After taking a variety of vacations with my wife at a wide range of costs/locations, I've realized a few things that I will apply to our next trip:
1. A vacation packed full of flights/events/traveling on a schedule is exhausting and we never really relaxed. Canned vacations left me bored to death (cruises, resorts, etc). My main memories of those trips are the boredom. Not many memories of all the 'fun' we had.
2. When my wife and I met, we loved to explore together, we didn't get much sleep, we didn't plan things out well, but we enjoyed the hell out of having adventures with each other (to this day, if we get lost or if a day out gets all buggered up by traffic/things we were going to do are closed/unforeseeable doom, we'll look at each other and say "now it's an adventure").
3. So I'd get the most out of a trip that probably involves a low budget, having no idea what we want to do, but picking a general direction and going with it, and being open to the adventures we'll have on the way. When we were young we found such joy in exploring, and I think we overplan everything now and forget how much fun it can be to be out there doing something new and strange and unknown.
- Go to the airport with backpacks packed and picking a random flight, renting a car and driving to wherever, then flying back, or riding a train, or whatever way you find to get home; backpacking until you're tired of it then stay at a 5-star hotel, try to get lost somewhere, stay in a hostel, do something a little bit dangerous, etc.