Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

A few months ago I got a text from my sorority little, a senior at William & Mary, asking me if I wanted to go on a road trip with her during the university’s spring break. Well, after many Skype planning sessions and inviting another friend to join the adventure, we planned our southern road trip. We started off in the beautifully constructed city of Charleston before moving on to sunny Orlando and rounding off the week in the vibrant and “twisted” (our tour guide’s words) city of Savannah.

Honestly, vacations as an employed adult are almost, if not actually, better than they were in college. First of all, I got PAID to go on vacation. Yeah, yeah, I know for those of you who have been in the employment world for a while aren’t as dazzled by this concept as I am, but it’s pretty cool. Additionally, my work email doesn’t sync with my phone because of the provider. Do you know what that means? I literally couldn’t work.

I’m a bit of a workaholic. I LOVE being busy, so usually I’m forever checking my email, but this vacation I was completely disconnected. (From work that is. Let’s not get crazy, I was obviously Instagraming the whole time because these three cities are beautiful.)

I had the best time doing college spring break as a non-college student. In fact, I think I’m going to do this every year. (Maybe not at the same time as college students, but you get the idea.) I firmly believe that vacationing is good for the soul. Sometimes you need to take a week and get the heck (this is a school blog, let’s keep it appropriate) out of dodge and just hang out with your friends.

Like I said in the last blog post, listicles are slowly becoming a trademark aspect of my blog posts. Keeping that in mind, here four memories from my trip bound to make you ask for our itinerary, and probably laugh a little too.

1. The World’s Most Interesting Man: Like any good millennials, my friends and I decided to book an Air B&B for our trip, and it was the best decision we could have made. We stayed with an awesome geologist/snake owner/master griller who clued us in on all the cool places to go in Charleston (and showed us some rockin’ fossils). Our gracious host made us a map with all of the free parking in the southern-charm laden town, which led us to some of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. There was Spanish Moss on every tree, the smell of barbecue in the air and a horse drawn carriage on every street.
2. Meeting Barbara Manatee: Okay, so we didn’t ACTUALLY meet Veggie Tales’ aquatic star, but we did get to swim with some manatees in Crystal River, Florida. The thing you don’t learn about sea cows in biology class? They’re HUGE and they’re very playful. While in the water one of the manatees came up to me and grabbed on to my legs with its paws. (Hands? Flippers? Honestly, I don’t know what the correct word is.) My new friend proceeded to spin in circles, dunking me under the water repeatedly. Scary? Yes. In hindsight? It was hilarious and a story for the ages. Getting to swim with manatees is pretty cool on its own, but having a great story to go along with the experience makes it that much better.
3. Sunburn City and Proper Beans: On this trip I got my first ever full body sunburn. Sure, I’ve gotten some light sunburns before, but this was a whole other experience. Why is this on my list of favorite memories? We all got so sunburned we had no choice but to laugh. Coco Beach got the best of us, and we all knew we messed up. There’s something about being covered in sticky, blue aloe that really bonds a group. After covering ourselves with lotion we met up with my dad and grandpa at a stellar Irish pub and stumbled into what can only be called the world’s best trivia night. Our team, named proper beans after a menu side item, climbed its way from dead last to number one. It was truly an epic night.
4. A Haunted Night and a Funky Morning: For our first Savannah adventure, our crew decided to combine two of the town’s favorite past times, ghost stories and alcohol. Our night began on a haunted pub crawl of the “twisted town” (our tour guide’s words, not mine). To be honest, it wasn’t too scary, but it was filled with lots of ghost stories and a few history lessons. Our night ended at a local establishment featuring a live band, complete with a trumpet and trombone player and a rapper to boot, and some friendly games of pool. The next morning we went to the Funky Brunch Cafe for a delightful breakfast before heading out to explore the city. We walked through antique shops and squares, saw a fountain with the water turned green (Savannah loves St. Patty’s) and ended the night at a board game/video game themed bar. It was a perfect ending to a perfect week.