We’re a couple of digital nomads. I’m a writer and my wife is a photographer. In many fields we’re complementary and have a lot of common interests. We are both travelers since twenty years and like what we’re doing. Sometimes we joked that going home for a couple of weeks every year was our way of making holidays.

Only it was never a real holiday when we returned home after a year of traveling. Practical issues had to be taken care of; the house had to be cleaned from top to bottom, insurances checked, tax declarations filled in, passports prolonged, arrangements made for our aging parents (complicated issue since they live in different countries) … the list is almost endless. We were always most happy when we could resume our nomadic lifestyle.

Until recently we wanted to celebrate our twenty years as a couple and my wife sighed, “We’ve never got a real honeymoon”. At first I was a little astonished, because we’re doing nothing else than traveling. So I asked her what she meant. She explained me that she would like to go for a week to a small town in Greece and just spoil ourselves.

Chania 3

So we booked a five days holiday in Chania (Crete) in an Airbnb that costed 100 euro/ day. We left our computers at home (although my wife cheated because she was taking pictures with her Smartphone), went every day to the beach to swim and lay in the sun, walked afterwards lazily a little through the small alleys of Chania’s old town till dinner time, went every day for some opulent dinner in a different restaurant, for a drink afterwards on a nice terrace and then returned to our little apartment for some fun and sleep.

Chania 4

After 3 or 4 days she started to pat her belly and her ass, while complaining that her system wasn’t keeping up with this decadent lifestyle. I said encouraging; only 1 or 2 days more to play the tourist.

By a stroke of (bad?) luck, we got on our return flight upgraded to business class, because we’re frequent flyers and the airplane was overbooked. It was a red eye flight and around 11 pm they served us with a 3 course dinner accompanied with all the wines and spirits you wanted. My wife had already snacked extensively in the business lounge before the flight and moaned. I had smartly only got a couple of beers.

We were both glad the holidays were over and could fall back our regular pattern; fly, visit interesting places and people, work, cook by ourselves, drink two beers before dinner, …

Not sure if or when we’re going to take holidays again.

Published by Shaharee

Shaharee Vyaas is a polyvalent cryptomathician. As such he likes to hover above the demarcation zone between Science, Art, and Religion. Where most philosophers perceive the language as the limit of our knowledge, the cryptomathic method crosses the language barriers and stipulates that the unspeakable can be expressed in paintings, music or mathematical equations.

12 thoughts on “My first five days of holidays in 20 years.”

  1. Isn’t that crazy? I know how you feel. After a certain amount of vacation time, sometimes it’s more relaxing to get back to your routine – however elaborate that may be. Excellent post… very thought provoking.

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    1. Yeah, I agree, we’re also cool with our lifestyle.
      The intended purpose of our vacation was to get away from day-to-day chores and to devote some time specifically for relaxation and unity. It was boring.
      So is home sweet home. Our house is more an occasional anchor place, like the home-port of a merchant vessel; useful for social security and taxation purposes, identification, and all the other red tape you need to travel.
      Historically, the concept of vacation was introduced at the courts and universities by William the Conqueror from Normandy. People were allowed to vacate their working or study place to facilitate the grape harvest.

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    1. Don’t think we’re ever going to take vacations again. It was a source of boredom and in the end also stress. That said, I have understanding for people who need to unwind for a couple of weeks a year to cope with the day to day rat race. It’s just that we give shape to our daily lives by following our own agendas and interests. We don’t need any vacation from that.

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      2. It’s not a traditional stay-cation since it involves lots of traveling. But in another sense it is, because we’ve established homes at the places we’re frequenting very often. We can afford it because we bought a string of really small cheap houses instead of one big mansion, and we rent our places through a local manager when we’re not using them .

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