迷你假期——休息，休息一会儿

忙碌了一阵子，是不是特别想出去放松一下心情呢？到别的城市旅游一下？去野外透透气？但是如果钱包不给力怎么办？难道一直等下去，一直等到钱包鼓起来的那吗？这种想法已经out了！

不需要进行为期太长的休假，我们只需要短短的几天时间，这样既可以达到防松身心的目的，同时又可以给我们的钱包大大的省上一笔。如果你有出去放松的计划，不妨试试迷你小假期哦。

If this languishing economy has left you pressed for time and short of money, you might consider stretching that relaxing getaway into bite-sized breaks.

Experts say mini-vacations, brief holidays of four days or less, offer today's traveler a restorative pause without the pressure or expense of a long journey.

"The mini-vacation is a fantastic way of changing the scene without breaking the bank," said Amelie Hurst of travel website TripAdvisor.

"The trip you spend 12 months planning and pouring all your budget into has to live up to a dream," she explained. "With a mini-vacation travelers can find themselves more ready to go with the flow."

In a recent Trip Advisor poll of almost 1,700 Americans, 22 percent said they opted to take shorter vacations of two-to-four days due to finances and six percent said it was due to vacation time.

Peter Yesawich, CEO of Ypartnership, which tracks travel trends, said the weekend getaway has reigned as the most popular American leisure trip for over a decade.

Last year, with the economy still stuck in the doldrums, it accounted for almost half of all U.S. vacations.

"To Americans a vacation is a birthright," said Yesawich. "It doesn't matter how low the Dow goes, how high the unemployment, the majority Americans are still taking vacations."

Yesawich said work habits reinvented vacation habits in the prosperous 1980s and 1990s, when employment rates were rising, along with the number of two-income households.

"Work habits began to constrain vacation habits," he said. "We became more beholden to work and that drove vacation around weekends."

Yesawich said the Internet accelerated the trend and the latest economic downturn sealed it.

"Prior to 1996 there was a sanctity to Saturday, but that has disappeared in this 24/7 environment," he said.

Genevieve Brown, of Travelocity, said autumn is traditionally a popular season for mini-vacations because the kids are back in school and families have less time.

"People are still committed to taking vacations, but they're watching travel dollars closely," Brown said. "Shorter vacations make sense."