Coolangatta, Australia - Part One of our trip

I made a video of our fun in Coolangatta. I still have a lot of photos on my old phone from diving and whatnot, so I think I will be making four or five videos from our trip.

This video is mostly from all of our fun with Aunt Nancy and Uncle Darryl, in Coolangatta -- then at the end is from our last night having dinner at their house in Surfers Paradise.

Hope you enjoy!

P.S. I also made an update to my Traveling with Tots post with new travel suggestions!

The problem with planning group vacations

At the beginning of the year, I was at Harry’s with my girlfriends sipping cocktails and having a great time. Since Australia was looming on the horizon, we were talking about vacations and wouldn’t it be fun if we could all go somewhere together!?

I have that timeshare in the Dominican Republic.

We all squealed with excitement. Let’s do it! December!

In the following weeks, lists were made. There had to be the perfect mix of people… we wanted no-drama, fun people. Folks were blacklisted. If you fought publicly with your boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse, you were out. Like a wedding, there were more friends we wanted to invite than we could accommodate. Even worse, we had to divide the list between us – Jay and I could only invite at most 5 people each. So we narrowed the list to those most likely to say yes. For me, that ended up being only the girlfriends (and their intended guests) present at Harry’s.

I made arrangements with a Shareholder Lifestyle Vacation Club friend to use one of her weeks to get a better deal (saving $180 a person on the all-inclusive fee). The $1200 all-inclusive price (including airfare) made this trip a no-brainer. Cheaper than a week in Ocean City. Seriously, who could say no?

After careful planning, an email was sent to the chosen few.

There was a lot of initial enthusiasm with the first responses.

Can’t wait!

The wheels fell off the cart a few weeks ago. People who had given us verbal confirmations were now turning down the invitation. Initially, we weren’t concerned… there were others that we’d love to have. But those were also the folks we thought wouldn’t be able to make it for one reason or another.

I think - Maybe we’ll cancel it altogether, save our vacation time and go somewhere we really want to go next year, like Europe. Or maybe get back to Australia to see Nancy and Darryl. Get to see Uluru and maybe even Perth.

Then our friends found a good airfare. They asked me if it was still happening. We had six people (us, the other couple and two of my girlfriends) at that point, so I said go ahead and book it.

Four days later, I got an email from my girlfriends. They were really sorry, but they had an awesome opportunity come up for another vacation in September. Basically the kind of thing that was much more exciting than the Dominican Republic. 

Having done much of the planning with them, I was majorly bummed. However, my husband was seriously pissed off. This was their idea to begin with! 

Then there was a message from an invited couple who weren't able to make it because of a new job. They had a suggestion:  Ryan and Kristy LOVE to travel! We mentioned it to them and they would be interested.

Umm, okay but we didn’t invite them. They’re a lot of fun, but I’ve only hung out with them a handful of times. And of course we’re friends on Facebook. Could they be a secret disaster on vacation? Hopefully not. I sent Kristy a message on Facebook about the trip.

Count us in, this place looks amazing.

And then…

Please let me know when you guys get the airfare, I am not an experienced traveler. This would be my first trip out of the US. Thanks.

I know that I’m a travel snob. Especially compared to most Americans. I acknowledge this. But how can someone say that they love to travel when they’ve never been out of the good old USA?

Anyone want to go to Puerto Plata December 7^th-14^th? (I'm serious, we need at least two more people or it will be an extra $67 a person)

We'll save you a drink!

Or will we? 

Australian Itinerary

Last weekend, Jay and I spent our first free weekend in four months planning our trip to Australia. We also spent a ridiculous amount of time vegetating in front of the TV, but I think we deserved it.

I wish that we were able to leave on May 10^th as we had originally planned, but our friends are getting married that day. I guess that I should be thankful that they’re getting married on Friday instead of Saturday. So now we get one less day in Australia and one more day in New Jersey. Not a great trade-off, but we do love Rick and Morgan.

So we will leave NJ/MD sometime Saturday morning (probably with quite the case of the wine flu) and head to Los Angeles for the day. Flights to Australia don’t leave until after 9pm, so we’ll have the better part of the day to explore the city and tire ourselves out. We’ll be in for 20 hours of air travel (after the flight to LAX), so hopefully we can get some sort of sleep on the plane. Ambien will be my friend.

We will arrive in Brisbane at 11 a.m. (Oz time) on the 13^th, which is 15 hours ahead of EST. Let’s hope that I adjust quickly, because we’re going to hit the ground running. 

Our first day depends on my Aunt Nancy. I originally planned to get a hotel in Brisbane the first night so that we could acclimate to the time difference and visit Koala Pine Sanctuary to snuggle a koala. Now I’m thinking that to maximize time with my aunt, I’ll ask if she’d be up for picking us up at the airport and check out the sanctuary with us. After the sanctuary (or the next day), we will travel an hour south to SurfersParadise and Coolangatta.

We will spend the 13^th-19^th hanging out with my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Darryl in Coolangatta and Surfer’s Paradise. I’m really looking forward to it, as it has been ages since I’ve seen them – probably six years and they have never met my husband. It’s going to be a blast… I can see us getting into all sorts of trouble. So those six days will be spent eating, drinking and making merry. While we’re there, we’ll probably go to another critter sanctuary and whatever touristy thing Nancy suggests. I haven’t done much research into those places.

On Saturday the 19^th, we will depart Surfer’s Paradise for another paradise 1200 kilometers north. We’ll fly to Airlie Beach, which is the gateway to the Whitsunday Islands. 

Why the Whitsunday Islands? THIS is why.....................

We’ve decided to book the Whitsunday Blue  for a 2 day, 2 night sailing adventure. From what I’ve read, a live-aboard boat is the best way to see the Whitsunday Islands. The Whitsunday Blue is a catamaran, which makes for a little less seasickness. This boat also has private cabins with bathrooms, which is pretty much unheard of for most live-aboards. It only takes 8 guests, so hopefully they'll be cool. We get along with most people, so I'm not too worried. We’ll be leaving on our adventure on Monday the 20^th and will return to Airlie Beach on Wednesday the 22^nd. 

No time to rest when we return to Airlie Beach on Wednesday! There are only 3 full days left of our trip and we need to make the most of our remaining time. We will be hopping in a rental car and driving towards Dimbulah, Queensland  (700-ish kilometers from Airlie Beach). 

Chances are high that we won’t make it all the way there and will have to rest for the night. This portion of our trip will be our Outbackish portion. Our final destination is not Dimbulah, but Almaden. 

Or maybe Tyrconnell. We’re not sure.  We're kind of winging this part of the trip. Hopefully there will be no international incidents. No tractors or kangaroos crossing our path. That kind of thing. I'd like to think that we learned our lesson after that tractor mishap in Ireland. 

Once we’ve tired of small town life, we will be on the road to Cairns, our final destination in Australia. We may book a reef trip while we’re there. This one  looks promising. They even have an introductory scuba, which I'd like to try.

We will be departing Cairns for Auckland, New Zealand on Sunday, the 26^th. New Zealand remains to be planned, but we know for sure that we’ll be visiting Hobbiton and Waitomo Caves. 

More on New Zealand once we figure out everything we’re doing. Previously, I said that we were going to hike Mount Doom. However, it will depend on the weather and if we’re feeling up to it. I don’t know how much strenuous activity we are going to feel up to. It is vacation after all! 

Diet update coming soon – stay tuned!

Is it me, or do Americans hold no value for vacation?

What is wrong with more than half of my fellow Americans?

According to a study performed by Harris Interactive, “About 57% of working Americans had unused vacation time at the end of 2011, and most of them left an average of 11 days on the table - or nearly 70 percent of their allotted time off.”

Seriously? Are we so narcissistic that we believe we’re too important to take time off? Do we honestly think that our employers would fall apart without us there?

At my previous employer, when someone responsible for something important (let's call her "Jane") was out sick or on vacation, my boss would say, “If Jane dropped dead tomorrow, who would I call?”  Unfortunately, that saying turned out to be a little too close for comfort one day, as the head of one of our banking units was involved in a horrific accident and passed away. She’d been with the company for over 20 years and was my go-to gal for many questions. Everyone relied on her. Her loss was a huge blow to the organization, but it turned out that my boss was right. Despite the devastating loss, business somehow kept on moving forward.

Remember this story - it's all going to tie together, I swear.

My nickname at the bank was "OB" - short for Office B*tch. If all of the admin staff decided to be sick, go on vacation, couldn’t make it through the snow, or needed a mental health day, I was there to pick up the slack. At one time or another, I’d had pretty much every administrative job there (we grew from 5 people to about 35 in my 7 years there), so I did it all. I trained every single administrative person who began working there after me. You know what? When I gave notice at my old job earlier this year, the world kept turning. Somehow things still got done. The bank didn't implode (depending on who you ask). I’d like to believe that they built a shrine to my awesomeness in my old cube… but somehow, I doubt it.

The one thing that I’ve had difficulty adjusting to with my new job has been the time off – or should I say, the lack thereof. I know that banking is an industry whose benefits typically include more holidays and vacation time, so perhaps it’s unfair to compare the medical field to banking. Now I get awesome medical benefits and mediocre time off. At my previous employer, I received 20 vacation days (available on the first of the year) along with 11 paid holidays. Here, I accrue time at the blinding speed of .538 days per pay period (26 pays in a year, which equals 14 days) and have 7 paid holidays. I lost 10 days off by taking this job. 

Granted, I should probably also mention that when I first started at my old job, I only received 15 vacation days, and at the time we were owned by a different bank, so we only had 7 paid holidays (the same I have now). Once I’ve been here for 5 years, my time accrued will go up.

And yes, once I factor in the time that I’m saving with my decreased commute, getting 2 hours of driving time back every day, I’m actually gaining nearly 20 full days (that’s 24 hour days, not 8 hour work days) of my life back each year. I guess looking at it that way, I shouldn’t be complaining.

My whole reason for making this post (okay, I'm whining a little)– is that I’ve been trying to go to Australia for several years now. One thing or another has always held this trip up, and I am determined to make it next year, come hell or high water. I knew when I took this job that I would have fewer vacation days, however, I wasn’t expecting a trip like this to be a problem given plenty of advance notice and the willingness to take unpaid time.

Let’s just say that I’m very glad that I asked about it early. Yesterday I sent an email to my supervisors at the Mothership, copying my boss here. I said that I wanted to take 3 weeks off, possibly with one of them unpaid (if I hadn’t accrued enough vacation time). Their reply was that they had to look into it, and that no administrative staff member had ever asked for three weeks off and that it would have to be discussed with senior management. I was totally taken aback! The only thing I read in the handbook regarding time off was that you were unable to take 5 days of leave in a row until you’d been working for 6 months. By then, I will have been with the group for a little over a year. Yes, a three week vacation is a long time, but administrative staff members have gone out on maternity leave, haven’t they? If I (God forbid) got pregnant now, I would be having a baby at about the same time I’m requesting the time off.

My local boss replied to my email that he was perfectly fine with me taking off (I even offered to let them select which weeks I’d be gone). They said that they’d take his input to the higher ups.

So what exactly is the problem? Do they think I'm lazy because I want to take vacation time instead of leaving it to roll over unused? Do they think that my job is far too important for me to leave it for so long? Do they think that because they would never consider taking a trip like this, that no one else is entitled to do so? Do they think that only physicians should be able to take a three week trip, while lowly administrative types toil away in front of our computer screens and dream about an exotic getaway?

Or maybe the horror is that I would *gasp* take a week off unpaid. I'm thinking that this is in all likelihood half of the problem.


 This story confirms some of my beliefs about American attitudes

Why do Americans work so hard? In the eyes of Rita Gorby, a visiting Irishwoman, it’s all about “the almighty dollar.”
Even some Americans agreed. “We’re a very materialistic society,” says Brad Johnston, a salesman for a tech start-up. “We find happiness in wealth.”

Sure, it’s nice to have money. According to a study cited by this Time Article, Money can buy happiness:

According to a new study from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School, it sort of does — up to about $75,000 a year. The lower a person's annual income falls below that benchmark, the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don't report any greater degree of happiness.

Maybe making $75,000 a year buys happiness. It sure makes living much more comfortable! So I suppose that according to this study, money can buy happiness.

However – you can’t take it with you. 

I went through a phase where I bought an insane number of Coach purses and even some expensive jewelry. After a few years, I realized that none of those things made me happy. When I looked at my life, the happiest I'd been was when I was with friends and family who I enjoyed spending time with. My dad wasn't big on traveling and we didn't have much money, but we enjoyed many camping trips together. I enjoyed the adventures of traveling in France with my aunt Nancy and uncle Darryl. I'll never forget the day I got lost in Paris and wandered the streets for hours looking for my hotel.Or the day that Jay and I were engaged, tractor accident and all. Hanging out with Jay and Colleen at Greens Pub in Kinvara with the locals we met at the  Dunguaire Castle Banquet. Nights out in Key West and Orlando with my girlfriends at Tu Tu Tango and the Cricketer's Arm. Friends that Jay and I met in the Dominican Republic, smoking at a hookah lounge. The hike up Thunderbird Mountain to watch the Lunar Eclipse in Arizona. Ghost hunting on Rose Island in Rhode Island, where we had to take a ferry several miles across a foggy harbor into the Narragansett Bay.

These are the things that I'll remember for a lifetime.

I recently read Josh Gates's book, Destination Truth: Memoirs of a Monster Hunter, and it really made me want to get out and travel more. It's not just the destination - it's the journey. Sometimes the journey takes you on a train meandering through the French countryside and sometimes you end up colliding with a tractor. What you walk away with is an experience uniquely yours. I was horrified when I read that only 10% of Americans have passports. While Googling for this blog post, I found that the number is now at an all-time high - one third of all Americans now have passports. This number is still astonishingly low to me when compared to most other countries in the world. Sure, the U.S. is big... but, it's the U.S. Do me a favor, fellow Americans - go SEE other countries. You may think that we're the center of the universe here, but trust me, we're not. Get your passport and go see the world. Provided, of course, that your employer actually allows you to take your vacation.

According to an article referenced earlier in my post:

The accounting firm Ernst & Young has found that people are actually more productive if they get more time off. That made sense to a lot of the people we talked to. “When you work all day you have family issues, household issues,” says Audrey Harrington, an administrative assistant. “You’re running around all day. We’re busier than we ever have been before. If people have more time to pay their bills, do their food shopping, take their kids to sporting events, they will be more productive.”

Americans put in more hours than any other workers in the industrialized world, even more than the hard-working Japanese, who get around 25 days of paid vacation. 

According to most sources that I've read, Germans get six weeks of paid time off.

Think that all of that time off makes the Germans lazy?

Germany is the eighth most productive country in the OECD (as defined by gross domestic product divided by the number of workers), while Greece is the 24th. But taking time off also doesn't make that much of difference in the overall picture. Employees usually end up paying for their time off because employers factor the cost of that lost productivity into a pay package. (That's one reason why Europeans earn less than Americans on average per year, even if the pay per hour is the same.) Then there's the growing body of research showing that time off can actually help workers get more done. A 2009 study in Harvard Business Review, for example, showed that requiring business consultants to take time off every week actually boosted their productivity.

I wish that the U.S. would get with the times and put some paid time off rules in place. I think that we would all be happier and healthier for it. I know that I would.

So the moral of the story is... all you have in life are your experiences. No one can take those away from you. Do what makes you happy, whether it's taking vacations or spending time with friends. You can't replace time with your family or friends with money or objects. 

I'm hoping that the higher-ups at work are travel lovers who will understand. If not, I suppose that I'll have to take whatever time they allow me for my trip, but I sure as hell won't be happy about it.