Do You Really Need a Vacation After Your Vacation?

When it comes to planning a vacation, there’s one big issue on which my travel partner and I always disagree. No, it’s not the classic traveling couples’ clash over who gets the better plane seat. (I’m shorter, so I take the middle seat every time. And I expect to be canonized after I pass.) We can’t agree on the value of the post-vacation vacation day.

When we sketch out our trip plans, my travel partner, Dan, insists on adding an extra at-home vacation day to the end of our itinerary. So if we fly home on a Monday, he argues that we need to take off the following Tuesday for “recovery.”

In my opinion, this is a waste of a solid day off. Vacation days are for traveling. If I’ve packed, planned and paid hundreds to fly to my destination, I want to spend as much time there as possible. Plus, a day on the road trumps a day at home no matter what. Squandering a good vacation day on the couch at home is like choosing to sit in coach after you’ve been upgraded to first class.

I’ll let Dan explain his side, in his own words: “I need a buffer day to get back into something of a non-vacation routine before I resume real world activity. Otherwise, the transition from vacation to reality is too abrupt, too painful.”

Who wins? Ultimately, we usually end up going with whichever dates allow us to snag the cheapest fares.

Where do you stand?