Turn another year older with a birthday vacation

Making it another trip around the sun is the perfect reason to pack your bags and celebrate. Birthday travel can provide a great opportunity to relax, refresh and bring in the new phase of your life in a setting that allows for a sense of rebirth, a step away from home allowing you space to return anew. Still, with all the hopes and expectations that can go into planning birthday travel, it can be helpful to take some special steps to make sure the experience lives up to its promise.

Consider renting a car

Maintaining flexibility is part of what helps a birthday trip flow as smoothly as possible. To achieve the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure agenda, try booking a car rental. Being able to linger at certain destinations, avoiding the snares and stress of public transit delays and having a wider travel radius all add bonus points to any birthday adventure.

Balance group and solo time

While partying, brunching and picture-taking with friends is an important part of the ideal birthday agenda, it’s important to prioritize space to decompress. Competing energies can be draining when there is hope to create a joyous mood, and quiet reflection can help usher in a banner year. Be sure to plan in some solo time to drink coffee, take a hike, write in a journal and ponder privately to close out your year with a moment of peace and quiet.

Choose a moment or two you just for you

Between reservations and timetables, taxicabs and train tunnels, a birthday celebration trip can pass by in the blink of an eye. Without managing our expectations correctly, we may end up feeling like we didn’t get much of a birthday at all. To combat this, choose one or two key moments that you want to focus on experiencing and use them to guide the trip. The moment you choose may be about finding the perfect setting like a restaurant, scenic view or shopping center, or it may be about curating the perfect emotional climate: sentimental, celebratory or silly.

This story was originally published September 14, 2022 at 9:00 AM.