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The only thing that I really plan for is having a place to stay for the arrival night of a trip overseas...I learned this from traveling alone to the UK as a young woman & sleeping the first night in London at Victoria Station on top of my backpack. I usually have a general idea of what I want to see or do in a certain area, whether it's a trip on the other side of the world or a local road trip, & figure it out as we go along. Some of my best travel memories are when I/we just stumbled on something unplanned or unknown.
In the 12 trips I took to Central and South America between 2004 & 2010, with the exception of my first trip (just a hotel reservation after landing at night), I merely flew into the Airport and, with my Lonely Planet Guide, I made no reservations whatsoever. Winged it the whole time. Never did I ever arrive somewhere, by bus, that I couldn't find a place to stay that night.
I hate the whole idea of it, making any hotel reservation in advance, particularly in a foreign country.
I used to go away with a rough idea of what I wanted to see and camping gear just in case. Now that I have two daughters whose big concern is when they can use the hotel pool I keep the days fairly open but always have rooms booked ahead of time.
We typically pick destinations and go from there.. I'll give you an example.
Last year, we decided we wanted to go to Europe around Christmas/New Years.. We had a ton of miles, so I did some searching to see which flights we could get over and back around that time. We really wanted to try to hit Amsterdam for New Years Eve and get Lisbon, Portugal in the mix.
We ended up flying into Brussels.. Stayed about 3 days. We had only one thing we knew we wanted to do, which was a museum to see a certain painting (which wasn't even there at the the time we went)... Otherwise we winged it, and had a blast.
Then took the train to Bruges.. stayed the night. No plans.. Did a Free Walking Tour at night which was super cool.
Then, took train to Amsterdam.. no plans either except to party on NYE.. we roamed around the neighborhood we were staying at.
We then flew to Lisbon for 5 days... The only plans we had were to go to a Soccer Match and the Zoo. Otherwise, we explored on our own. We had decided we wanted to go to Sintra... Until we ended up at a very local restaurant we discovered on a free walking tour in Lisbon. We have an incredible story from doing that.. but the best part was a local in there that told us we didn't have enough time to do Sintra right, so, go to this other place instead.. We took the bus out (via the instructions he gave us) to Ericerra.. one of the coolest places ever! We had an absolute blast with that!!!
So, long story, we have a very basic plan, and then we wing it once we are there. We tend to do AirBnB's, so we love to explore the local neighborhoods and just happen upon things, which has given us a lot of fantastic stories along the way!
You really should learn to relax.. A vacation is to wind down NOT have every second accounted for...
And what's the deal about going shopping instead of a planned event..
So restaurant A is closed or has a big line or is something else.. So what.. Just find another restaurant and eat...
You miss wonderous things by being so rigid.... Just like going shopping all day.. If you didn't do that and stuck to your "PLAN". you might miss a new restaurant or a new store with things you couldn't live without... Or maybe meeting new people or seeing new things.....
OR even being in a movie.... Happened to me with the movie Miss Congenialty.. Had I not decided on the spur of the moment to go to the Alamo and saw them filming I would not have been asked to be an extra....
That's the thing. Having a fairly planned out schedule is MORE relaxing to me. Not knowing where I am going ahead of time stresses me out in a big way. And I don't plan for every second. But I do have the large activities planned out ahead of time. When we went to Disneyworld, for example, I knew which parks we were going to go to on which days, based on online reviews of which ones had the longest lines on which days of the week, which ones had certain attractions closed or open on certain days, etc.
And I did say that I was flexible on some things, like choice of restaurant.
Also, not everyone likes shopping. My husband and I both hate it with a passion that burns like an oven inside a volcano on the sun. I buy, I don't shop. If I go into a shop, I know within 2 minutes whether I am interested in browsing or not, and it is almost always not. My mom and my sister are the same way. There are a few unique shops I will spend some time looking around, but if I'm with a "browser", I'm bored out of my mind within 5 minutes. Absolute waste of an afternoon, in my book. Also, there are very few "things I couldn't live without". Actually, I can't think of any, right now. I'm not a "stuff" person.
No need to be insulting (and yes, your post was very insulting) just because different people like to do different things in different ways. If we all lived the same life, the world would be a really boring place.
You sound like an extrovert, which is nice, but from what I've seen, most extroverts don't seem to understand that some people are introverts, and don't enjoy the same activities as they do.
We are doing a 10 day river cruise out of Amsterdam this spring, then off to Ireland for a 17 day driving trip. Back to Amsterdam for 4 days, then home.
We know where we are staying at every location. We know some of the places we are going to visit. The rest of the time we will wing it. As an example, we are staying at a seaside hotel at one of our Ireland stops. Ocean view beautiful room. One of our splurges. And a break for some (we expect) needed rest. So we know where we will be staying, but all we have to do is get the itch, jump in the car and go if we want to. No plan, just look at a map or a brochure from the lobby, see a place that looks good and off we go. Perfect.
We've always liked the mix of knowing we have a place to stay, but running all over to wherever we want in the area. Works for us.
Plan broadly (I'm going to...), wing the details (I'll sleep at...)
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