There are two types of travel vacations: sightseeing and relaxing. Sometimes you can combine the two, if there are interesting sights to see but not too many. If I’m in a major city with a ton of things to see and do, though, I usually want to see as much as I can.
My travel vacations to great European cities like London, Paris, and Rome are among my favorite trips! But I’d usually return home from big-city vacations like that both jet-lagged and tired . . . with just a day to recover before going back to work, since I wanted to spend as much time in my destination as possible. I often felt like I needed a vacation from my vacation!
The basic problem was not enough vacation time, thanks to American work culture. (It was always telling when I’d take two weeks off to visit friends in Europe. My American friends would say how great it was that I was taking two full weeks for my vacation! And my European friends would say You’re only coming for two weeks? ) Happily, retirement has solved the not-enough-paid-time-off problem.
I took my first major-city trip as a retiree recently – minus the travel time, expense, and jet lag of a trip to Europe, since I met my sister in New York for a week of city fun. It was my first flat-out sightseeing trip of retirement – and it was fabulous!
No, I don’t have the same energy as my younger traveling self. But it was freeing not to have to worry about how exhausted I might be when I got home. Who cares? I could rest for as many days as I wanted after my return!
On our last full day in the city I ended up walking almost 24,000 steps, according to my watch – 13.5 miles. Sure, I was tired – that was after 9 miles the prior day and 12 miles two days before. And, I don’t have quite the stamina that I used to. But it was great being swept up in the energy of Manhattan.
There’s no place quite like New York City for risking making you feel expendable if you’re not “productive” and earning money (or young & attractive – not me – or already fabulously wealthy or famous – also not me). Which is why I was wondering how I’d feel there as a retiree. I worked in Manhattan a couple of summers when I was in college, and I remember how “important” I felt commuting to a job, earning money, and being part of the fast pace of the city instead of a meandering tourist.
But it was all fine. I had a slight pang walking by Grand Central Station once, remembering young me who was part of the rushing pulse of the city, who knew the good local places to eat near my office, who didn’t have to look at the bus and subway maps to get where I wanted to go, who wasn’t strolling like a tourist with my neck craned to the sky staring at the skyscrapers.
However, it didn’t take long for those thoughts to change, to “Isn’t it great I don’t have to rush off to a job! It’s fun to stroll and be able to really experience awe as I soak in the magnitude of the New York City skyline!”
Bottom line: Travel as a retiree absolutely rocks. I hope to be able to do a lot more of it while I still can.
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