If you don't do beach holidays, what do you do?

[TitanicWasAGreatMovie]

I am wondering what other people do (or would like to do if they had the budget!). I am not keen on the beach but that has been our family holiday every year since I was a kid!

Now I don't have young kids at home I'd like to travel and see other places, with some relaxation time but not the beach.

And I know lots of people can't go on holiday - so I'd love to hear real life experiences + fantasy ideas, please 😊

Ride the range in Wyoming. Fly down the Grand Canyon. Photograph Lions in Kenya or Jaguars in Brazil or Google activity holidays and just go.

Do it before the ecopolice take your car, passport and every penny you earn.

Be careful who you vote for.

Wander around a city or even a village.
Take a day trip to a vineyard (or other industry) this could be on a bus or in Australia on a river boat. I've also seen around couple of Brady distilleries and a diamond factory in Amsterdam.
Go round art galleries and museums.
Try the local language.
Watch a festival procession.
Eat and drink.
Shop.
Spend a day at a thermal baths - that was Uruguay and Ecuador but they exist in Europe too.
Take a train to another city.
Go to the theatre / opera - I saw Don Giovanni at the Sydney opera house.
Visit a rain forrest or other UNESCO site.
Take a boat trip to the great barrier reef.
Taken a tour on the back or a Harley Davidson.
Go to a zoo / animal park / wildlife centre. Bonus if you meet a friendly animal in the wild, so for me that was a bandicoot and on another occasion quokkas.

When I was mobile I'd also do some hiking, camping, canoeing.

Currently on a city break. We have visited this place a few times in the past, but we do different things each time

First day heavy rain
Visited an art gallery

Second day no rain
Visited several markets & walked along river

Third day a little rain
Going to visit a smaller town

I do lots of city breaks but for longer holidays normally go somewhere where there might be a beach but also lots of things to do / see. We are just back from Sicily which was amazing and spent 1 day out of 10 on the beach. In May we went to Ischia/Procida and Naples - again loads to see. Last year we did the Cinque Terre and Nice/Antibes. Next year I am planning Puglia/Matera and the white Trulli villages. Italian Lakes are another good option - Maggiore/Como/Garda are all stunning. You might guess I like Italy. Catching up after many years of Eurocamp/family friendly holidays mostly in France. I do like a swimming pool though.

As well as beach holidays we do:
City breaks- sometimes with a beach nearby
Spa hotels
Festivals
Motorcycle rallies and tours
Campervan tours around the UK to the peak district, Scotland, lake district, Cotswolds, Wales amongst others.
We also have a National trust pass and like theme parks and adventure stuff like tubing, quad biking, archery etc.
Cruises- which gives us the best of all worlds - sightseeing, lakes and mountains, city tours, nature and also beach days.

City breaks for food, culture, just seeing new places, and I do lots of walking/wild swimming holidays, but not like beach resort sort of swimming, more lake on a day's walk sort of swimming.

As well as cultural stuff we like to walk - more amble, really. DH likes photographing butterflies, I like wild flowers - I get DH to photograph them and identify them later. Even a walk in a city park can be good for this - Funchal's park had monarch butterflies and there were lovely swallowtails flying around the archeological sites in Cyprus.

Eating at local restaurants...

Not generally interested in shopping except for flags and hardware. I love ironmongers, and foreign shops always have interesting and different gadgets. We came back from Spain once with a suitcase full of hinges and doorknobs, I've got a floor brush from Thailand, an ice scraper from Canada and several items for my ice cube tray collection (DD gave me an interesting tray from the sex museum in Amsterdam!)

Finding a flag shop can be fun. The one we found in Cyprus was combined with a religious outfitters 🤔(We have a flagpole in our garden)

Beach holidays are so boring.

I go hiking, kayaking, sight seeing etc

I do city breaks for gigs, just in the UK so far but I love it.
Dd is grown up so it's just me and I can do as I please.

Walking holidays in the lakes, Scotland, west coast of Ireland

Many city breaks, it’s easy to spend a week in a large city.

Usually ski once a year too

I go on sea and river cruises,city breaks, twin centre holidays, holidays in a hotel with a pool and then either hire a car or do a big excursion every other day and a smaller thing the day in between. I like to make use of spas in hotels.
My next few holidays are a European river cruise, visiting some friends in Florida for thanksgiving and then staying in an Airbnb with them and doing things like food tours and boat trips. European Christmas market break on Eurostar, Mauritius stay followed by a cruise to different places in Africa where I’ll do some safari trips and sightseeing. Then sightseeing in New York with grown up DC.

Road trips! Stopping for 2/3 nights in different places. Have done this lots in the US and Canada (currently exploring eastern Canada!) and also Croatia. Would like to do Italy as a road trop too.

Also city breaks, usually one for 3/4 nights in the winter.

And cruises- we don’t just cruise for the sake of it, we deliberately pick cruises that hit really awesome destinations such as the Norwegian fjords or Alaska (AMAZING) rather than ones with lots of sea/beach days. Next year looking at cruising from Dubai to India!

Holidays that include sports, sometimes more than one sport or interests

Multi centre holidays

Road trips

Cities (a week or more for somewhere like Rome or Florence not a 'city break'). Nielsen for watersports - beaches are just for getting boats on and off of.
Inland waterways holidays eg a boat on the broads, Caledonian canal.
Walking holidays in U.K. national parks.

Mix of sightseeing, gentle walks (dodgy knee, can't do anything hilly or longer) in forests or coast.
I don't mind the odd beach day if we are in a sea side area. I love the sea and don't even mind rough weather to walk along the coast.
DD likes Go Ape or similar, we all like going to zoos and lots of history.

We did Boston, Cape Cod and New York this year. Next year will be Berlin and Denmark. In May we will be in France for sightseeing.

Camping, hiking, adventuring.

I LOVE driving holidays too! I've driven all over Europe.

Webe done very few neach holidays. When we've stayed at a beach resort, we've used it as a base and gone on excursions more than half of the time.

We've done lots of different types of holidays over the years. City breaks, little tours by train/bus, theme park breaks, Center parks, Butlins, villas in Europe, Eurocamp, festivals. Often we'll pick one sight somewhere in the world/UK that appeals to one of us, and build a break around that, doing sightseeing in and around the area.

I enjoy just picking somewhere in the UK and exploring. Walks, shops, landmarks. Even the most boring of places can be good for a weekend if you've never been before.

We did inter railing this summer as it was our youngest's GCSE year so we had one big holiday.
Took in Italy (Rome, Pompeii, Venice), Switzerland (Lugano, Olten with day visits to Lucerne and Kandersteg), Germany (Wuppertal and Hamburg with a day visit to Cologne) and Denmark (Copenhagen).
We do usually do city breaks anyway. I'm not keen on driving abroad and oh can't drive, so we tend to favour the trains.

Walking- Pembrokeshire, the Lakes, the Peak District or down mountains in Switzerland.
I go on organised swimming holiday. DH surfs or skis.
We’re also going to Pompeii and Rome soon.
I'd love another trip using a European sleeper train.

I do quite a few Lakes & Mountains hols - you don't need to climb the mountains :)

Switzerland is generally lovely - pricy but such gorgeous scenery, and the museums are generally extremely well done. Also the public transport is brilliant so you really don't need a car.

Austria is a cheaper alternative, as is Lake Bled in Slovenia.

One of my favourite holidays ever was Merano in the South Tyrol - technically northern Italy but culturally Austrian. Gorgeous scenery, loads of castles and museums, and great public transport options. The town itself was really lovely too. Local cuisine mixes the Italian and Germanic influences.

The Italian lakes have a lot to offer - lots to see and do, but also lovely little towns and the water to look at/go on boat trips.

A river cruise might also suit you if the DC have actually left home - relaxing but excursions to interesting places every day.

Lisbon and Barcelona. Get a hotel with s rooftop pool.
Rainforest tours in Central America.
Marrakech.

We live by the beach so tend to do mountains/lakes/hiking for our holidays, we did a road trip round the UK one year too which was fun.

I'd like to go do a road trip round Wales round year.

We usually get a villa with a pool if we're going abroad - though our dc are now adults so not sure how often that will happen again. Relax in the shade or sun, swim, read, eat and drink loads, eat out, go on city breaks, get out into the countryside, activities (last holiday abroad was Croatia, kids did kayaking and zip lining, all had a day tour on a boat with snorkelling and swimming and food).

We're lucky to also have a second home in the Scottish islands and we go there more often (but mostly every second year in the summer, plus Easter and autumn time). There we read, sleep, knit, sleep, do the garden, sleep, go to the beach, sleep, drink wine, sleep, etc etc etc ....

I don't think I've been on a primarily beach holiday since I was a child, just so much else to do!!

We go to France. Usually the beach for a week combined with a week somewhere else, eg Loire Valley or Dordogne. Lots of castles, historical towns, markets, lakes and rivers etc. Stay at a campsite so kids can swim in the pool.