THE LIFE CHANGING MAGIC of Exclusive Group Getaways

by NANCY HELLMRICH

Adjoining hotel rooms, schmotel rooms. Let’s get a yacht. Or a seaside villa with to-die-for views. Let’s vacate like the Clooneys on a YouTuber’s budget. Run away with each other to Tuscany, Austria, Anguilla, or Brazil. Let’s decide what to do as each moment arises. Then get lost in town and walk back along the beach … barefoot, tired, and happy.

We could invite a few friends, easygoing travelers, and split the cost seven ways. We could wake up early, drink Turkish coffee, and watch fishermen load their nets in pink dawn light. We could spend lazy afternoons riding scooters around the island or playing soccer with some rascally kids. Pop into a vineyard, bring a few bottles home, and invite the vintner to join us. Or wander into a taverna and ask where the locals go to dance.

There’s something about chartering a small yacht in the Seychelles or renting a Cyprian villa that feels less like a vacation and more like a change in lifestyle, a release. Something that says it’s okay to lean back a little farther, close our eyes, and revel in adolescent levels of abandon. To eat when we want, do as we please, go where the mood takes us, and dream impossible dreams on the deck beneath the stars.

With a yacht or a villa, there’s no lobby to walk through on the way to our rooms. No housekeeper knocking on our door. No dress code for dinner. No one in the pool or sauna before us. Nothing but a quiet, comfortable casualness that makes us consider moving to Provence, Portugal, or Puerto Rico for a year, maybe two, or the rest of our lives. People do that all the time. We could be those people. We could do this.

With a yacht or a villa, there’s no lobby

to walk through on the way to our rooms.

No housekeeper knocking on our door.

No dress code for dinner.