Vacations without kids are the only real vacations.

Good job to the original poster for doing a kid free vacation to spend time together as a couple and invest in your relationship.

It is important to expose kids to other cultures and enable them to be travel savvy before they are on their own. But it's amazing the places people will travel to with their kids. My wife and I have several kids that are now grown and I totally get that for a 10-20 yrs you may not be able to travel unless you bring your kids with you. But there are places that to me just do not make sense to invest the money, effort, travel time, etc and then have to spend at least half your time trying to keep the kids happy. You are better off doing kid friendly vacations close to home every year and then hopefully get the grandparents to watch them for a week every 3-5 yrs so you can do a kid free trip.

As an example, I'm currently in Bora Bora with my wife and we see multiple couples on the beach, at dinner, etc that are frazzled trying to keep their kids happy instead of being able to just spend time together…which is the point of a trip to Bora Bora. Also, while it is great to expose kids to the broader world and get them travel experience, from 1st hand experience I can tell you they absolutely will not appreciate it until they are high school aged. Before then they would rather be at the local beach, Disney or a water park 10 miles from home with their friends.

Another important issue to consider is not having your kids take for granted the ability to travel around the globe. You just want to balance their exposure to great travel without making them bitter that once they get on their own they will be backpacking and staying in hostels vs flying business class and renting a catamaran to cruise the Greek Isle's. It's a fine balance but it is extremely important to keep in mind.

Sorry for going a bit off topic, I'm just relating the learnings from my personal experience and I'm sure others have strong feelings about this which I look forward to reading.

OilManAg91 said:

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Good job to the original poster for doing a kid free vacation to spend time together as a couple and invest in your relationship.

It is important to expose kids to other cultures and enable them to be travel savvy before they are on their own.

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Agree completely.

OilManAg91 said:

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But there are places that to me just do not make sense to invest the money, effort, travel time, etc and then have to spend at least half your time trying to keep the kids happy.

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That sounds like a parenting issue. Obviously you shouldn't take your kids to South Beach so you can go bar hopping (or Bora Bora) but on the other hand, my kids don't need to be entertained while I'm in Holland. They can learn to appreciate the Tulips and the Windmills.

OilManAg91 said:

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Also, while it is great to expose kids to the broader world and get them travel experience, from 1st hand experience I can tell you they absolutely will not appreciate it until they are high school aged. Before then they would rather be at the local beach, Disney or a water park 10 miles from home with their friends.

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100% disagree

I think it is a common fallacy for adults to think that kids are too young to understand, won't appreciate it, etc. Granted, they might understand things better when they're HS aged and maybe have studied something in school.

But think about it from the other side of the coin too. If you have those experiences when you're young, it makes it very real for you when you cover it in school.

Kind of like when I was doing my MBA at Colorado and we studied Southwest Airlines as a business model. Since LUV didn't fly to Colorado at the time, it was only a handful of transplants from Texas and California who had first hand experience flying Southwest. For the rest of my MBA class, Southwest Airlines was something in a textbook.

Likewise, I didn't need to read Anne Frank's Diary because I've been to her house as a young kid. Knowing that another young kid only a few years older than me, hid out from Nazis in this very room, that was overwhelming.

My case is a little unique due to my father being in the construction business primarily supporting oil companies. I was less than 15 years old when I saw the Pyramids at Giza, Luxor Temple, The Valley of the Kings, Tutankhamen's Tomb, took a Safari in Kenya, went up in the Eiffel Tower, ate at the McDonalds near the Arc de Triomphe, The Acropolis in Greece, toured Vatican City, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, Notre Dame Cathedral, some awesome German Technology Museum in Munich, saw a 500 year flood on The Rhine, saw fake food in Tokyo, Singapore, the Opera House in Sydney, Taronga Zoo, Waikiki, Diamond Head, Mt. McKinley, Prince William Sound, Columbia Glacier, etc., etc., etc.

Don't get me wrong, this kind of exposure will make others think that you're:
a - lying
b - pretentious
c - a rich a-hole (even if you lived in a double-wide or single-wide while you had some of these experiences)
d - a braggart

The other side of the coin is that it can be difficult to fit in when all your peers have spent their vacations at the Deer Lease, or at Concan floating the river, etc.

OilManAg91 said:

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Another important issue to consider is not having your kids take for granted the ability to travel around the globe. You just want to balance their exposure to great travel without making them bitter that once they get on their own they will be backpacking and staying in hostels vs flying business class and renting a catamaran to cruise the Greek Isle's. It's a fine balance but it is extremely important to keep in mind.

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Air BnB and the like has changed the game a little. My kids don't want to stay at any fancy hotels, they want to rent an Air BnB. Likewise, if possible, they'd rather Uber than rent a car.

But relevant to this conversation is when the kids start booking travel on their own, if you haven't forced them to sit there with you and consider the options, they might not get the optimal flights.

Example, my oldest got a screaming deal to someplace in Asia on Turkish Airlines right at the time when there was a lot of civil unrest and active shooting going on in Istanbul. I helped her rebook on Lufthansa using a bunch of my United Miles. Overprotective Dad - yes. Regrets - none.

Another example was my youngest traveling on her own from college in rural Virginia to Texas for an event. She showed up too late to the airport to check-in. But the plane was still at the gate, why won't they let me on? Followed by the conversation about how many flights dad has missed - approximately zero. I've had some epic airport runs, a few close calls and a handful of times where I made the flight by seconds (no exaggeration). Hard lesson learned for her but after that, she was willing to understand my system for catching flights which was invisible to her as a kid.