people go to all sorts of places from here. My trip was in the spring and I went to Alaska. My boss is going to the Azores in August, and another co-worker goes to Hawaii in December.

I would be okay with just using vacation time to relax at home, but that seems to be really frowned upon in the culture around me. The attitude very much seems to be, "if you are just sitting at home, why can't you be working instead?" I think that many would view it as lazy.