GTKY

[rere]

Since it is vacation season.

1. Favorite vacation ever.

2. Dream vacation for the future.

3. Worst vacation ever.

[kimberlybb]

1.Favorite vacation ever. It is a tie between a trip to Hawaii with DH and a trip to Australia I took with family.

2. Dream vacation for the future. I have so many places I want to go but top of my list would probably be Greece or Iceland.

3. Worst vacation ever. Key West. It would have been a great trip had I not been pregnant, super uncomfortable, and able to drink

[rere]

1. I loved our first couples getaway to Aruba. However for family vacation, we always have the best memories in the Smokey Mountain National Park. We stay away from the bustle of the tourist towns and spend our days in the park wading in the creeks, hiking, picnic lunches in the cove. It's almost like a second home.

2. Girls trip to NYC. Family trip to Italy one day.

3. DH'S family trip to Orange Beach 2 yrs ago. MIL went and drove everyone crazy with asinine questions. Every morning I would get up and try to beat her to the balcony to enjoy my coffe, nope, she's out there smoking, firing off questions at 7 am like a machine gun. BIL finally snapped at her. She decided to tell him exactly what she thought. She pulled SIL hair because she thought she booked a non smoking condo on purpose. All condos are non smoking. My other Bil, kids, and I are staying out on the balcony, but through the window I see Dh leap off the couch, point and start yelling. He has lost his temper maybe a handful of times in 19 yrs I have been with him.Then she takes off and my kids are crying because Grammy is lost.

Even before this fiasco, my SIL pretty much stayed in her room. I think my nephew saw about 40 minutes of the ocean in a week. She leaves her kid with us because they need a night out. She doesn't do one dish or clean anything all week and stays perpetually overwhelmed with life .

By Friday, Dh and I are drinking at 1 on the beach, and he says I want to go home. I dump my beer, and we leave at 9 pm. My MIL asked if she can sleep in my bed, and which one is mine. I yell, it doesn't freaking matter, because we are leaving.

On top of this, there were purple flags all week due to an unprecedented amount of jellyfish.

[twinmomma]

1. Favorite vacation ever: Backpacking Europe with DH. It wasn't luxurious or relaxing, but we made some incredible memories. We hit 10 European cities in 4 weeks and had a blast! And got engaged, so that's a good perk too.
2. Dream vacation for the future: I really want to get to Ireland, it was one place we missed on our trip. I'd also love to bring the kids to Europe at some point. Probably a total pipe dream, but it would be amazing.
3. I'm not sure.... There were definitely parts of our Disney trip that grated on me. Specifically, my BILs and FIL getting wasted until 2 AM the night before we had to leave. Or my BIL throwing a tantrum about how early we had to get up to get to the parks... But overall the trip was a lot of fun. But it would have been better without 10 of us in one house all trying to enjoy ourselves.

[beachbum2]

1. DH and I went to Orlando once a few weeks before H was starting a new job. The fact that he had no email/work calls on the trip made it feel really care free.

2. DH and I really want to go to Antigua and have a private bungalow near the water. We wanted to do it recently but decided to wait until we are done having kids due to Zika concerns.

3. My parents took my me and my sister to Ellensburg, WA when we were both in high school. It was so HOT and there was absolutely nothing to do. My parents wanted to relax at the cabin. My sister and I were ill prepared for relaxing in the desert.

[HeartofCheese]

Favorite: a trip to the FL and the Bahamas with my BFF when we were in our early 20s. Seriously need to do that again.

Dream: So many...another trip to a tropical location with just me and my BFF. Universal Studios with my 2 kids or a water park resort when they're old enough to be on their own. Or possibly a trip to Greece with my mom or solo.

Worst: Our 2016 trip to Virginia Beach - so much work, so much screaming. Or after last year's July 4th trip where DS rubbed urine on my face and clothes during the first 30 minutes of a 4-hour layover. The janitor threw a stack of napkins at me before walking away.

[mellym]

1. Ireland with our best friends - the country was beautiful and our trip was relaxing even though we hiked and saw a lot. Drinking Guinness and Smithwicks in the pubs.

2. Hawaii with DH, National Parks with kids

3. Our vacation to Florida with my inlaws when DD1 was 2. I was pregnant and it was summer in Florida and I couldn't drink to make it more bearable. DH's family do vacations very different - they stay with their relatives at their house and never leave to go do anything. Go grocery shopping every day and it's all about making the meals each day. Sorry, but I want to get out and see stuff and you can't expect us to keep our 2 year old occupied at great grandma's house where there are no toys or anything to do.

[leap]

1. A toss up between our trip to New Zealand and our first trip to Hawaii.

2. So many places. I want to go to Costa Rica and Belize with DH. I want to go to Norway with my mom and sister. I want to do a fun family trip somewhere tropical.

3. I think it was our first family trip to Disney World. DD2 was 13 months and had RSV the week before we went. She was still kind of sick/recovering and was clinging and not sleeping well. The day we left I woke up sick - probably from not sleeping myself and caring for a sick baby. It wasn't a horrible trip. It just wasn't great.

[erinshelley21]

1. Senior year spring break to Orange Beach with my 2 BFF's and when DH and I went to St. Louis for a long weekend when we were dating. We just explored the city, went to a Cardinals game and had no real plans. This is when we were dating and before life got complicated.
2. Europe or Hawaii. With or without the kids, I don't really care.
3. I tagged along to a baseball showcase with my parents and brother to Vero Beach, FL in October one year. The weather was not great and neither was the hotel. My brother and I were going to fly back alone while my parents stayed a bit longer for their anniversary. My grandma called and said the older woman that lived with her and my parents helped take care of was in the hospital and the doctors said she wasn't going to make it. My parents canceled their part of the trip to come home with us. Our rental got a flat tire on the way and my dad ended up having to change it because the repair man couldn't get there before our flight home, which made him grumpy. We get home and the old lady is not dying, nor did the doctors ever say she was. I felt so bad for my parents and honestly think that was the beginning of the end for my parents. Their marriage really went downhill after that because my grandma really started causing problems with my mom and put my dad in the middle.

[Covergirl82]

1. Favorite: Any of our trips to Mackinac Island, it's one of my favorite places (except the one where DH thought it was only 4 miles around, and we walked the whole thing, finding out half way it was really around 8 miles, and DS was 8 weeks old and I was 8 weeks post C-section). The two Spring Breaks we went on with friends to Florida.

2. Dream: Ireland and Hawaii. Someday we will get there!

3. Worst: Our first "camping" trip. We hauled our new-to-us travel trailer up to the Upper Peninsula (Michigan) to visit SIL and her family, and parked it in their yard for a few days. It had high and low bunks, DS being on the higher bunk, and apparently we didn't secure it well enough because he rolled and fell out the second night we were there. About an hour later, he started to vomit, so I called our Pedi's emergency line and they told us to go to the nearest ER to get him checked out for a concussion. (DS had just turned 4.) The town's "hospital" was really like a glorified urgent care (one reason why I will never live in the middle of nowhere), but nothing showed on the CT scan that would prove a concussion. DH talked to one of our good friends who is an Athletic Trainer, and he told us to treat DS like he's in a glass case for a week to make sure it wasn't a concussion, because according to our friend, sometimes concussions don't show up on CT scans. A few days later we went to a hotel with a small indoor waterpark, and DH was distracted for literally 2 seconds while DS was coming down a kiddie water slide, and DS's mouth ran right into his knee and a tooth was knocked out and we never found it). So then I called the dentist to see if we needed to do anything (nothing they could do for a baby tooth except wait for the adult tooth to come in) and then called the Pedi to see if we needed to be concerned about aggravating the possible concussion. And then I was a nervous wreck for weeks because I felt like a terrible mom for not securing DS in the bunk bed properly and for fear of CPS showing up. And I told DH to sell that travel trailer because I would never be able to sleep in it again fearing that one of the kids would fall out of one of the bunk beds again. So we bought a new travel trailer with a bunk house so both kids could sleep on a low bunk. On top of all that, I got to hear from SIL how everything she does is the "right" thing to do (live simply (at that time, although now that her H has a much better job and they've moved to VA, it's ok to have a 3,000 sq ft house in a gated community with a pool), be a SAHM, homeschool, not let her kids watch TV, etc.).

[lizlemon19]

1. Favorite vacation ever.


San Diego as a family
St. Lucia - honeymoon


2. Dream vacation for the future.


France and Italy- as a couple
Hawaii- family




3. Worst vacation ever.


prob tent camping when it rained all weekend- in Mass

[sudokufan]

1. So many, but as an adult - South Haven if the off season with my H, before DS. We stayed at a really nice B&B and totally unplugged. It was lovely.

2. We want to do a River Cruise through Europe.

3. Eh, I've never had a vacation that was a total disaster, but the last part of the one where my brother and I went to King's Dominion and camped in a 3 man dome tent and it rained for 24 hours straight was not so fun. He's over 6' and any time he touched the tent canvas, it let water in. We thought our air mattresses were going to float by morning.

[traveltheworld]

1. Favourite vacations: southern France with DH. We were going through a tough time in our marriage and just finished counselling. I wasn't entirety sure that I wanted to stay married. But the trip reminded me how much I live the guy.

The other one was San Diego with DS when he was 2.5. He was so happy on the trip and did really well. He was a super difficult baby and grumpy toddler who had multiple hours long meltdowns daily, and I was getting seriously concerned. But he was so good on that trip that I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

2. Too many to choose. But a big one would be the Galapagos islands with the kids. I'm already saving up for it.

3. When DS was 1.5, we flew out on Christmas day to Thailand for a relaxing beach vacation. DS threw up right before we left for the airport, but I thought he just overate. Being a first time mom, I didn't pack any medication. By the time we got to the airport, he was already quite warm but because it was Christmas, no pharmacies were opened. We got on the plane and his fever and cough got worst. DH and I took turns bouncing the screaming kid for 13 hours. He didn't sleep a wink. We got off and rushed him to the hospital. He was diagnosed with phenomena and we spent the first week of our vacation in the hospital. Then DH and I both got sick. We hardly saw the country.

[k3am]

1. Our honeymoon in San Jose del Cabo. We've actually repeated the trip, but nothing beats our first time.

2. Greece and/or Ireland. (Bonus: once completed, we can retire the awful travel art DH got me for Mother's Day!) I would also like to repeat our ill-fated Disney trip in February.

3. Disneyland last year. Day one was SOOO crowded I was worried DD would get trampled. We got there at opening and only made it on 4 rides. Pro tip: the week between Christmas and New Years is statistically THE MOST CROWDED of the year. DO NOT MAKE MY MISTAKE. Day 2, we all woke up with horrid colds, DS and I ended up with pink eye and DD ended up with "bad poop." We went for 2 hours before giving up. The drive back took close to 10 hours. It was... awful.

[jlaok]

1. This last February DH and I took a 10-year anniversary trip to NYC. Nothing fancy but it was perfect for us at this stage in our life.

2. I'd love to go to Tahiti

3. We were with friends for a 30th birthday weekend in Vegas when the May 20th 2013 tornado happened in Moore, OK. Most of my friends live in or around there and we had many good friends directly effected. It was so hard to get information, no ones phones were working, we literally didn't know if our friends were alive or if our homes were damaged. A part of me was glad that I wasn't there when it hit because I'm not sure how I would have handled it but I also hated being so far away.

[legomyago]

1. Toss up between London with DH (where we got engaged) and a Caribbean cruise with DH before kids (first vacation where we just relaxed)
2. Lots of vacations and travel on my list: Europe (haven't been but the one time to London), Hawaii, Disney World with kids.
3. I haven't had a really bad vacation, but I would say back in 2001 when my family was returning from a family reunion in MA, the car lost air conditioning and broke down completely in Akron, OH. That night I started getting sick and the day after we got home, I had to go into the hospital for dehydration. Never figured out for sure what I had, but symptoms seemed like E. Coli.

[mommyatty]

1. This year's to Hilton Head was pretty awesome. Lifetime fav is probably the year I learned to surf. I was 7. My surf instructor tried to convince my parents to stay in Hawaii so I could surf competitively. I loved it, and it was the first physical thing I was ever good at.

2. Would love to spend a summer in Australia. It's always seemed like my kind of place.

3. Pretty much any vacation with my mom after my dad died when I was a teen. She got really into wanting me, my brother, my (now ex) SIL, and brother's 4 kids to travel with her. But she's a nervous travelled who becomes a total dictator when she's nervous plus she is the worst planner in the world. So the few trips we took involved my brother being constantly late - like almost missing flights late- my mother freaking out about my brother, my brother and SIL fighting continuously because SIL didn't want to be away from her own mommy (plus brother totally married my mother three times... he needs therapy), and teenaged or early 20s me trying desperately to keep my nephews feeling safe and entertained in the midst of all the adults acting like utter assholes.

After I became a self-supporting adult at 21, I never travelled with my mom again. And I found I actually like traveling.

[justcheckingin73]

1. Favorite vacation was probably our honeymoon to Cancun. I had no kids (DSS was 8) and it was so carefree and relaxing.

2. Dream vacation - there are so many places I haven't been - mostly overseas but I would love to go to Hawaii.

3. Worst vacation was when I was 6 months pg with DS and we had plans to fly to TX on a Saturday to visit my parents for the holidays. We are in the Chicago area and ended up getting hit with a major snowstorm that day. They had not cancelled the flight by the time the taxi got to our house so we headed out and I feared for my life. The taxi driver was driving as if the roads were clear. Not even halfway to the airport, we got word that the flight was cancelled. The worst part is that we couldn't get out until Tuesday. I was emotional enough and bawled almost the whole day - which is very unlike me. I will brood but eventually deal with reality but hormones got the best of me. Because it was the worst vacation ever, the only flight available was a connection which ended up being delayed because of mechanical issues, causing us to miss our connecting flight in Dallas, by only a few minutes. We ended up in DFW for about 9 hours, trying desperately to fly standby and ultimately leaving at 9 pm. We only had about 2 1/2 days by the time we got to parents house.

[xctsclrx]

1. I am hoping it will be the one coming up next month. I don't really have a favorite right now. We go to the beach every couple of years.

2. I want to go to Australia and while there charter a flight to Antarctica. Its going to be expensive though.

3. While I don't have a standout favorite and I also don't have one that stands out as awful either. I went to the beach in 2014 while pregnant and everyone around was drinking and I couldn't. That one was not as fun as it could have been, but wasn't bad.

[olenka]

1. Best - tough call! I went to Belgium with a GF just to drink beer, which was very awesome. Had a really, really cool solo trip to Lithuania and latvia after a biz trip to London. Visiting my boyfriend of the time in London when I was in my early 20s was also really memorable. Going to Amsterdam for a week with another boyfriend, also cool.

2. Dream vacation - hmm, that's tough. Definitely want to go to Scandinavia with my family, also want to go to Poland and Ukraine. And Buenos Aires. And a bunch of other places.

3. Worst - I really can't think of one! I will say that my dad was definitely not a great travel companion in his younger days. So many times I wished that I (or really, he) would get swallowed up by the earth.

[sunbutter]

1. Turks and Caicos with kids. We have been twice and it has been amazing. We rent a private home in a quiet residential area and just do our own thing. Really relaxing. I had an easier time decompressing last year compared to this year but it was still awesome.

2. Croatia or Scotland (coastal areas) with the kids. When they can appreciate it.

3. No complaints. "Vacations" where we visit family for the sake of visiting family at their homes rank at the bottom though.

[186momx]

1. My first and so far only trip to Disney World at 16. This was the first time in my life that we did something other than visit relatives on vacation.

2. New Zealand would be wish list. Actually any vacation where we could just go someplace warm and can just R&R without having to be constantly on the go. DH can't just sit and chill.

3. That trip at 16 we drove straight through from Oregon to Indian 36 hours staying and visited relatives for 2 days then drove into Chicago to fly to Disney for 4 days then flew back to Chicago drove back to Indiana visited relatives for another 4 days before driving straight back to Oregon but my mom got a UTI in the middle of nowhere Nebraska so we had to stop overnight. I got left in charge of my siblings in this really yucky motel while dad took mom to the "ER" then the rest of the drive home was miserable as she had to pee every 5 minutes.

My other really miserable trip was the weekend H and I got married we went to this archery shoot that he just couldn't miss and I tromped around the woods got eaten alive by mosquitoes and his parents joined us to critic and give there not needed 2 cents. Lets say I remember it but not for the wine, candles and romance because there wasn't any and the fanciest thing I ate all weekend was DQ.

[sandandsea]

1. We have had a lot of greats but Bora bora honeymoon is still tops.

2. African safari

3. A week at Sandals in Jamaica. The quality and service were bad and we had a bad experience at Dunn river falls where a salesperson accosted us and wouldn't leave us alone (followed us to our car!) after we said no multiple times very firmly.

[mustardseed2007]

Since it is vacation season. be

1. Favorite vacation ever.
Probably when we took both kids to disney for the first time. They had so much fun and so did we.
Also, our honey moon to san francisco and sonoma was awesome. Although New York was also awesome.

2. Dream vacation for the future.
London and Paris.

3. Worst vacation ever.

The Florida vow renewal of DH's brother and SIL that started with a 12 hour drive, during which we got into a car accident, ended with SIL screaming at DH's brother from a hotel balcony - from the room that she was sharing with us and DH's whole family, including her children - that she wanted a divorce. They did make up the next day so I guess it's all cool now.

Read more: pandce.proboards.com/thread/581090/gtky#ixzz4nCouLDkw

[campermom]

1. Favorite vacation ever. Before we had kids we took a trip to the Big Island and Kauai. I will never ever forget an impromptu stroll my H and I took and saw a sign for Mai tais. We looked at each other and both said, "Hm. Ever had one?" And got them with sushi on a rooftop and the sun shone down and dolphins started jumping down below. It was the most relaxing feeling I've ever had! No obligations!

2. Dream vacation for the future. Fiji in one of those little huts!

3. Worst vacation ever.
When I was little we used to drive to a ski resort every year in Quebec. One year we got all the way there, and it was too warm. We had no snow, the weather continued to get warmer and we turned around and came home. 10 more hours with my sisters in the backseat of the Oldsmobile.

[ilovelucyvv]

1. One of the times we've been to Cacun, but I can't pick one.

2. Looking forward to our Disney cruise next year, but i'd love to go to Alaska and Hawaii someday too.

3. Last year's vacation because my ILs were there, they were ungrateful, and
my nephew broke H's phone without remorse... I cried my eyes out because H never backed up pics and movies from the kids when they were babies

[supertrooper1]

beachbum2, I had to laugh about your parents taking you to Ellensburg. We didn't travel as a kid, but once a year before school started, we would go to Ellensburg for two nights. It usually involved looking at hay for the farm and swimming in the motel pool. But you're right, there is nothing in Ellensburg. It's where everyone stops to pee and get gas once they're over the pass.

[supertrooper1]

1. April's trip to Maui because it was so relaxing and DS had a great time. Or DH and my trip 10 years ago to Puerto Rico. That was our first big trip together.

2. Australia or Fiji.

3. Our honeymoon to Marco Island, FL. It wasn't disastrous, just disappointing. We felt like we had to pick a beach location because that is a honeymoon norm. We should have picked Hawaii. We had flight cancellations due to weather, thunderstorms and rain all week, crappy food and were bored because we couldn't go to the beach.

[pengy86]

1. Alaska land/ sea cruise tour
2. European vacation. I would like to see England, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, etc.
3. I don't know if it really counts but I went to a church summer camp one year as a kid and it was a miserable experience. I had gone to that camp in previous years and enjoyed it but the last year I went was a bad experience. I was going through my early teen rebellion that summer so that probably didn't help. A few of the girls in my cabin were children of the camp directors so they had my free time taken away because I wasn't part of their crew.

[billie]

OMG traveltheworld I think you win worst vacation story