My Favorite thing about vacations is the vacation. My least favorite part about a vacation is the end of the vacation. And over the years I've found a way that it extends the feeling for me before and after the trip.
I love the planning phase of the trip so much that I've been defaulted the trip planner, even when I just want to tag along. This often starts about 12-18 months before the trip so that in my head the structure of the vacation is ideal mix of excitement, relaxation, and surprises. We recently spent two weeks in Spain, the actual trip planning took place in early 2024.
Once we settled on Spain being the summer 2025 destination the planning started. It started with researching the obvious cities, attractions, etc. This part of the plan is the most obvious to all. Then I started looking at travel bloggers, and fiction authors. The reason for the fiction authors is that it gives a unique color to the city of choice. Pieces of ficiton are obviously not realistic however the color and detail a good author can provide is priceless. My choice for Spain was Dan Brown and his book Origins.
In Origins, the protagonist Robert Langdon is thrust into Spain into an AI fueled quest that spanned across various cities in Spain. And that is where the blueprint for my trip came from. Primarily set in Montserrat, Bilbao, Madrid, and Barcelona the book gave me ideas beyond what I could have found from endless Youtube videos and travel bloggers. Not that I'm against travel bloggers, but they aren't a professional writer like Dan Brown who can paint a picture so vivid, and invoke feelings to buildings, cafes, and monasteries. Reading Origins gave me just that "a pre-vacation" before the actual trip.
This second part of the trip where the homework is done allows me total freedom to be in the moment during the trip. My family might argue with this as I'm a stricler for morning activities, but for me knocking out the major things early allows compelete freedom to be a rambler in the city all afternoon, evening, and night.
While i do enjoy a tour guide, I almost prefer the Dan Brown fictional element. Even though the tour guide is explaining the intricacies of Antoni Gaudi's architecture. I am enjoying Casa Mila (La Pedrera) from Dan Brown's perspective as they go through the hallways, attic, and rooftop. This is like I'm having two versions of the same trip. There is the tour guide version of how Gaudi was inspired by sea creatures, but also loving how Robert Langdon is using the clues to search for his quest. Now multiply this feeling across the various cities, and I'm having a vacation inside a vaction.
Ending a vacation and thinking about getting back into the routine of work, emails, teams meetings, stand ups, and jira tickets is a buzz-kill.
The final part of me extending the vacation feeling is the tedious element fo going through all of the photoes from the various cameras, phone, goPro, insta, etc. This is tedious of de-duping, organizing, creating favorites, and cleaning up. Even though this is time consuming, it brings up all the similar feelings of satisfaction and content like I was on vacation. Probably as my brain is replaying everything from the vacation. This is like the third time i'm living the same vacation.
The bonus one after this is when I get a physical album print of the favorite photos that I've painstakingly curated. Sharing the album with family brings a different level of satisfaction than just sharing a google photo album or photos album link.