Holiday Travel With The Family

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Kristen K.'s picture
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Holiday Travel With The Family

When traveling for the holidays with family and friends - do you do something special to celebrate the holiday, or is being on vacation special enough? If you do special holiday things, what do you do? Share your holiday travel planning celebrations with me!

Becks534's picture
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Joined: 12/17/2011
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Must be my itchy feet but I love traveling around the holidays, especially ON Christmas Day. What did she say?! Yes, really! Christmas Day is a fantastic day to do a road trip if you're blessed with good weather. I've never flown on Christmas Day so maybe other folks can weigh in. I can tell you that traffic is usually going to be really light since everyone is hanging out at home. Do the presents early and take advantage of the lull. Word of advice - make sure you've got plenty of food packed with you. About ten years ago, I did a Disney road trip my son and ex-husband. We left Chicago very early Christmas morning (about 3:30 am) and drove all day. Sunny weather, light traffic and high spirits so we made it much farther than we had originally intended and ended up in Tifton, GA. The only place that was open for dinner and I do mean the ONLY place in the entire town was The Waffle House. Line out the door and the interior was hazy with cigarette smoke. PASS. We wound up having microwave burgers and chips from a gas station. Sick The next time we decided to do a trip at Christmas I packed our entire dinner up and stuck it in a cooler. We had awesome ham sandwiches for the whole trip. Christmas week is great fun at Disney but whew boy, packed to the gills! We did Washington, DC at Christmas few years back and really enjoyed it. It's a great experience if you're a history buff, the DC Metro is super nice and it's much less crowded than in the summer. I'd love to go to Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas someday.

Kristen K.'s picture
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Becks534 wrote:
I'd love to go to Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas someday.

We so need to make that happen - I've always dreamed of doing Christmas there.

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Joined: 06/17/2012
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This Thanksgiving we will be sharing it with Sister and Brother in law on the Norwegian Epic a cruise to the Caribbean St Thomas and St Marten for a 7 Days Smile this is our first time traveling on a holiday and I'm so looking forward to it !! 15 days to go Smile

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Eeyore's picture
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I am not one that loves to travel on holidays. During Thanksgiving and Christmas, I enjoy being home in our house! The few times we've traveled to my in laws on Thanksgiving and Christmas were good trips though. We've flown during both holiday weeks and airports and planes were crowded with sick people coughing their germs out in the cootie can we were riding in. We've driven twice and I must say, it sucked! We drove from NC to Iowa and once we hit snow/ice we had a flat tire. It also took like 18 hours. It's the worst drive ever. I prefer to fly even though I hate flying.

Thank goodness this year we are staying home! laugh

What I would LOVE to do is go on vacation from Dec 26th to Jan 2! I would love to travel to Europe during that time.

crazycatperson's picture
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Kristen K. wrote:
Becks534 wrote:
I'd love to go to Colonial Williamsburg at Christmas someday.

We so need to make that happen - I've always dreamed of doing Christmas there.

We did Thanksgiving there with family a few years ago - dad and stepmother, who drove down with us, and sister and brother-in-law, who joined us there. We had a two-bedroom timeshare unit just minutes from the historic area for the parents and us, while sister and BIL stayed nearby in a comped hotel room.

The historic area's restaurants did special Thanksgiving dinners (for a special high price) that sounded lovely, but we passed since my sister is vegetarian and has many additional dietary restrictions. Instead, we cooked a scaled-back Thanksgiving dinner in the timeshare unit's kitchen.

Even though it was Thanksgiving, the Christmas decorations were starting to go up. They're all lovely, but unfortunately complete non-authentic. Folks back then would not have wasted real candles and edible fruit merely for ornamentation, so even the subdued decorations you see today are way, way more than they actually had in colonial days. A little evergreen and perhaps a sprig of holly and that was it, according to a tour guide.

We also attended a Christmas concert the day after Thanksgiving which was quite lovely (if you like classical music, which we do).

Kristen K.'s picture
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crazycatperson wrote:

They're all lovely, but unfortunately complete non-authentic. Folks back then would not have wasted real candles and edible fruit merely for ornamentation, so even the subdued decorations you see today are way, way more than they actually had in colonial days. A little evergreen and perhaps a sprig of holly and that was it, according to a tour guide.

It's good to hear that the tour guides were explaining the difference!