Importance of Weekend Getaways

TTT Weekend Getaways
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Meggan: Hey everyone, and welcome back to Travel Tip Tuesday with the Travel Mug Podcast. I am Meggan. Joined as always by Jenn. How are you doing today friend?

Jenn: I am doing well, we are steamrolling into the holiday season here and it is coming up fast.

Meggan: Oh my goodness, is it ever? I can't believe it's like mid November ish. It's mind boggling.

Jenn: Yes.

Meggan: Well this week I want to take just a few minutes and talk about what I see as the importance of weekend getaways, if they are in your budget. So to paint a picture, most of us, a sad photo, um, most of us usually get two to four weeks of vacation time per year. Some more. Some less, but that is your typical average of the North American worker. We see you Europeans out there with your six weeks, and yes, we're jealous. So I'm going to talk about those a bit more vacation strapped than maybe the Europeans.

So everyone does something a little bit different with this time, whether it's staycations or using a few days here and there.

Some people break it up into one to three week chunks and plan bigger trips. No matter how you slice it, that's not a lot of time compared to how much we work, which again, I don't really want to think too hard about, or I will be depressed. So let's move on. Now having said all this, this is why I think it, if it is possible, for you to incorporate a weekend getaway or two into your year. Typically for weekend getaways, you don't go far. You won't have to use vacation time. Yet it provides you with a wee getaway from your typical weekend. Now we all have different responsibilities and weekends are often used for errands or laundry or groceries with a little bit of fun, hopefully built in, but it is really nice to break that up with an entire weekend away eating different food, seeing different things, even if it's just just staring at different walls and staying in different places, it can be a really good reset for your mind and it can feel like a mini vacation. We were just away for three nights, so Friday through to Monday, and we were both like amazed at how big of a difference it made for us and it felt longer than it actually was. Life can get mundane and ordinary. And honestly, a lot of time that's okay. Like that is You know, life is like that, but if you are able to mix in a few small getaways here and there, those can help re energize you, plus it gives you something to look forward to and to plan for. So we love weekend getaways and usually try to do one to two per season if possible, which also means a lot of advanced planning to get the kind of places that we like. We often book weekend getaways for summer and fall in early winter or spring prior. Early bird gets the good locations. Everyone's always like, how do you guys find such nice places to stay? Well, we think about it like six months in advance, and we're like beating out all the other people because we're just trying to like, Get something on our calendar in the dead of winter to live for. Um, so Jenn, like, what are your thoughts on weekend getaways? Is this something you guys try to do, don't do enough? What are your, what are your feelings?

Jenn: so it's not something we've done a ton of, to be honest, and part of that is we do have four animals, so , we have to find someone to look after them, and that is, um, you know, costly if we're hiring someone to come stay at our house, which is usually what we do. Uh, however, we did a weekend getaway over, our Thanksgiving in October to PEI and it was so nice and it's something that I definitely do want to do more of. And now that I am an employee instead of, um, you know, I was self employed for my entire adult life up until spring 2024 when I took an employee position. And now I'm a lot more limited in my time off.

So I need to plan a lot more carefully. So definitely something that I hope to do more of in 2025. Um, just, just to get away. Yeah.

Meggan: Yeah, just to break it up. We gotta do something. Well, that is it for this week's Travel Tip Tuesday. Let us know what you think about the importance of weekend getaways or if you feel like your life is just fine without them. That's cool too. Either way, we would love to hear from you. You can find us on social media at travelmugpodcast, um, at our website, travelmugpodcast. com. And we would love it if you share the show with a travel loving pal. We'd love to continue to grow our audience, but until next time, either way safe travels and bye.

Jenn: Bye!