Mix Up Your Holiday Routine with a Trip Abroad
After the last few years of revenge family reunions, there’s never been a better time to buck tradition.
It started as an idea: What if we go to Ireland for Thanksgiving?
My wife, an academic, had the week to herself. I work remotely, and an open-ended invitation to Slane Castle and its eponymous distillery in County Meath had recently come across my desk. And after a couple post-pandemic years of organizing giant revenge travel-inspired family gatherings for everything from birthdays to Christmas—not to mention moving back within driving distance of both our mothers—traveling abroad for one of the most US-centric holidays on the planet sounded absolutely novel.
A few emails later and things were in motion. It wasn’t long before word spread and my retired parents, a.k.a. our family’s long-established go-to hosts for every festive occasion, asked if they could crash our Thanksgiving-ditching party. Did it still count as an escape if we had mom and dad in tow? Decidedly yes, as all four of us were willingly skirting our holiday obligations for the first time in memory.
We scheduled our flights, booked our rooms, and laid out a plan to spend a few days exploring Dublin after leaving the castle. Despite my mother’s fears, the rest of the family took the news in stride, simply arranging alternative sources for their cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Yet the trip still felt like a small, cheeky transgression, like “accidentally” staining your matching Christmas pajamas or sneaking off to the bathroom just before it’s your turn to tell the circle what you’re thankful for (the trauma). We were in it for the thrill—that, and the copious Irish coffees.
And they were indeed copious. We sampled them at Slane Distillery, then again at a nearby country pub or two. We followed those up with a few more at Teeling Whiskey Distillery and John Fallon's The Capstan Bar in Dublin. And, if you can believe it, capped off the trip with a final round at the Dublin airport before catching the flight home. Between frothy sips, we hiked the Hill of Slane, discussed the merits of Gaelic football, attended a blacksmithing demo led by a charismatic modern-day viking, toured the chilling Kilmainham Gaol, tapped our feet to and Irish trio, crossed the Ha’Penny Bridge, paid our respects to the Book of Kells, told meandering stories, and laughed—a lot.
In reality, our little sojourn was less of an adrenaline rush and more of a breath of fresh air in a world where so many of our sanctioned holidays are spent reenacting the same routine, year after year, decade after decade. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not turning my nose up at tradition by any means, and if you try to serve me anything but lasagna on Christmas Eve, I’ll riot. But breaking free from that expectation, if only for a single year, can provide some much-needed respite in an otherwise chaotic time of year.
If you’re considering cutting and running this season, you have my blessing. And if you’re still not convinced, here are a handful of reasons why traveling abroad for the holidays could just be the best idea you’ve had all year.
Your schedule is what you make of it
Don’t feel like rolling out of bed until noon on Thanksgiving? No problem. Can’t fathom making hours of small talk with your Facebook-obsessed auntie? Just don’t. Prefer drinking your weight in Guinness in a pub versus folding napkins while watching people awkwardly tote inflatable cartoon characters down the street? Be my guest. When you skip town for the holidays, your schedule is what you make it.
For us, that meant sleeping until 9 am, loading up on a full Irish breakfast at Slane’s basement restaurant, then embarking on a spontaneous hike to the nearby ruins of a stone hermitage. Afterwards, we made our way to Dublin, where we got an immersive tour of the Guinness Storehouse before grabbing choice cocktails at poitin-crazed Bar 1661.
At Bar 1661, we were seated at a four top affixed to a dark banquette. Next to us, a middle-aged couple accompanied by two teenage kids poured over their menus. Hearing our accents, the man looked over and smiled. “You guys avoiding Thanksgiving, too?” he asked.
It turned out the family, who live in Colorado, scheduled a different Thanksgiving trip every year. “The kids have the whole week off from school and we don’t have any family nearby,” added the woman as her son and daughter scrolled on their phones, doing their best to look bored. “They don’t care, and besides, it saves me a lot of dishes.”
Not quite sated—and unable to snag a cab due to a gridlocked situation downtown—we hopped over the River Liffey to the Brazen Head, Ireland’s self-proclaimed oldest pub, and settled in for some trad music with a side of Irish whiskey. The music was good, no one got stuck with those dishes, and there was nowhere else we’d rather be.
And the same goes for the menu
Freed from the confines of the standard American Thanksgiving routine—watching the parade, watching the food, watching the television—the world is suddenly your oyster. And if you want to only eat oysters, that’s okay, too.
For our Thanksgiving dinner, we started with an afternoon slice of Guinness-infused cake, then transitioned to the savory side with a charcuterie board and hummus courtesy of the cocktail bar. For our mains, the Brazen Head’s beef stew stole the show, while the bangers and mash and fish and chips followed closely behind. And between it all, brisk walks along the river and a bout of knee-slapping tunes—not to mention a good amount of lager and a few nips of whiskey—kept us up and buzzing, visions of tryptophan-induced comas far from our thoughts.
Travel might not be cheap, but what is?
As you might expect, flying during the holidays isn’t necessarily the most wallet-friendly endeavor. However, unless you pick a destination synonymous with highly seasonal escapes like Cancun, London, or Vienna, you’re looking at dropping a decent amount for Christmastime airfare (significantly less for Thanksgiving, of course). The upside? Once you get there, accommodations are generally less expensive during the winter, and the roving crowds of tourists are a bit thinner, as well.
In fact, said accommodations might even be running a holiday special. When we arrived at the Merrion Hotel in Dublin, we were surprised to find that the property’s Thanksgiving package, which included a weekend stay, spa treatment, and full turkey dinner at the onsite restaurant, was actually sold out. “We're starting to connect with Thanksgiving now because that's become more of a thing,” Fiachra Martin, director of guest relations, told us. “We threw it out there as a feeler and everybody just loved it—a good percentage of Americans, too. It’s been a huge success.”
One trick is to fly on the holiday itself, which often saves you a bunch of money on plane tickets. And if you’re skipping the festivities anyway, there’s no reason not to. Plus, think about how much you’re saving on home decor, grocery store expenses, and random gifts you feel obligated to buy people you see once a year. I’m no mathematician, but I’m fairly certain breaking even should be in the cards.
Two words: no traffic
I recently moved from the Midwest back to the East Coast, and being within a few hours’ driving distance of my family in New York is, while admittedly nice, also plenty exhausting. That four- to five-hour trek up I-95 is annoying at best, and a massive, slow-moving headache at worst. Throw in holiday traffic, and you’re looking at some very unhappy campers.
By traveling abroad, you’re ridding yourself of all driving duties. Leave it to the Ubers. Or, better yet, sit back and watch the scenery pass you by as you traverse the countryside on a high-speed train. On our trip, we mainly used taxis for getting around, subbing in the occasional long walk whenever we could. And with each ride, the subsequent lack of stress was well worth the €10-ish price tag .
Mingling with strangers beats bumping into high school classmates
Picture it: You’re back in your hometown over Thanksgiving or Christmas. Bored of listening to your dad yell at the TV while your mom doles out peppermint schnapps, you head to the local bar for a drink of your choosing and some quality alone time. And before you can even settle into your stool, you feel a hand land jovially on your shoulder. It’s Mark from AP Chem, and he can’t believe it’s really you.
There’s nothing quite like running into someone in your 30s you didn’t want to hang out with when you were 17. Because by the time you reach your 30s, you’ve perhaps regrettably built upon your teenage social graces, forcing you to engage Mark in small talk for the next 40 minutes or so. And that’s the best case scenario. What if Mark is harboring an entire Class of 2004 table at the back of the bar? And what if it happens to be trivia night? And what if they need a fourth? The horrors.
It goes without saying that launching yourself several thousand miles away from your city of origin ensures safety from all the Marks of yore. But not only that, it allows you to mix it up with strangers in the lowest of low stakes environments. While in Ireland, my wife and I learned how to “split the G” in a tiny County Meath pub, threw back Baby Guinness shots with traveling Brits at a rowdy Central Dublin pub, commiserated with fellow Ohio State fans over ciders at a sports bar in Broadstone, and crushed White Claws on the dance floor of a gay club in Temple Bar. And not a single person asked what we were up to these days.