During this trip, Chis mentioned that all of our trips are not genuine “holidays” in that we are never really sitting back, relaxing, and just letting time slip away. We’re always on the go, with a list of things we want to see, do, and accomplish by the time we leave our destination. The closest thing to a “holiday” in this sense for us is when we come back to Melbourne and are spending time with his family and friends… or at least, it’s relaxing for him. For me, it’s a lot of need to be “always on.” It is a bit more relaxing than hiking up mountains and trying to find the next restaurant in a language we can’t understand, but it’s still not complete “zone out” time for me.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy kicking back and relaxing. It’s more that I feel like time is limited. I won’t live forever, and even if I did, I would not have enough time to see every inch of the world that I want to see. So when I am not working and am away, I want to be able to explore more, to see and experience new things that I don’t always get to do.

It’s for this reason that whenever we take trips, we rarely spend any time just lying on a beach or back stroking through our hotel’s pool. In Rio, one of the beach capitals of the world, we were only on the beach twice and spent about five seconds in the water. But this trip, we decided to spend the second half of our first day in Cairns relaxing in the water at our resort pool, which was gorgeous and mimicked a real beach with its white sand “shore” and clear water setup. It was by far the nicest hotel pool I’d ever been at. It was a great feeling to not feel like we had anything we had to rush off to or be at afterwards. I felt calm and happy, swimming on my back and feeling the sun beam down on my face and body.

I still think I would get bored if that’s all we did for a week anywhere, though.