We did it again! 🎉 A big group of my college friends and I rented a house and enjoyed four soul-nourishing days together.
We’ve been pulling off these reunions for twelve or thirteen years now, depending on whether you count 2020 🦠, which we skipped. This year, eight of us convened in Boise, Idaho (a city I loved visiting solo back in 2019).
I can’t even tell you how entertaining and restorative these gatherings are. How packed they are with love, laughter, and support. My friends and I look forward to them for months, and afterward, we savor the memories.
In case you’ve ever yearned for a reunion with your friends, I’m going to share our well-honed approach. Steal anything that helps you spend quality time with the people you love.
Our getaways go from Thursday until Monday. Even though we’re sorry when the long weekend is over, four nights is a good amount of time to relax and reconnect.
Our scheduling stays the same, year after year. We used to spend a lot of energy hunting down days that would work for everyone. Now we know when our reunion is happening well ahead of time.
We alternate the east and west sides of the country. To goal is to be somewhat egalitarian about the onus of long travel distances, though our friend in Barcelona remains unfairly far from all our USA choices.
Our destinations tend to be mid-sized cities. We avoid huge metropolises like New York City or Chicago. We enjoy hiking together and hanging out at our rental house—maybe doing a little shopping. We’re not looking for a frenetic vibe with a long list of must-see destinations. Ideal locations have included Santa Fe, New Mexico; Asheville, North Carolina; Santa Barbara, California; and Stowe, Vermont. (I reported on New Orleans here back in 2018.)
Airports matter. Sometimes our destinations require a long drive from an airport (like Chatham, Massachusetts, last year). We’ve been tremendously lucky in such situations, but you’re introducing a huge risk when your rental house is far from the airport. If one person’s plane gets delayed, transporting them to the house can become a challenge.
We conduct a poll to identify our destination. We collect suggestions for a while and then use Google Forms or Doodle to identify our winner.
Sometimes we use polling to pick a rental house. We seem to use Airbnb a lot, though I imagine there have been some VRBOs too. Strong advice: Make sure your rental house has plenty of bathrooms.
We use a shared Google Sheet for all our flight information. This makes it easy to figure out who among us should rent a car, who will get ferried in each car after arrival, and what time groups need to be at the airport on departure day.
The Google Sheet can include other information too, such as group activities to consider and the address of the rental house. It’s helpful to keep everything in one bookmarked spot.
The first destination on Thursday is the grocery store. The beauty of renting a house is that you can eat many of your meals there. We load up on grazable goodies: olives, cheeses, hummus, crackers, chips, wine, etc. and we tend to spend our first night feasting on our smorgasbord and catching up. We always invest in at least one sheet cake.
We often create a shared shopping list ahead of time. This can be done in the same Google Sheet as mentioned above or in the Apple Notes app. A shared list can help when a large group is shopping together—items can be ticked off as they go into a shopping cart so you don’t end up with duplicate items.
Make sure you plan for caffeine ingestion. Some of my friends are tea drinkers; others go for coffee. Don’t forget to pick up half and half or whatever your people enjoy in the a.m. And if someone in your group drinks decaf, make sure that the package is well marked and noted. (Peet’s did me dirty in Boise and I accidentally went a whole day without my life force, caffeine.)
We often go to restaurants for lunch, rather than dinner. Dinners at the house are relaxed and unhurried, and we don’t need to drive anywhere. And if you’re lucky enough to have friends like mine (looking at you, Nikki, Kristin, and Becky), someone in your group might be able to orchestrate/prepare an amazing meal for everyone. One year, Nikki surprised us by preparing delicious dishes in advance and feeding us like royalty all weekend long. It goes without saying that everyone should pitch in with cleanup.
Splitwise makes it easy to divvy up costs. I’m sure similar apps exist, but we’ve found Splitwise really easy to use. We do not use Splitwise to reimburse one another, though, because it can be a hassle in that regard. We use Venmo and then manually check off our payments in Splitwise.
We’ve never brought our spouses or kids. (One exception was a year that coincided with our college reunion.) It goes without saying that we love said spouses and kids, but we’re looking for completely undiluted catch-up time.
We create—and cherish—shared photo albums. The photo above was captured on Nikki's phone by a friendly passerby in Boise, but we can all access it, thanks to the wonders of technology.
I’m already getting excited about next year. Maybe we’ll go to Charleston, South Carolina. Or Chattanooga, Tennessee. Or Savannah, Georgia. Even thinking about spending quality time with dear friends in a fun location is a treat. I hope you can get inspired by the notes above and make your reunion dreams a reality.
We’ve been pulling off these reunions for twelve or thirteen years now, depending on whether you count 2020 🦠, which we skipped. This year, eight of us convened in Boise, Idaho (a city I loved visiting solo back in 2019).
I can’t even tell you how entertaining and restorative these gatherings are. How packed they are with love, laughter, and support. My friends and I look forward to them for months, and afterward, we savor the memories.
In case you’ve ever yearned for a reunion with your friends, I’m going to share our well-honed approach. Steal anything that helps you spend quality time with the people you love.
Our getaways go from Thursday until Monday. Even though we’re sorry when the long weekend is over, four nights is a good amount of time to relax and reconnect.
Our scheduling stays the same, year after year. We used to spend a lot of energy hunting down days that would work for everyone. Now we know when our reunion is happening well ahead of time.
We alternate the east and west sides of the country. To goal is to be somewhat egalitarian about the onus of long travel distances, though our friend in Barcelona remains unfairly far from all our USA choices.
Our destinations tend to be mid-sized cities. We avoid huge metropolises like New York City or Chicago. We enjoy hiking together and hanging out at our rental house—maybe doing a little shopping. We’re not looking for a frenetic vibe with a long list of must-see destinations. Ideal locations have included Santa Fe, New Mexico; Asheville, North Carolina; Santa Barbara, California; and Stowe, Vermont. (I reported on New Orleans here back in 2018.)
Airports matter. Sometimes our destinations require a long drive from an airport (like Chatham, Massachusetts, last year). We’ve been tremendously lucky in such situations, but you’re introducing a huge risk when your rental house is far from the airport. If one person’s plane gets delayed, transporting them to the house can become a challenge.
We conduct a poll to identify our destination. We collect suggestions for a while and then use Google Forms or Doodle to identify our winner.
Sometimes we use polling to pick a rental house. We seem to use Airbnb a lot, though I imagine there have been some VRBOs too. Strong advice: Make sure your rental house has plenty of bathrooms.
We use a shared Google Sheet for all our flight information. This makes it easy to figure out who among us should rent a car, who will get ferried in each car after arrival, and what time groups need to be at the airport on departure day.
The Google Sheet can include other information too, such as group activities to consider and the address of the rental house. It’s helpful to keep everything in one bookmarked spot.
The first destination on Thursday is the grocery store. The beauty of renting a house is that you can eat many of your meals there. We load up on grazable goodies: olives, cheeses, hummus, crackers, chips, wine, etc. and we tend to spend our first night feasting on our smorgasbord and catching up. We always invest in at least one sheet cake.
We often create a shared shopping list ahead of time. This can be done in the same Google Sheet as mentioned above or in the Apple Notes app. A shared list can help when a large group is shopping together—items can be ticked off as they go into a shopping cart so you don’t end up with duplicate items.
Make sure you plan for caffeine ingestion. Some of my friends are tea drinkers; others go for coffee. Don’t forget to pick up half and half or whatever your people enjoy in the a.m. And if someone in your group drinks decaf, make sure that the package is well marked and noted. (Peet’s did me dirty in Boise and I accidentally went a whole day without my life force, caffeine.)
We often go to restaurants for lunch, rather than dinner. Dinners at the house are relaxed and unhurried, and we don’t need to drive anywhere. And if you’re lucky enough to have friends like mine (looking at you, Nikki, Kristin, and Becky), someone in your group might be able to orchestrate/prepare an amazing meal for everyone. One year, Nikki surprised us by preparing delicious dishes in advance and feeding us like royalty all weekend long. It goes without saying that everyone should pitch in with cleanup.
Splitwise makes it easy to divvy up costs. I’m sure similar apps exist, but we’ve found Splitwise really easy to use. We do not use Splitwise to reimburse one another, though, because it can be a hassle in that regard. We use Venmo and then manually check off our payments in Splitwise.
We’ve never brought our spouses or kids. (One exception was a year that coincided with our college reunion.) It goes without saying that we love said spouses and kids, but we’re looking for completely undiluted catch-up time.
We create—and cherish—shared photo albums. The photo above was captured on Nikki's phone by a friendly passerby in Boise, but we can all access it, thanks to the wonders of technology.
I’m already getting excited about next year. Maybe we’ll go to Charleston, South Carolina. Or Chattanooga, Tennessee. Or Savannah, Georgia. Even thinking about spending quality time with dear friends in a fun location is a treat. I hope you can get inspired by the notes above and make your reunion dreams a reality.
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