I absolutely wasted Sunday and I feel guilty for it, even as I try not to feel guilty. I was very much raised on the idea that you should make the most of your trips, squeeze in as much as possible and probably come home more tired than when you left. But that’s not what a holiday is. A holiday is supposed to be time to relax.
(The tenses in this post jump around all over the place. While I was relaxing and being lazy, I also had my tablet open and started writing this there and then so some of it is present tense and some is past because I filled things in and added bits on later.)
Friday felt like a longer travel day than it really was. I didn’t reach my apartment until 11pm and then I couldn’t get in and had to phone the number and plead for help. But it was only a 2-hour flight and it was only a 2-hour drive to the airport so and I didn’t leave home until 1pm. Taking into account the time difference, that’s only 9 hours of travel, including sitting at the airport waiting for the flight to be announced, sitting on the plane, waiting for the shuttle bus at Dubrovnik Airport and being shuttled down to the bus station. But because I arrived late, it felt exhausting.
Then I was up again at 8am on Saturday to get breakfast from the nearest supermarket before being down at the port for 9.30am for a full day of sea kayaking. And it was a full day. We got home at 7.30pm and I had no idea how much my shoulders were going to ache on Sunday or how badly I’d burned the back of my left hand through having it turned towards the sky all day (I got the rest of me with the suncream but I tend to miss the backs of my hands). Add in that this blog is called i am a polar bear for a reason – that reason being that I thrive in the cold and wilt in the heat, and the Croatian night was hot – and by Sunday morning, there really wasn’t enough of me left to do anything.
I’d kind of planned for a lazy Sunday already, actually. The weather forecast said it was going to be rainy and stormy between about 10am and 5pm and so I’d more or less decided that it wasn’t worth trying to do anything. A lazy day wouldn’t be unwelcome after Friday and Saturday, the supermarkets would be closed, why plan to do anything very strenuous?
And so I had a holiday day. I stayed home, other than going down to the port for my daily 2km walk, which was far too hot and I resented furiously and I really should have just waited until later in the evening, although at least I got it done during a break in the rain – had I waited for the cooler evening, I’d have been walking in a full-on thunderstorm. I sat on my balcony a little. Not much, because it rained. Actually, “balcony” is underselling it. I had a terrace. It’s the biggest terrace I can see for miles around. I tried to make a point of eating out there – although that’s partly because it’s always dark in the dining room. It has a triple door and a triple external shutter. I can open two of the shutter sections but not the third and even with two open, letting the light in, it’s never really light enough to feel satisfying. So I eat on the terrace. I wander on the terrace. I watch the cruise ships from the terrace. I take selfies on the terrace. I can see a sliver of the port from the terrace, I can see the big cantilevered bridge and the mountains and the steep side of the city. Part of the fun of being on holiday is just sitting on the terrace, absorbing Vitamin D and the view.
But when it rained and when the sun beat down on my little bistro table, I sat in the shelter of the balcony above or I lounged in the living room and I watched Doctor Who. I ate actual food! Other than a quick breakfast of burnt toast on Saturday morning, I hadn’t had time to sit down for proper food since I’d arrived in Croatia back on Friday. I wish I’d been able to get some proper crusty bread but if you arrive in a supermarket at nearly 8pm because you’ve been kayaking all day, you have to take what you can get and what I could get was little square sweet toast bread. That was great because I have a toaster, so I could make toast. And as usual, I bought plastic cheese slices and so I could make little cheese sandwiches. It’s hardly pan-fried squid with roasted vegetables or pizza with olives and herbs but a) I have ARFID and b) I’m on holiday. Plus c) supermarkets aren’t open on Sunday and I needed something that would keep from Saturday to Monday.
Plenty of people do fine at the relaxing thing, at sitting at the apartment eating on the terrace and not feeling guilty for not making the most of every minute. I don’t think I want every one of my trips to be like that but I’d like to cultivate a lack of guilt if I do it occasionally. I was tired on Sunday and the weather wasn’t cooperative. And yes, I needed to write a blog post about it as part of the argument to myself that I’m allowed to do that, and also to turn a lazy day into material. I’m not a full-time or professional blogger. I have a 9-5 job and an obscene amount of Girlguiding volunteer hours. I blog as a hobby and I travel as a hobby. There’s no tangible practical value in getting a certain number of blog posts out of any trip, or in writing any at all but I’ve blogged at least twice a week for seven or eight years now and there are definitely times when I’m concerned about what I’m going to be able to write about. This very year, I’ve had two files called “What am I going to write in May??” and “What am I going to write in July??” and to wring every last word out of a trip can be helpful there, so I’m writing about Sunday, even though I did nothing.
You don’t have to do things. You don’t have to earn your holidays. You don’t have to “make the most” of your holidays. It’s allowed to just sit and relax and eat and watch things and read things. Not every day has to be about having adventures or exploring new places or having experiences. I spent Sunday living like a local, in my apartment in a residential part of town well away from the major tourist area, having a day of rest and eating food I bought from the supermarket. Oh, I like that! Living like a local! There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a tourist – as long as you’re not too obnoxious about it – but there’s a category of tourists, who usually call themselves “travellers”, who seek out authentic experiences and I think I absolutely had an authentic Croatian Sunday off. Ok, that’s the new title of this post. I was a tourist Saturday and Monday and Tuesday but on Sunday, I lived authentically in a new place and that’s a fine thing to do sometimes.