how do you balance researching and planning your trip; and leaving room for discovery and not spoiling your trip?
how do you balance researching and planning your trip; and leaving room for discovery and not spoiling your trip?
how do you balance researching and planning your trip; and leaving room for discovery and not spoiling your trip?
I make a list of everything I want to do or see and I assign each point of interest to a day. These activities don't fill up a whole day usually so I consider the rest of the day "free time" and that's when I walk around with no real goal for the rest of the day. I've found it works for me and it beats being worried about keeping a schedule when you're supposed to be enjoying yourself.
I research everything I want to do prior to the trip. Then I divide the sights between must see's/do's and places I would visit but do not deem necessary. I group them by proximity and just make sure I would not try to visit in a day that its closed. Then when I am in the trip I just wake up and do as I wish. Don't like to have a strict itinerary while travelling, unless it's something that requires much planning/travelling long distances while in destination. For those I decide one or few days earlier but while I'm in my destination. Always keep a "free day", usually the day I get to my destination or day after (if arrive late) just to roam around and perhaps get in one of those touristic buses just to get a notion of how sights are disposed and distances between places. Would not exchange my random two hours doing nothing while sitting at a cafe having a drink to visit the fifth museum or tenth different neighborhood.
I keep my expectations pretty modest. I like to do one, maybe two max, things a day, and spend the rest of my time bumming around and relaxing. And unless there’s something like a ticketed entry with limited availability, I rarely decide which thing I intend to do until just before I do it.
But I take a lot of small trips (6+ times/year, occasionally 10 or more), usually focused on just one or two cities, so there is always inherently limited scope.
I haven’t felt the need to rush and see a lot very quickly over a wide area in years.
I enjoy planning, I always make a list of what I want to do and maybe do with all the opening times, prices, and locations plotted on a map. Then I fit everything I want to do and fill in the maybes where I can, but always leave a bit of time between things (lets say an hour as an example but it's not a hard rule). I don't really go to bars or party because I'm an old loner so if there's some place to walk around and chill I just do it in the evenings when everything closes.
You aren't a Real Traveler™ if you aren't spontaneously de-worming orphans in Somalia to save the village. Real™ ones don't travel for "toorism". We only travel with purpose.
No but joking aside tourism is fricking lame and if you want some great experiences, try traveling with an actual purpose besides tourism like volunteering, business, education, and it's 10x better in every way. Yes that includes cooming because if you're autistic enough to have to fly to another country for pussy, you're probably autistic enough to cross paths with some pimps and gangsters and that's pretty fricking funny. I love reading the coomer greentexts here. Horrifying and hilarious. If you want to be a tourist, you'd be better off going on Google Street View because you'd get a better view than the crowds and instathot selfies. Sorry to disappoint.
I've thought about doing the volunteering thing, any suggestions for orgs to volunteer with? I don't mind building shit or feeding/teaching kids.
>tourism is fricking lame and if you want some great experiences, try traveling with an actual purpose besides tourism like volunteering, business, education
Totally agree. What's the point of traveling just to see something and eat shitty food made for tourists. Might as well stay home and watch it on YouTube. This kind of "low involvement" travel is really just to say you've been there. You don't learn anything, don't interact with anyone except for the staff and other tourists. Kind of like van life.
The real travelers were the coomers we met along the way
This, i just travel to have easy sex and explore the nightlife, do things that I don't do that. I literally develop another identity while traveling
a badly planned trip would be a bigger spoiler
if solo, i am lazy
i will enjoy nice hike for an hour or 2 through trails or historical area, but after that im done