How to Answer the Question, ‘Did You Go Anywhere This Summer’ Without Being Awkward

I’ve discovered a new, annoying habit. Actually, I’ve caught both myself and my travel-partner-for-life, XFE doing it a lot over the past few weeks.

We’ll be talking to friends or neighbors or coworkers or the pet sitter or (in my case) the eye doctor. We’ll be chatting, catching up on our lives and the latest news when the conversation will inevitably turn to this question: “So, did you guys go anywhere this summer?”

And the way we hem and haw and get all awkward over our answer is just so weird. We’ll look at each other and start mumbling about, “Yeah, we took a quick, last-minute trip but it was just to Mexico. Just for a week. Just a fly-and-flop at an all-inclusive resort. Really, it was no big deal. Nothing glamorous at all. What about you?”

It turns out, we are vacation apologists.

There are a couple of reasons this might be/is the case. For one thing, we tend to take really big trips to some far flung places. Like, safaris in Africa, driving tours through Sri Lanka, living it up in luxury in the Maldives, roughing it on a dive boat in the Barrier Reef, eating tours and temple hopping through Singapore, Cambodia and Hong Kong. So any vacation that’s less than a week or is in a location that takes less than two days to get to makes us feel like we’re letting our expectant audience down.

(OK, now I just feel like I’m bragging about all the great vacations we take. Which I am, because, hi, hello, Maldives? But I don’t mean to brag. I’m really, really grateful. I pinch myself all the time. Really, I have bruises from all the pinching. I can’t believe I get to go to any of these places. So then there’s that: I feel a lot of shame that I’m so fortunate. Thus, awkward apologies.)

Plus—to further belabor the bragging theme—we actually have a big trip coming up: three weeks in New Zealand. Which we are really, really excited about and has been our primary trip-planning focus for the last few months.

Then there’s the fact that we pretty much planned to not go anywhere this summer since we knew work would be so busy and we would be spending so much money on New Zealand. In fact, just this past spring, we had turned down an offer to go on a group vacation to the very same part of Mexico that we ended up running off to for six days in July. And the group trip was actually right around the same time (literally, we were only like two days off from passing each other at the Cancun airport).

Whatever it was, we have consistently minimized our Mexican vacation, both before we went and after we got back (Heck, I only posted one photo on Instagram). And we shouldn’t minimize it.

We shouldn’t downplay our Mexican vacation for a lot of reasons but first and foremost is because we are just so privileged. Some people spend all year saving up the time and money to go to a beautiful, all-inclusive resort in Mexico. They are genuinely excited about their vacation and they should be.

Going on vacation is (obviously) a luxury that a lot of people—people who really, really work hard and deserve a break–just don’t get. We are both so damn lucky to have the means and ability to just go on vacation whenever and wherever we want. Yes, XFE has worked very hard at both his real job and his other job – racking up and managing all those hotel points and airline miles. No doubt. But again, we’re incredibly privileged. Just for the fact that we can carve out the time and make arrangements to cover our medium-sized obligations while we’re gone.

Secondly, our trip (which, by the way, was to Secrets Maroma Beach in the Riviera Cancun) was really, really nice. The resort was an adults-only, all-inclusive with all the amenities—great service, gorgeous grounds, delicious food, impressive entertainment and a variety of activities for those who wanted to partake.

We booked a swim-up room and that’s pretty much where we spent most of our six days. It was definitely low-key (we didn’t go on any excursions, but there are a lot of things to see and do in that region of Mexico) which was exactly what we were looking for.

To be honest, the trip planning for New Zealand has been a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of moving parts and logistics and decisions to be made, but with Mexico, we didn’t have to make any decisions. Plus, unlike New Zealand, Mexico was a short direct flight from D.C. We left in the morning and were drinking our first pina coladas by that afternoon.

So let me shout it from the rooftops: We got to go to Mexico this summer. And it was great. I got a few mosquito bites but I didn’t get sunburned. We met tons of nice people who worked very hard to make sure we had a good time, all the time. We ate the most amazing fresh, grilled fish for lunch every day (which I shared surreptitiously with some of the very friendly stray cats you’re not supposed to feed and which the staff pretended not to notice that I was, in fact, feeding). And the pina coladas were always delicious and refreshing. Everyone should absolutely go, if they can. Even vacation apologists.