When you tell people you are about to take a few weeks off work for a vacation, often the first question they ask is 鈥淲here are you going?鈥�

I鈥檓 not a big traveller, for a variety of reasons. So the answer for me is usually, 鈥淯m, nowhere?鈥�

Which isn鈥檛 to say I did nothing during my time off.

I went for several satisfying bike rides, until I discovered that my tires, not replaced since the year before the pandemic, were literally disintegrating. Who knew you could ride that far on a tire worn right down to the fabric core?

We had a particularly challenging 1,000 piece puzzle that swallowed the entire kitchen island for a week and a half.  

I finished several novels, including Mick Herron鈥檚 Slow Horses and Colson Whitehead鈥檚 Crook Manifesto. 

As for outings? Well, having reduced my stack of unread novels, I had to hit the local bookstores to buy a couple more, including by Canadian authors 鈥� Premee Mohamed鈥檚 post-apocalyptic We Speak Through the Mountain, and Vancouver-area crime writer Sam Wiebe鈥檚 Ocean Drive. 

We also visited the Vancouver Aquarium for the first time since before the pandemic. I spotted the sloth hanging out on a branch, admired the scarlet ibises and the sun-bathing sea lions, and spent a lot of time peering at the tanks of poisonous tree frogs, all in jewel-tones of blue, yellow, and red.

We went to IKEA to pick up a couple of things (nothing I had to assemble, fortunately) and visited some hobby stores.

I took a series of very satisfying afternoon naps.

That鈥檚 about it. 

I like seeing new places, but just hanging out with my loved ones, talking, reading, and playing board games, is pretty much my ideal time away from work.

Someday maybe I鈥檒l take a vacation that involves a ferry or train trip and a hotel stay. But the last few years have been a bit stressful (you may have noticed this), and between inflation 鈥� and my suspicion that many airplanes are currently held together with baling wire and hope 鈥� a long trip is not in the cards in the near future.

Which is fine.

I am aware that some people enjoy a vacation that packs in a lot. There鈥檚 a certain attraction to seeing as much of a new place as possible.

But there are vacations that are not about seeing and doing. They are about not doing. 

A vacation can purely be about relaxing, which means perhaps a couple of local daytrips, a special meal, firing up the barbecue, or just lying down with a book until you close your eyes and doze off.