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• Monday, September 1, 2008 10:47 AM

  @sarava

  Have a fantastic time. Spain is unforgettable. Hope you get to visit some of the white cities and drive up along the Western coast. But, yeah, watch out for the pickpockets and the two-man cons.

  Frolick is right: the word "staycation" should elicit nothing but eye-rolling. It's not the idea itself of staying home--I relish the thought of sitting at home, spending the afternoon reading on my patio, a pitcher of sangria by my side, while bread dough rises on the countertop and boeuf bourgignon bubbles away in the oven. Or going for a very long bike ride out in the country, stopping in tiny towns spread across the prairie for a sandwich or a soda consumed in the quiet shade of the town square.

  It's the cheesy, gimmicky mass media attempt to foist this on us as if it's something none of us had ever thought of and that it's our all-Amurrikan, teevee-watching, SUV-driving duty to undertake. I dread the day I walk into the office and, in the midst of desultory small talk about What We Did This Summer, hear, "Oh, you know how gas prices are! We thought we'd take a staycation this year." I plan to respond with (admittedly disingenuous) confusion. "Staycation? What's that?...Oh, you decided to stay home! I didn't know there was a word for that."

  I'm alternately sobered and cheered by the idea of fewer Americans abroad. On the one hand, Americans should travel widely. On the other, when I was last in Paris, crossing the Seine to eat lunch in the Luxembourg Gardens, I looked up to see an oncoming group of American tourists speeding toward me on Segways, all wearing unintentionally identical shorts, t-shirts, running shoes, and baseball caps, apparently under the mistaken impression that they were in Disneyworld. That image has been stamped indelibly on my brain ever since, and I would be overjoyed to think that these are exactly the people to whom the whole mass-marketed "staycation" phenomenon is most likely to appeal.

  —Marianna Trench Read Marianna Trench's other letters
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