Photo: Lifeguard Chair at Castaway Cay
Should you sleep on vacation, or should you wake up early? One of the advantages to getting out early onto Castaway Cay, the Disney Cruise Line’s Bahamas island, is that you get to see some areas with few or even no people around. That lets you see things like this photo below.
As you can see, there were almost no people in sight when we got out to the Family Beach at Castaway Cay that morning during our 2017 Disney Cruise. Although he is hard to see, the lifeguard had arrived to take up his chair, but he did not have many people to watch over. To me, that is the perfect time to get out and get a photo or two. Or to get in the water and enjoy having it all to yourself. As you might guess from looking at this photo, the lack of sun was probably one thing that kept more people from getting out there early, but sometimes no sun can be a blessing, especially for us fair-skinned people.
Of course, even with the clouds and some rain drops, many more people did eventually make their way out onto the beach with us, so our isolation did not last for long. But it was nice for a short while.
So here is the often-asked question: Should you sleep on vacation? The obvious answer is yes, because you have to sleep some. But just how much should you sleep on vacation? That’s a more tricky question.
We like to get away from everything and just relax, and going on a cruise or to the beach does get us away from a lot of the things that we have to do at home, such as laundry, ironing, house cleaning, horse feeding, and all that other fun stuff. Just getting away from those things provides a large measure of relaxation, and that is the beauty of getting away from home for a while.
But then when you are away from all of that home life stuff, how much should you actually sleep? Should you get 10 to 11 hours of sleep each day? Or should you save sleeping for when you are at home?
I suppose it partly depends on what type of vacation you are on. Are you trying to get away to relax, or are you trying to see things that are different from what you have at home? Or maybe a mixture of both?
For us, cruises are more in the category of seeing different things. We don’t live near water, and we don’t go to nice islands and other places every day, so we want to try to maximize our time doing those things as much as possible, while still getting enough rest to be able to enjoy it all. But other trips, such as our July 2017 Florida trip, are for us more of a mixture, where we see some things and then just relax. For those, we get a little more sleep than we would for the other category of trips. And actually, just being away from home and not having to do those chores gives us a good bit more time to sleep than what we have at home.
The best trips are the ones where you can find a good balance of rest and fun. When you can find that, you will come home feeling like you have had the best vacation ever. At least until the next one where you once again find that balance. It never gets old.
Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. - Hebrews 4:1
About the photo:
The downside to being out at Castaway Cay early on this particular morning was that all of those clouds combined with the sun not yet being high in the sky to give everything a really gray look. Fortunately, I was able to overcome this with some processing, adding some artificial sunlight to the little bits of sun that were making it through that hole in the clouds. Check out this before-and-after version to see the difference:
Photo: A single Raw exposure, processed in Photoshop. Read more about photography tips, photo software, camera gear, and more at Steve’s Photography Tips.
Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M10
Lens: Rokinon 7.5mm f/3.5 Fisheye Lens
Date: June 10, 2017
Location: Castaway Cay, Bahamas
