This past Monday turned out to be so awesome. Ask me why?

My husband and me were having a vacation and taking time off from work! It’s been a long time since we took a break and spent time in an unfamiliar place. We had been looking towards taking an escape from our daily lives, enjoying an adventurous trip and having a wild drive. How about that?

Yeah, it’s me at Napa Valley in the picture above, a wine-producing county in southern California. We are basically wine snobs but we decided to explore lot of wineries near around. We had fun tasting different flavors of the real authentic wine from the winery.

As I said, we enjoyed a wild drive across several places in this vacation starting from historic center of San Francisco that is the northeast quadrant of the city bordered by Market Street, then Union Square, the principal shopping and hotel district where I emptied out my husband’s pockets.

We stayed at the Fisherman’s Wharf, a tourist area featuring great sea food like Dungeness crab from a still-active fishing industry. If you are ever down there I highly recommend the Shellfish Risoto at Alioto’s. I will always remember the amazing view of the Historical Golden Gate Bridge and the residential neighborhood with the famously crooked Lombard Street, Oh man driving through the crooked street was really insane and as was spending time in the wild and nature built Red wood forest with its sky rocketing trees and chirps of birds. I was happy spending time in Asian cultured San Francisco’s Chinatown and enjoyed the food there which is one of my favorites. I even had some chicken feet with my eyes closed!!!

Well, we had to limit our visit to four days which was not enough to explore all the places in the San Francisco though. If you are planning to travel I recommend you go for at least a week. That will help you roam around more and explore all the places.

It’s nice to have a vacation once in a while! But it’s seems to be a trend these days for people to not use their vacation days but rather be at office and accumulate those vacation days. Are we really such workaholics or that tied up in our work? I doubt it!

The reasons are different; People get comfortable in their everyday routines or are trying to control their expenses or maybe they are insecure about their job in the current economy and don’t want to risk being away from work for a few days.

Whatever it may be, keeping one’s interest and excitement level consistent at work every day can be really challenging though. Spending your majority of time at work and then fulfilling family responsibilities after; men and women are equally busy all the time. Getting caught up in the routines including your work may not bore you but can bring down your interest level day by day and can reduce your productivity at the end of the day.

See, I am not going to throw at you a bunch of jargons for increasing productivity and making you a top performer in your profession but finding happiness in simple things will definitely keep you relaxed under stress and bring happiness in your everyday life.

Taking a few days of vacation or taking some time away from your work and spending it with the ones who you value most, may be your family or friends, would help to keep yourself refreshed all the time and would help you bring your best at work every day.

Believe me; I understand that we cannot fully separate our work from our personal lives. It is difficult to resist checking emails on your phone or laptop even when you are on your vacation but try to enjoy your time away from work.