What do you do when you have three kids and your husband just got back from a 20-day business trip? You take a vacation. What do you do when you have three kids and in-laws who can only take about 24-hours of them? You take a staycation. It’s cheaper, shorter and surprisingly more eco-conscious—no matter where you stay!
Now for those of you unfamiliar with the term, a staycation is when you take a vacation without ever leaving your hometown. I was surprised to find that this term has been included in Webster’s Dictionary since 2003, and is defined as a “stay-at-home vacation,” of which common activities include, “use of the backyard pool, visits to local parks and museums, and attendance at local festivals.” I’m guessing that the staycation will grow in popularity this year as the crash cuts short many families’ standing reservations for cross-country travel.
Since we did, in fact, drive to our staycation, it wasn’t as low on the carbon footprint scale as diving into a (preferably saltwater) backyard pool, not that we have one. But compare our 20-mile trek in a 30-mpg car to anything in an airplane, which emits carbon dioxide, nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide at heights that make these emissions twice as destructive to global warming as those emitted on the ground, and we look pretty damn light. In fact, according to TerraPass, one jaunt across the Atlantic can produce as much ozone-depleting pollution as the average driver does in a year.
But I digress. All green-mindedness aside, the goal of our staycation was to relax, reconnect and celebrate our (gulp) 12-year anniversary. Oh, who am I fooling? We’ve got three kids: The goal of our staycation was to sleep.
And sleep we did. In a giant, four-poster, enormous bed that looks like it belongs in a fairytale, during one truly fairytale weekend at the Langham Huntington Hotel in Pasadena, CA. (Check out the pic and tell me you wouldn't take that over Sleeping Beauty's castle.)
Now, granted, the Langham is not marketing itself as a “green” hotel, like some of the others we’ve come across: The Starwood Element chain, for example, the amazing Ambrose in Santa Monica or the Hotel Felix, which will become Chicago’s first LEED-certified hotel when it opens this March.
But even at a hotel like the Langham, known for luxury rather than eco-mindedness, poolside drinks were served in compostable veggie plastic, an incredible meal in the hotel’s signature Dining Room included local and sustainable grown elements, amenities include an organic perfume blending bar by Ajne and visitors were encouraged to reuse and recycle. Yes, plastic mini bottles of water are still offered when you pick up your car from valet. No, the beautiful, old-fashioned, red-tiled roof is not yet adorned with solar panels. But the times they are a-changing.
And we feel well rested, indeed.
