My husband and I have never taken a vacation after ten years of knowing each other and eight of marriage.
Oh, we’ve done little day trips and we take time off, but generally, we stay at home. Even our honeymoon was just a few days in a local hotel. We both just wanted to be home so badly and finally live together (I’m old fashioned, sue me).
A few things to know:
We have no children and no desire to be around children
I absolutely cannot handle extended times around crowds
Neither of us drink or care about the nightlife
We prefer learning things when we go out, or seeing performances in the arts
I don’t care about shopping that much
We are food wusses
The idea of going on rides terrifies me
I would only camp in a cabin
Is there any vacation idea you can think of, or has our plan until now been the right one? Just stay at home and relax on our days off. I like travel, as long as it’s done in a way where I have no itinerary and I can escape back to a room, if necessary.
I know, I know. We’re boring, but it doesn’t mean there aren’t new places in the world that might be friendly to us, right?
Museum and historical site tours might be your best bet. If you go when schools are out, you’ll avoid a lot of the children and it would seem to fit the rest of your criteria.
If you don’t like traveling, don’t underrate the attractions of spending time off at home. Just because other people like to get away, that doesn’t mean you have to.
I don’t know where you live, but there are a lot of places you can learn things in most cities. Natural history or science museums are a great place to start, and they often have theaters showing science-themed films. For instance, this is the natural history museum in my city.
You might think about whether there’s a city you’ve always wanted to see and then search for attractions that appeal to you there. For instance, my family had a great time in Chicago going to the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry. Now, the problem with places like that will be the crowds. They’re popular spots, especially in the summer, and there will be a lot of people there. If you’d like to avoid popular places, you can seek out smaller, more quirky places, like Museum of Surgical Science. These are just some suggestions - you know the general area where you’d like to travel and what specific things you’re interested in. If you start with a geographical area and then do a search for a subject you’re interested in, you should be able to find fun activities (almost) anywhere.
Also, once you’ve chosen a spot, Dopers are an excellent source of suggestions you might not find through more conventional means.
Scientific American runs cruises in the Mediterranean with seemingly pretty interesting lectures on Cosmology, Quantum Physics etc, with a visit to CERN thrown in. I want to go. Wife resists.
You do sound quite boring with all due respect but your choices are still endless. My first thought is Washington D.C. during the off-peak season. It is a big city disguised as a small town and there is an endless amount of stuff to do much of which is free. The Smithsonian museums alone make it worth it (there are many and you can’t even hope to see 1% of their collections even in a week). Combine that with some other attractions like the Capitol building and the National Archives plus plenty more and there is plenty of stuff there to keep you occupied indefinitely.
Crowds are seasonal so pick a time when there aren’t many people there like between Thanksgiving and Christmas if you want the place to yourself (that time-frame applies to lots of places). I am introverted too and D.C. is one of my favorite cities. If you want to go all out, combine that with a stay in Virginia to see Monticello, Charlottesville and natural attractions like caverns in that area. It is beautiful.
If you are true nerds, come to Silicon Valley. You can visit the Tech Museum, the Intel Museum, see the original HP garage, and drive past Google and Facebook. Drive down 101 where the billboards advertise stuff 80% of people know nothing about. And you can visit San Francisco too.
Cruises are another alternative. We went to the Hermitage on our recent cruise around the Baltic, and cruises around the Mediterranean stop at lots of interesting places. Very few kids, no more night life than you need, and not beach oriented.
I second Washington DC. When I used to go to a conference there I stayed another day to do various Smithsonian museums. And New York has tons.
Cruising (Get a decent room and you can relax in it quite a bit. Certain cruise lines have low percentages of children as passengers, you can eat whatever you want… even “boring” food, there are performances on most ships, etc.)
Wilderness Lodges (Not crowded, nice views, can get outside and take short walks/hikes with lots of space, perhaps some type of educational nature hikes are offered.)
Hawaii (Very easy to relax in Hawaii. Can find good deals on rental villas and spend lots of time enjoying the beaches. Oahu has the Polynesian Cultural Center, Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantation, etc. that you can do on your own time if you rent a car.)
How about Yellowstone Park? You don’t have to camp in a tent to stay there–there are cabins and hotels. Summer is more crowded than spring or fall, but this is Wyoming, so to anyone from a large city, it’s probably not going to seem bad at all. Sometimes there’s a lot of traffic, especially if there is an animal to see (“bear jam”). If you go right after Labor Day, the weather should still be good, the kids are all in school, and there will be hardly anyone there at all.
The scenery is amazing. Geysers, hot springs, all kinds of animals–if you have an interest in geology or biology, you’ll be in heaven.
Heh–that was exactly what I was going to suggest! Stay in a cabin, avoid crowds in the off-season, and learn all kinds of amazing things about the planet.
We need to have a nerd village vacation area. A place where nerds can go and show and tell and mingle with like minded nerds. Amatuer stage productions, science or historical projects etc. Why don’t the nerds of the world get together and make a place like this happen?
Second Chicago and D.C. Also want to suggest London for the following reasons:
Tower of London
British Museum (more archaeological exhibits than you can possibly stand)
British Library (exhibits from a Magna Carta original to 1st Ed Canterbury Tales to da Vinci notebooks to Beatles lyrics as originally scratched out in pencil by members of the group)
Natural History Museum
Walking tours that uncovers the history of everything around you
Westminster (Big Ben/Parliament, Westminster Cathedral, National Gallery, etc.)
Hot spot for plays and musicals
Etc.
I’ve had the idea for a while to start a website for travel info for geeky/techy tourists. It seems like all the guide books and such always focus on the art museums, gardens, and that type of thing. But I’ve really enjoyed the science museums and architecture in some of the cities I’ve visited.
If you do go to D.C., put the Library of Congress on your list of places to see.
You might consider Munich; home of the Deutches Museum, which is sort of a German Smithsonian. Berlin has a bit of a geeky vibe; I enjoyed the natural history museum and it’s rich in very recent (i.e. my lifetime) history. Vienna and Prague are possibilities, too.
Some sense of budget would help. It would also help to know if this is a “We haven’t been on vacation in ten years, we probably won’t do it again, so this needs to be the Ultimate Trip”, or is it more like “We want to start taking trips every couple of years, and are looking for a list of places we might go” or “We are hoping to find a semi-stable vacation spot that can be our “thing” every year”.
In my experience, if Mickey doesn’t greet you as you board, you are okay about kids. I’ve been on five, all to interesting places, and very few kids on any of them. Most seem to be associated with family reunion cruises, and keep out of everyone’s hair pretty well.
