Discover the secret to a vacation close to home
It’s Thursday night and you realize you have some free time … how do you plan an impromptu vacation? That’s the situation Frank and I found ourselves in last weekend.
We decided to go do some Christmas shopping and then an evening out in Fort Collins, a city 20 miles away from us. We had an amazing weekend.
We booked a very cool bedroom in an art studio, did a brewery tour of one of the most successful, fun to work places in America, and hung out at a speakeasy inspired bar.
![Our Airbnb room in the Fort Collins Artery, a hub for artists.](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-14.18.06-e1419309897124-576x1024.jpg)
1. Pick a town or city close to you.
Pick a town or city big enough to have a few Airbnb’s with a good selection of restaurants and a few tourist attractions. A small city of 200,000 will do. A city is great. A college town has lots of potential.
2. Book an interesting Airbnb.
We stayed at the Downtown Artery. It’s a hub for artists in Northern Colorado. They have artist studios, a recording studio and an art gallery. Plus several bedrooms in the back for visiting musicians. The room was awesome – wood floors, interesting colors, remodeled bathroom – kind of what you’d expect from a group of artists – and the people were super friendly.
![2014-12-20 14.17.23](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-14.17.23-e1419309284571-576x1024.jpg)
3. Be a tourist at home.
If you are like most people, there are probably lots of tourist attractions close to home that you’ve never checked out because … well, because they are in your backyard. We have friends that decided to spend a week in Denver (their backyard) seeing the sights they’d never seen.
We decided to tour the New Belgium Brewery and it was a fascinating tour. The tour was 90 minutes long and the tour guide was not only the happiest guy around but he had lots of great stories. I bet half the tour looked up jobs on the New Belgium website when we were done.
![2014-12-20 15.57.19](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-15.57.19-e1419309518763-576x1024.jpg)
![We also got plenty of samples to go with the great stories.](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-15.58.52-1024x576.jpg)
4. Pick one spot you wouldn’t normally go.
Our favorite dinner spot, Fish, was completely booked, so I pulled out the phone and checked out Yelp. We ended up in Social, a bar styled after speakeasys. The place had lots of atmosphere, great innovative drinks and just a fun vibe. From the outside, the place was just a small sign over some concrete stairs descending into the sidewalk. Inside it was a crowded bar full of people from all walks of life enjoying drinks and appetizers. (All walks of life but all with some money – the drinks were not cheap.) The table behind us first had a couple dressed to go to the opera (or at least what I would think of as clothes for the opera) and when they left they were replaced with a couple dressed in tshirts and tank tops sporting lots of tattoos and piercings.
![2014-12-20 18.29.28](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-18.29.28-1024x576.jpg)
![2014-12-20 19.02.32](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-20-19.02.32-1024x576.jpg)
And most interestingly, the acoustics were awesome. The place was packed (there was a line outside) and yet we could hear each other across the table without shouting.
![2014-12-21 09.12.21](https://canyoucrossthestreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014-12-21-09.12.21-1024x576.jpg)
Where are you going next weekend? Go plan a trip near home and then let us know what you did!
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