Do you vacation/ travel around a "theme"?
 

My excitement around my upcoming trip that includes xc skiing has me looking at Road Scholar trips. (A friend wants me to join her on a Road Scholar trip and this may be a way to choose one to take).
For years, my ex and I planned vacations around snorkeling and our carryon bag was a snorkel bag with swimsuits, towel, etc.
A long ago ex planned every vacation around golf (which is one reason she's an ex).
I know some Fodorites travel for opera.
I read about people who travel hours to a new city to buy a Hard Rock tshirt from that city.
Someone I know is part of a group that plans meetups to ride roller coasters.

Do your vacation had a similar/ ongoing "theme"?

(Not sure "theme" is the right word, but it's what I'm going with).

Food

Not really. We did drive Route 66 which is probably the nearest we'll get to a theme. Bluesroute would be good too if we had the money/inclination.
Oh and we started going to La Palma because that's where our dog came from.

Cheap airfare.

((l))

Where is it? I googled, Canary Islands, but know nothing about it.

LOL! Good reason! That's how I ended up in London on the last trip. (but point sale, not $)

Can you believe my flight into JAC was only $400?! :-O

I look for dance fitness everywhere I go. But I do not plan a trip around it exclusively. Rather any place I vacation, I then find local events, teachers, dance studios, zumba classes, gyms and fitness centers, free hula, salsa fest, whatever... and participate in those.

Always where we can get the most for our travel dollars.

Westernmost of the Canary Islands, very green, volcanic, high, black beaches, snow occasionally, beautiful dogs, scenery, sunsets in that order, dark skies and telescopes. Only small - you can drive around it in less than a day but (at least last time we went) still a little bit of paradise on earth.
It's the one than some claim will fall into the Atlantic and send a tsunami across the Atlantic to wipe out the East Coast.

I just go wherever I'm in the mood for at a particular time. That's why I don't like to plan far in advance. I usually just book when the mood hits me and before I change my mind.

That said, when I go to Italy I do like to look for cooking and language classes.

BTW, Road Scholar runs the XCountry skiing weeks at Craftsbury, VT if you're looking to pursue that further. (At least they did when I went about 5 years ago).

Yes, I saw that! I am very interested. I'm going to wait to see how the xc ski part of the next trip goes and then suggest it to her. I saw they had other side focus features, including yoga, for some trips and she loves yoga. I think this may work as a trip we may be able to take together!

Did you enjoy the trip?

It depends on what I'm in the mood to do. Do I want to relax on a beach, explore museums, enjoy nature? However, where ever I go involves good food and fun.

I did a modified Harry Potter theme trip in London 2 years ago. If my grandkids had gone as originally planned it would have been full blown Harry Potter. It became more of a literary themed trip, we walked up and down Charing Cross Road looking for number 84 and went to the Docklands to see Call The Midwife locales.

I have done one Road Scholar trip and have one booked for San Antonio this October. They are a great organization, I think you get your money's worth, I think you'd enjoy it Starrs.

With one exception, we have not, although we sometimes travel for an event (ex. NY for the US Open, New Orleans for JazzFest). The one exception is major league baseball parks.

We do try to take advantage of whatever would be a local "theme" once we're there however. If we're in the south, we're going to eat barbecue. If we're in Florida, we're going to hit the beaches. If we're certain locations, we'll hit a bunch of Revolutionary and/or Civil War battlesites. But we don't initiate the trip around those things.

I had not really thought about travel and themes, but lately we have planned several around life events. This summer we will be in Kauai for our 45th anniversary with kids and grands. In September we are returning to Tuscany after a friend’s big birthday in Rome. So plan it and we’ll come?

While not into xc skiing anymore, we did have a good experience with Road Scholar on a trip to Santa Fe a few years ago. And we were going to go to Ireland with them last fall, but our trip got cancelled several months out due to low enrollment. Since we had already booked our airfare, I ended up planning the trip for us, and it worked out quite well.

For a long time while we were working, I would talk my relatively non-traveling, Atlanta Braves-loving DH into trips to various US cities because of the allure of major league baseball parks.

Now that we're retired and have been to games at most of those parks, I lure him to various locations because they have great geocaches. Actually, there are great geocaches all over the world but I show him that there are plenty of good ones in the places I want to go. Geocaching has been a great hobby in retirement.

Way back in the 80s, when it was called Elderhostel, we were at a motel pool in Colorado and had the best time talking to two older couples. They were on an Elderhostel trip and I loved the concept. They took classes during the morning and had the afternoon "off" to explore - or play in the pool all afternoon. I looked forward to getting old enough to go on a trip! My friend takes one at least once a year. She just got back from one in Philly. I picked her up from one in Asheville for the afternoon to took her to see the Biltmore decorated at Christmas. It's just been a challenge to find one that works with our schedules. She just took an early retirement (medical) so her schedule is far more flexible. She's mentioned Iceland so that's a possibility. I want to go somewhere I've not been before. The xc ski trip may work. Iceland could too. I need more vacation time!

Good to hear how much you enjoy them! I was at the DeSoto in Savannah at the same time another Fodorite was there on a RS trip. I noticed all the name tags in the lobby. Later he shared on the forum he was there on the trip. We were probably within feet of each other and had no idea!

Once had a colleague whose goal was to have visited every single pro baseball stadium in America. When I knew him, he was well on his way with his total visits. I'm pretty sure that he succeeded, or will very soon. He just retired.
I am done. The list.

Always.
Last trip to Spain theme was; "Movies from my childhood".
Cordoba and Almeria.
Lawrence of Arabia; Duck, You Sucker; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Accidentally, stumbled on the "Mar de Plastico" locations as well.

Previous one was mainly: " Lighthouses I saw only from seaside"
The coast of Galicia, from Vigo to Ferrol.

Fisterra was a must.







https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fod...d6867a54df.jpg

I decide what I want to see and then where to go to see this.

Every travel has a new "theme"

For example, if I want to go on a Safari, I then decide where that Safari should be.

I think there's a Fodorite who does/ did that.

I remember reading about the trip they were planning to Baltimore, expressly to see the new Camden Yards. I thought that was a really cool idea.

Hershey, I just read this post. Are you the one I was talking about in post #21?

Since 1991, me and up to 5 other guys from around the country take "Baseball (usually minor league only) and BBQ" trips every 2-3 years to places where both exist in goodly numbers. Typical trip when we were all working, and in our primes, was 4 days, 1000-1500 miles, 5 ball games (doubleheader in different cities on same day), 20-25 BBQ joints (meat only, no bread, no sides), lots of beer and umpteen big bags of plain M&Ms while driving around. And if we can't find a BBQ joint open in the morning, Krispy Kreme to the rescue.

The last 2 trips were a couple days longer, repeats of earlier territories, but only 2-3 BBQ joints a day because our eyes are no longer bigger than our stomachs. Only one of us has a stent (not me - I have abnormally low cholesterol).

Moved to Travel Tips

I have an old Collins Road Atlas from the sixties, on which I traced the route which we drove from Versailles to Gdynia, Poland, through France, Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, West and East Germany.

It was in 1968, at the time the Soviets and their puppet regimes armies were invading Czechoslovakia.
There were a lot of US Army trucks on the autobahns moving toward the East German border.

My mother was convinced there was going to be war so we drove from Hamburg to Gdynia in a day.


I have always been tempted to repeat that journey taking the same roads.

That may have been me and Mrs_Dave. She is a BIG baseball fan. We have made some baseball junkets, visiting MLB parks for games. It helped for awhile that we had a SWA Companion Pass. One day we flew into LGA from NE Ohio in the morning, took a taxi to Citi Field, had lunch, watched the Mets lose to the Giants, had a few drinks and a snack, then flew right back home that evening.

There are seven ballparks we haven't yet been to. We hope to see games in most of them at some time.

However, the actual theme, if any, for most of our travel is affordability, food, and wine.

(btw: We first met the Hersheys while they were in between Cleveland and Pittsburgh on one of their baseball junkets. They had just begun their geo-caching at the time.)

Our themes have included:

The Reunification Express, the train between Hanoi and Saigon in Vietnam which we have done in both directions, stopping off at various points along the way, taking anywhere between 3 weeks and 3 months with time on the train somewhere between 36 and 48 hours and;

The Pan-American Highway. An ongoing project, we have now covered most of the route in Colombia, all in Ecuador and Peru, A little of Mexico, parts of Chile and most of Ruta 40 in Argentina with the exception of the far south of Patagonia, all by bus. Hope eventually to connect it all up from Alaska in the north to Ushuaia in the south by trips in Central and the USA.

We recently house and pet sat for a couple in their seventies whose father was a Battle of Britain pilot who escaped the Nazis in Poland. Using his diaries, they followed the route of his escape from Warsaw through Greece, many countries in Eastern Europe, North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East and finally into the U.K. through Scotland. The one place they had to miss, for obvious reasons was Syria. They included us in a WhatsApp group so we could follow their travels. An incredible journey and I only wish I could match their travel stamina with as in the main, they drove themselves and the trip mostly consisted of one night stays.

What great ideas. And that couple's journey is amazing.

Almost always, when I travel, it's music-related, to attend a concert and/or music festival. My next trip is a good example: next Wednesday I leave for 5 days in New Orleans to volunteer at the Folk (Music) Alliance International Conference. When that's over, I am off to Key West to attend a big Americana/Texas/Red Dirt Country Music festival for a week. This is a longer trip than most (usually a long weekend), but it's how the dates lined up. I've done both of these before, but this year they are running consecutively so I decided to go for it!

Wasn't this post in The Lounge?

It was great. We had good skiing weather the entire week. The groups were pretty small - I think there were only 4 or 5 in my group - and the instructors were great. There are two lessons a day. The food at Craftsbury is all organic, grown on the premises and you get 3 delicious square meals a day.
We had yoga the week I went and the instructor - Margaret - was wonderful. I'm pretty sure she still teaches at Craftsbury. Sometimes they have other themes, such as square dancing but I really enjoyed the yoga.

Craftsbury is where I learned to scull. It's a wonderful outdoor center with rustic but comfortable accommodations and a very friendly atmosphere. When I went, Road Scholar provided free transportation to and from Burlington Airport.

Writing this is making me want to go back.

It was moved.

Hiking, food and wine.

And for an upcoming 'local' trip which will start on Wednesday - hiking, food, wine, hot springs and hot tubs

Usually places I haven't been to before...and cheap fares :)

Thanks panecott. I wondered as so many people answering don't usually post in this Travel Tips forum.

We usually travel to explore new places. The only time I would call it a theme is when we go specifically for hiking or skiing, like we will do next week. Just headed over to our local mountains, but we have a cabin rented and it will be a ski weekend for a bunch of us.

One Dublin visit I tried to see as many Ulysees/Oscar Wilde themed places. There are markers in the sidewalks.

I do book or author themed trips. Research author homes, statues, book sights etc and take my book club on trips centered around our reading.

Zumba cruise!

'Rock Cruises' have become popular. Wouldn't have guessed that. They're not for me, coz invariably they feature bands with but 2 or maybe 3 original members left, the others having died, quit or spontaneously combusted. Some pals have recently experienced those kind of cruises, including pals for whom money is no object. When I try to hint about the wide variety of other travel locations available, those pals seem uninterested. Whatever floats yer boat I guess.

I am done. The end.