If you can answer “yes” to the eternal question, “Are we there yet?” then you probably need a survival manual for the first day of vacation. The 24 hours after you arrive are among the busiest and most stressful — the unpacking and settling in, the arguing, and the inevitable chaos.
It doesn’t have to be. But it took me many, many trips to discover how to make the first day of your vacation as smooth as possible.
I’m not on vacation 300 days a year. But I’m on the road with three teenagers for that amount of time, and we go through many of the same steps that the average family does when they’re away. Arriving at a hotel or vacation rental. Foraging for food. Fighting over what to do with the rest of the first day.
The general problem is nervous energy: Everything’s moving at twice the pace. You’re in unfamiliar surroundings, which heightens your senses. No wonder some people want to turn around and go back home. Hey, it’s stressful.
You know what that’s like, don’t you?
The solution: Plan your arrival time carefully. Hotels, like highways, have rush hours — times of the day when check-in traffic is high. Hint: it’s usually after 3 p.m. I try to aim for the early afternoon, so that even if the room isn’t ready, I can get the hard stuff behind me. Then have the hotel store your luggage, find a good coffee shop, and relax. Let everyone else stand in line.
How about the rest of the chaos? Well, that’s easily dealt with before you arrive. Explain to your kids that hotels like to make extra money by offering overpriced bottled water and other minibar treats. Tell them that the TV remote is coated with germs and that you’d rather sanitize it before use — or better yet, avoid the TV altogether and spend time with your family. After all, isn’t that why you’re on vacation?
Chaos!
Ah, food and travel. I could write an entire book on the subject. Restaurants and hotels want you to eat nothing but comfort food while you’re away. But if you do that, you’ll end your vacation overweight and bankrupt.
You will probably have a food argument shortly after arriving at your destination. To avoid it, plan family meals ahead of time. It’s as easy as saying, “We are having sandwiches for lunch.” My middle son, Iden, is always hopeful that we’ll find our way to that overpriced French restaurant for a five-course meal. Declaring your intentions is a clever way to avoid that predictable argument.
Now what?
If all goes according to plan, part of the first 24 hours of your vacation will be spent, you know, on vacation. That means you and your family can hit the beach, go hiking, or hang out in town — whatever you’re there to do.
Deciding what to do can be a source of conflict.
We do a lot of skiing in my family, but if you arrive at a resort in the early afternoon, do you still hit the slopes? My 14-year-old would always say “yes,” but my other two would prefer to do something else. And they have a valid point. By the time you rent gear, the lifts are about to close.
What is a good idea is renting your gear in the midafternoon, when no one else is at the ski shop, so it’s ready for the next morning.
For beach vacations, the compromise is usually a nice walk along the shoreline after dinner. That assumes, of course, that Dad can finish answering all of the emails that have piled up while we were on the plane.
Again, surviving the first day of vacation means careful planning and then sharing that plan with your party. If you don’t, they’ll all go their separate ways — one will head to the slopes, the other to the pizza joint, and the other to the pool. You’ll wish you’d booked a cruise instead.
The first 24 hours of your vacation doesn’t have to fray your nerves to the point where you need a vacation from your vacation. A little planning and careful communication can avoid the worst of it. For the rest of us travelers, there’s always the spa.
By Christopher Elliott, founder of Elliott Advocacy
