Vacation…a word often defined for me as “a longer than anticipated detour from any regular workout routine.”  Despite the gym wear in my suitcase, I never get to the hotel gym as anticipated nor do I actually do the ‘hotel WODs’ given to me by my Crossfit coaches.  The clothes just take up suitcase space and then return home clean to be put away until next time I pack for a trip.  

This year I decided to just “be active” and made sure to plan “activity” into our travels. My thought was that we would leisurely peruse the souvenir shops and enjoy moonlit strolls along the beach.  

I had no idea that much of our movement this week would be forced activity; multiple flights of stairs that had to be ascended/descended ANYTIME we wanted to go ANYWHERE.  That wouldn’t have been too much of a problem had we not decided on day one to be “beasts” and take the advice of the locals to “take the stairs down the ‘hill’ to the road and walk to town. It’s beautiful”  

“Sure, a beautiful walk DOWN stairs, how hard could that be?” 1500+ stairs and miles of narrow, congested road later we arrived in town.  

Yes. You read that correctly.  One. Thousand. Five. Hundred. Plus.  

Needless to say, despite it’s beauty, we took the local bus back UP the ‘hill.’  The following day was made up of reading from the lounge chairs on our patio as soreness from lactic acid buildup made climbing the never ending paths of stairs nearly impossible.  

The lack of food in our house quickly necessitated navigating the torturous stairs to the parking lot where we could catch the bus to town: I no longer felt the need to “beast mode” my vacation.  I rather enjoyed the subsequent sardine-packed bus rides to town.  They also afforded us a workout: we had to tense every muscle and brace ourselves to keep from falling into strangers as the bus careened down the hill through hairpin turns.  The fact I stopped counting boarding passengers at thirty-nine when the sign stated capacity was twenty-six is a post for another day.  

In the end, our AirBnB choice of “a house overlooking the beautiful Mediterranean” proved to be more than suitable to keep us active. The final day of our Amalfi Coast adventure we hiked five miles on a trail appropriately named the Path of the Gods; only God Himself could create something so stunningly beautiful!  What an amazing finale to our coastal escapade.  

So, what is the moral of this story?  

Things may not always turn out the way you plan but you can always plan to enjoy the way things turn out.