I Tried a Millennial’s Travel Itinerary and This is How it Went

A Gen Xer trying to live her best life in a new age

It happened quickly. I was scrolling Instagram one morning and a Reel caught my eye. It was fast, colorful, and filled with scenes of good food, nature, and wine. It was obviously a paid, influencer post and, even though I likely wasn’t their target audience, I was intrigued enough to forward it to my husband (via text because he’s not on IG-which should have been our first clue that we weren’t the target market) and we decided to give it a go.

Now, you should know this is very unusual for us. We are not spontaneous. We usually choose vacations up to a year in advance and I spend hours doing research. Well, that’s how we used to do it 20 years ago, before we had my daughter. Which makes me wonder how I did research when the internet was a barely a thing? I suppose I found ideas in travel magazines and in the newspaper, but I digress.

This was our first weekend getaway, alone, in years. Once my daughter went off to college we promised we would pick up where we left off and travel more. So maybe I was heady with the freedom. Maybe I wanted to jolt us out of our tendency to stay home.

I made reservations at the hip hotel in the small town the women on the Reel recommended, Then I wrote down the list of places they mentioned. That’s right folks, I had the list on a piece of paper that I folded up and put in my purse-which was NOT one of those fanny-pack things all the cool kids wear slung across their body. What are those things anyway? All I know is that if I try to wear one, my full, saggy bosom pushes those things up into the chicken waddle hanging from my neck and chokes me out. No, give me my Coach purse, the one I can safely sling over shoulder, without poking my own eye out.

So, purse in hand, off we go to the hotel. It was okay. It was nice. A bit minimal, but what isn’t these days? The last time my husband and I had a romantic getaway (circa 2003ish?), bed and breakfasts were all the rage and let me tell you, the Shabby Chic rooms were anything but minimal.

The first stop was the little downtown. It was cute. The shops the influencers recommended were a used bookshop, a candy shop, and a vintage shop. Thank goodness it’s still trendy to read books, eat sweets, and riffle through someone’s grandma’s junk (which looks surprisingly like the things that were in my childhood home). So far so good.

The hotel’s restaurant was recommended for dinner and, since we had committed to following the itinerary as closely as possible, we headed downstairs. The hostess told us she could seat us but that it would take thirty minutes for our food. We agreed because she said we could get our wine right away.

The table next to us was a four top of young women. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had seen the Reel too and decided to take advantage of the hotel’s “Squad Suites”, which feature ‘luxury” bunk beds to sleep six, are stocked with board games, and have a temperature-controlled wine cooler.

I’m telling you, these kids today know how to travel, don’t they? Back in the early 1990s we packed four to six girls into one room with two double beds. One of us might bring a pack of cards and the only thing being chilled in the room was a six pack of Miller Genuine Draft stuffed two-at-a-time into the ice bucket. 

After dinner, Mr. B and I headed up to the room to watch television because the town had already closed everything. We had to watch cable because we couldn’t remember our Netflix password to access the app on the hotel TV.  Apparently, the only people who still watch cable are people our age and older because every commercial we saw (yes! commercials!) was for nutritional shakes and pharmaceuticals and were filled with actors who looked surprisingly like us. They were usually riding bikes. “Hey! The hotel loans bikes! Maybe this place is for us!”, we thought as we drifted off to sleep.

The next morning my husband rushed out to visit the bakery listed on the itinerary. Unfortunately, he came back empty handed. Apparently, there would be no marionberry danish the size of my head for our breakfast as they were closed. On a Sunday.

Like any oldsters would, we grumbled about ourselves why any bakery would be closed on a day when, to our mind, your customers would want to come in, buy a coffee and danish, and read the Sunday Times. That’s right, I’m letting my Gen X flag fly-I still love a nice thick Sunday paper that smears newsprint on your bagel and cream cheese laced fingers.

The new generations values work-life balance and working on Sunday most decidedly is NOT balanced. Maybe they’re on to something. We choked down the hotel’s free breakfast buffet and headed off to hike. We didn’t do the ten mile loop that was mentioned, but we saw a nice waterfall.

The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful. We hiked, wine tasted and realized that, in those things at least, we could keep up with future generations. We ended our trip in a small college town-our only deviation from the Instagram itinerary.

We were pleased to come across a small café, called The Brass Monkey. It felt like the coffee houses where we spent our circa 1994 dating days. Those glorious cafes that were filled with old couches, bought at garage sales, with ironically bad art hanging from the walls. The coffee houses that Starbucks, in all its dependable minimalism, eventually drove out of business.

We sipped our drinks and relaxed into the mismatched chairs as the song which the café was named after looped through our heads. Maybe there was still room for us in this rapidly changing world after all.

How about you? Have you ever followed a travel itinerary that a stranger put together?

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At the Check-Out Desk

My Beeting Heart by Laura Bray, in process

Last week, I gave an artist’s talk at a local gallery. I had a piece in the show and talked about how I created the natural dye to color the fabric and floss in the piece. During the pandemic, I pulled away from my work as a textile artist and it felt good to reconnect to it and listen to the other artists talk about their work. It inspired me to start stitching and playing with textiles again.

The time I’ve spent away from making visual work, and trying to turn it into a business, has been good for me. I’m looking forward to seeing how the change in mindset affects my creativity. I’m even thinking of ways to combine stitching and writing. There’s even a short story rolling around in my head about the piece I had in the gallery. Maybe I’ll share it soon.

My current writing practice enabled me to talk about my art in a new and, in my opinion, better way. I was much more confident writing my artist’s statement about the piece than I used to be. I guess the lesson I’m trying to share it not to get caught up in only doing one creative practice. This recent experience has taught me that’s it’s all coming out of the same creative pool inside you and so, all the pieces will fit together, like a puzzle, Don’t worry about what the final puzzle is a picture of. Just keeping snapping all those pieces in place, one at time. The picture will appear eventually.

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Since I talked about Instagram this week, let’s be friends. You can find me here. I don’t post often but I’m starting to hatch plans to make some intentional, bonus content over there. In fact, I’m turning to the Millenials and Gen Z again and trying to up my Reels game. Be sure to leave a comment so I can follow you back and see what you are up to over there.

Have a great week!