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One of the easiest ways to lose friends is to travel with the "wrong" friends.
I divide my friends into the following categories:
Can I travel with them?
If yes, can I go camping with them?
If yes, can I go camping with them IN THE RAIN?
Folks who fall into the last category are the best friends of all. You can take any trip, any where, any time with them. The rest? Well, pick your trips carefully.
Tried it and can't do it. All our friends are early risers even in retirement and we are not.
Or, despite having money, are cheap and want to cook at home.
So, despite invitations, we will go on our own, at our pace. Don't want to be on someone else's schedule.
That said, I am amazed at those who are able to make it work.
I think there are only certain types of trips that are acceptable with these types of people. It is basically trips like a cruise or all-inclusive resort where everything is there and one person can get up and do what they want to do while the other stays in. If it is a city situation too, a lot of times you can get up and walk around/get a coffee first.
I know right now, my dad is having some back problems and is not able to keep up with my mom. She is a little frustrated about this.
I travel with my best friend and we generally agree on when we want to wake up and what we want to do. We make some compromises (she drinks and I do not, so usually I will drive and we will hit up breweries or places she wants to see), but it is not something that takes up the whole day. She hates traveling with her in-laws because they get up super late, have breakfast at 11am, and expect everyone else to be doing nothing until everyone meets. She prefers to try to be up and rolling at 8 or 9, so we are usually on the same page.
We don't have very good luck traveling with others. We've gone to a couple amusement parks with friends and we clashed a tiny bit, with us wanting to buy lunch at the park, and them wanting to save money and eat packed lunches outside the park. Not a huge deal, but that coupled with having to wait around for them a lot of the time just was annoying.
However camping with others has been the biggest issue. Either they are super heavy drinkers, which we are not, and it's really hard to be around especially when we have our kids with us, or they get into massive fights, or in the last camping trip it was both heavy drinking, huge middle of the night screaming fight with rape allegations on a minor, that occured at the campsite. Total nightmare and we got the heck out of there at the first crack of daylight and swore to never camp with that family again. Turns out that wouldn't be an issue because the husband ended up going to prison because the rape allegations were true!
We have one friend who we've been successfully camping with for over a decade, but other than him, after that last trip, were just sticking to ourselves!
What a horrible experience for everyone (especially for the minor).
Depending on where you are, the very early morning hours are prime photography hours. That is pretty much a solo activity and you can get a lot done before your companions are ready to go. Meet them for breakfast. I recall one very early morning walking in Milan with no pedestrians or traffic and near perfect light.
I’ve always been a morning person, and when I’ve travelled those who aren’t, I’ve mixed it up. Some days I’ll go out and do my own thing for a few hours, and some days I’ll just hang around until everyone else is ready.
I still do that now that we have kids. When we were last in Hawaii, the youngest one (still crawling) was up way before sunrise, while everyone else would sleep in. So, some mornings I would take the youngest one out in a carrier and walk along the beach, and other mornings we would just play in the living room until everyone else was up.
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