Going on vacation can mean different things to different people, and King Charles III and Queen Camilla are no exception. What the queen “loves” to do on getaways doesn’t exactly have the king eager to join in.
Queen Camilla ‘loves’ reading and spending time outside on vacation
Some people like to have action-packed vacations. Others like to embrace a life of leisure. Queen Camilla falls in the latter category, according to her son, Tom Parker Bowles. The 50-year-old told the U.K.’s Sunday Times that his mom is a big fan of relaxing on vacation. However, his stepfather, the king? Not so much.
“My mother loves walking, and I love walking, so we just wander off together,” the food critic told the publication. “She hasn’t changed at all over the years: if you give her the sun and a book, she’s perfectly happy.”
Parker Bowles continued, sharing that while King Charles is a fan of walking, sitting down to read a book just isn’t his style. “The King loves walking too, but he’s the most hard-working man I’ve ever met,” he said. “I don’t think he’s the sort of person who can just flop onto a deck chair and disappear into a book.” (King Charles is famous for working long days, which Camilla and Prince William have said can get frustrating.)
Although work trips might be the exception. As Queen Camilla told British Vogue in 2022, she and King Charles like to read. “When we go away, the nicest thing is that we actually sit and read our books in different corners of the same room,” the queen, 77, said.
“It’s very relaxing because you know you don’t have to make conversation. You just sit and be together,” she added.
Charles and Camilla have canceled two vacations due to his brief hospitalization
The king and queen’s schedules are a little lighter on vacations than they were just days ago. Following King Charles’s brief hospitalization on March 27, 2025, due to reported side effects from his ongoing cancer treatment, the couple canceled two upcoming vacations (via The Sun).
An “Arican spa retreat” they planned to take together got canceled. So did the king’s “annual walking holiday in Romania.” The king was reportedly “forced to pull out” of the spa vacation “only days in advance.”
Palace insiders have since called his hospital stay “a bump in the road,” per the Mirror. Sources also shared that the 76-year-old monarch’s cancer treatment is “very much headed in the right direction.”
King Charles began treatment in early February 2024 after announcing he’d been diagnosed with an undisclosed type of cancer.
The king and queen will mark their wedding anniversary on a state visit to Italy
Although King Charles and Queen Camilla canceled their vacations, they’re still doing some traveling in the coming days. The pair is headed to Italy on a three-day state visit beginning April 7, 2025. (Their schedule’s changed somewhat with their visit to the Holy See now postponed.)
The visit overlaps with a big personal milestone for King Charles and Queen Camilla—their wedding anniversary. On April 9, 2025, they’ll have been married 20 years. Details on how they’ll mark the occasion are unknown.
