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June 26, 2016 10:42 AM Subscribe

There are two types of travelers in the world; which one are you? — a checklist by Sarah Cooper.

(Sarah Cooper previously)

posted by Johnny Wallflower (129 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite

I worked in hostels for twenty years. I met both of these people every day. It was always entertaining when they were travelling together.

The "negotiations" one reminds me: in 2008 I had a work trip for which the easiest routing would be to fly into Calgary and out of Vancouver or vice versa. Those of you who have done similar open-ended trips know that the stumbling block is often that if you pick up a rental car on one city and drop it off in another, you pay a hefty surcharge, known as the drop fee.

My Albertan dad pointed out that in those days (pre-oil sands collapse) a lot of people were migrating to Alberta for work at high wages so many were likely driving one-way and were prepared to eat the drop fee — what is five hundred bucks when you are starting an $80k per year job? He reasoned that maybe rental cars were piling up in Alberta and I could get a good deal to drive one to BC. I checked around and found a rental place in Calgary where a very helpful dude named Bill confirmed this was the case, and he set up a very attractive package: $300, one week, unlimited km, drop off in Vancouver. Perfect! I made the reservation.

A month later my dad collected me and my traveling companion at the airport in Calgary and ferried us over to the rental car agency where our car was awaiting us. When we arrived, the not-especially-helpful guy behind the counter told us that car was ready and it would be $1600 for the week and please sign here and we will get you on your way. I asked what had happened to $300. "We no longer offer that package." Well, can I talk to Bill? "Bill is off today." Well, can I talk to the manager? "Also off today — it is Saturday." Guy behind the counter, Omar by name, recommended we sign for it, pay over the $1600, and call the boss in Monday to explain the situation, and the boss could refund the difference. I responded that if I signed my name under the $1600, I was not in a good bargaining position to get 80% of it back come Monday.

The increasingly flustered Omar then began poking around for alternate packages to get us away from the counter. He offered us one that was substantially similar (one week, pick up here, drop off there, no drop fee, $350) but did not include the unlimited km, and there was a hefty charge per extra kilometer over the daily limit. "What is the daily limit?" Quoth Omar: "Zero."

After more tapping around the computer, Omar offered us a decent setup that did include unlimited km, but the trick was it had to be returned to Calgary. My dad, who had stuck around to make sure we got a car, said, "if you are coming back to Calgary, why not take one of my cars?" Good point. Fare thee well, Omar!

I did end up talking to Bill, the original point of contact, a few days later. He apologized for the mixup but explained that since their company had been bought by a week earlier by a larger company that rhymes with Gudget, all these agreed-upon contracts like mine had been unilaterally cancelled and replaced with Gudget's rental rates. Bill confirmed that the rental cars were still accumulating in Calgary, and they would end up paying employees to drive them to BC and other places. I spent an hour trying to give them money to perform this service for them.

Brilliant business model.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 11:20 AM on June 26, 2016 [48 favorites]

I am mostly the travel clueless and anxious twat to the right with the exception that I do plan stuff. Ridiculous that the first time I went to a Starbucks was when I visited Amsterdam - of all times. Because they obviously have a lack of interesting coffee shops, you know...
posted by Foci for Analysis at 11:21 AM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is like the Goofus and Gallant of traveling and I love it.
posted by lunasol at 11:28 AM on June 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

The one (usually wearing a pink shirt) is a Traveler; the other one is a Clueless Tourist who should just stay home. Everyone involved would be happier that way.

Note: No checklist here, merely a short series of crude drawings contrasting the two.
posted by Rash at 12:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I am usually the one on the left (except that never in my life have I been offered an upgrade on anything) and that is why I prefer to travel alone. Being stuck with the guy on the right is my worst travel nightmare. I'd rather revisit the pit toilets of rural China than visit Paris with someone who has never in their life made a travel-related spreadsheet (how do you people function without spreadsheets???)
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:17 PM on June 26, 2016 [26 favorites]

Pablum.
posted by humboldt32 at 12:20 PM on June 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'm the third type of traveler: "Y'all have a good time and tell me all about it when you get back..."
posted by jim in austin at 12:31 PM on June 26, 2016 [6 favorites]

No checklist here, merely a short series of crude drawings contrasting the two.

Tag added.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:34 PM on June 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

For our honeymoon, Mr. Machine made a three ring binder with a detailed itinerary for each day, including not just attractions to visit and where we were staying each night, but also the mileage we would need to drive each day, alternate routes, alternate attractions in case of bad weather, options for eating, and places en route to buy souvenirs and snacks. It was more than 50 pages long for our two week trip, and was organized in a three ring binder and tabbed with section dividers.

He sent the word document to his parents, so that they could admire it, and their first (loving) comment was that he had a typo on the first page.

GUESS WE KNOW WHAT KIND OF TRAVELER HE IS, AS WELL AS WHERE HE GOT IT FROM.
posted by joyceanmachine at 12:36 PM on June 26, 2016 [91 favorites]

I'm the fourth type of traveler: wandering from kingdom to kingdom seeking the sword of prophesy.

I have a lot of respect for the fifth type of traveler, but I don't own a spaceship and I fear dying during character creation.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:38 PM on June 26, 2016 [36 favorites]

One of my students took time off from his exams to go on a sword quest. Really. So if you say it is so justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow, I can buy into it.
posted by biffa at 12:46 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

Biffa, do you teach in the Land of Ooo?
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:50 PM on June 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

That's not even the worst one. I also had a student drop out because he wanted to be Jesus. In fairness, he did make it on to the reserve list.

And he did have a decent singing voice.
posted by biffa at 12:54 PM on June 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

"Mr. Machine made a three ring binder with a detailed itinerary for each day, including not just attractions to visit and where we were staying each night, but also the mileage we would need to drive each day, alternate routes, alternate attractions in case of bad weather, options for eating, and places en route to buy souvenirs and snacks. "

The first time I presented my husband with one of these he was like, "This is ... thorough." I was like, "THIS IS WHAT IT'S LIKE INSIDE MY HEAD ALL THE TIME."

He respects my control freak tendencies a bit more than he used to after using my itinerary to locate the kid-friendly food during a snack crisis at the Smithsonian.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:56 PM on June 26, 2016 [27 favorites]

I like to beanplate every aspect of a trip beforehand so I know enough to be able to be spontaneous. That sounds snarky, but if I know how the buses in Mexico City work I'm more likely to hop on a random bus to see where it goes. Otherwise I'm trying to figure out if I can get back and by then the bus is gone. There needs to be third, middle type, like "The McConaughey" where it's all good. That said, I did much more traveling in the pre-Internet era. I'm not likely to check the Internet or mail, but I think a smartphone is too helpful leave behind. I know it's different for parents or people dealing with urgent matters at home.

I've travelled a bit in Mexico, and I've been to a couple of very cool destinations, but I'm more of a "free magazines for unused miles" than a VIP lounge (or even seat upgrade) type.

the other one is a Clueless Tourist who should just stay home. Everyone involved would be happier that way.

Most Travelers usually start out as Clueless Tourists, though. I live at the heart of an international tourist destination and I really like talking to the helpless tourists; they're so happy to be here it makes me appreciate my neighborhood more. Frankly, it's the Travelers who are usually the ones smoking while standing in front of the No Smoking signs. (I'm looking at you, AFI attendees.)

On preview, I think opposites do work better in this instance. I'd be more than happy to let a traveling companion make binders and do all the hard work!
posted by Room 641-A at 1:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [18 favorites]

I am the inveterate wake up early, walk everywhere, bring just enough to survive, have a few highlights you plan on but otherwise roll with it ('cause seriously what's likely to happen), sure-let's-bring-the-kids-along-they-can-walk, catch a train or bus to the next destination type.

It's a big ol' world out there.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 1:04 PM on June 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

travel-related spreadsheet (how do you people function without spreadsheets???)

My husband, his entire extended family, and I went to multiple places in Europe for 2 weeks and before the trip I printed out a travel schedule showing trains, planes, and hotels that I glued on postcards, then "laminated" with clear packaging tape for each person traveling.

My in-laws had STILL not finished packing by the time they arrived at the ticket desk at the airport. I knew right then that after this trip we would never travel together anywhere ever ever ever again.

(In reality, the traveling companion that drives me the most crazy is myself, for reasons like WHY did I pack 2 shirts for every single day of the trip and wear the same t-shirt the entire time? WHY do I have 8 places we have to eat at when we are going to be there for only 3 hours? WHY do I spend HOURS AND HOURS finding said places to eat and only 5 minutes on how much a taxi should cost? and other burning questions.)
posted by barchan at 1:08 PM on June 26, 2016 [22 favorites]

Johnny Wallflower, you've been posting a lot of great stuff lately!
posted by Room 641-A at 1:12 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

WHY did I pack 2 shirts for every single day of the trip and wear the same t-shirt the entire time?

How on earth did you get barchan's password, Mrs. Wallflower?

thanks, Room 641-A
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 1:16 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

When I was growing up, my father would do the crazy OCD-style planning on all our trips. He was an academic, so we would take long, frequently international trips each summer. I found it stressful.

And now, I just don't understand the spreadsheet overplanning. It's a vacation. That sounds like WORK. Isn't the point to get away from work and relax and have new adventures? Feynman, in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman, wrote about getting into adventures by patiently waiting for them. I feel like spontaneity is the key to good vacationing, and would frankly find a super planned out by the minute approach exhausting and stifling.

Improvisation and creativity grow out of the impulse to discover. Every moment of your trip doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to experience everything. You can just have the adventure that you stumble into, and let chance and opportunity cross and create something for you, rather than slavishly following a guidebook or someone else's idea of what you should do.

I'm a fan of waking up in the morning on a trip, and discussing "what should we do today?" and then letting it happen.

That's not to say that there can't be specific things to experience in particular places, but over preplanning sounds like death to me.
posted by MythMaker at 1:17 PM on June 26, 2016 [14 favorites]

I like to beanplate every aspect of a trip beforehand so I know enough to be able to be spontaneous

My people!
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:19 PM on June 26, 2016 [40 favorites]

I am not sure what number category I fall into but since much of my work is exploratory user research in demanding operating environments where informal economies prevail*, after 10 years, I have learnt this:

Preparation and planning in doing homework is critical but expect all plans to fall apart the minute you land. That's when the prep comes in handy for last minute changes and backups to everything that fell apart.

Document everything. Don't stop taking photographs. Once in China the taxi drove away before the bag with my passport could be retrieved. Only a photograph of the taxi stand signage at the airport helped us find the number for the cab company.

Take days off if its more than a week. Curl up in the hotel room with a bag of crisps and a book, or the computer.

Choose service apartments if its more than two weeks, or even less to be honest, if you like your morning routine.

Email yourself a copy of your passport, visa, ticket, birth certificate and marriage license (if relevant)

There's more but not relevant for general travels for vacations :)

*rural, poor, sad excuse for urban market towns in parts of Africa, islands in the North Pacific/South China sea, deserts of the subcontinent, no running water gauranteed, or electricity, or internet, and there might be geckos the size of puppies in the space between the roof and where the wall ends.
posted by infini at 1:24 PM on June 26, 2016 [12 favorites]

According to the checklist, I am both kinds of travelers.

Ridiculous that the first time I went to a Starbucks was when I visited Amsterdam - of all times. Because they obviously have a lack of interesting coffee shops, you know...

I really, really miss the coffee in Amsterdam.

That's not code for anything, the coffee there is fucking awesome.

I am the type of traveler who follows cats around Amsterdam to navigate.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:24 PM on June 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

Seriously, my spreadsheets aren't of the "at noon we shall spend precisely 88.3 minutes at the museum" sort but of the "these are all the trains available on a Sunday so I can make sure I don't leave something I really want to do for a Sunday thinking I could get there but actually I can't" sort. I use them to get familiar enough with a city to get around and know what's on offer without wasting a ton of time trying to figure out logistics. I can just get up in the morning, muse on what mood is striking me that day and go.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:26 PM on June 26, 2016 [21 favorites]

A few of my best travel adventures have started in a starbucks of all places. Most novel life experiences pop up in unexpected situations.
posted by MillMan at 1:32 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

My bestie is mostly the traveler on the left. Her spreadsheets have spreadsheets. We are going on a group trip to Disney this week, and she took input from everyone about what they wanted to do, and now the dinner reservations are made, the fast passes are booked, etc. It's really nice for something like Disney - all we have to do is show up. :) Her tagline is "I vacation with military precision." She also has no interest in say, sitting in the pool and hanging out for awhile ("I can do that at home, why would I do that here?" The one cruise we took together just about drove her to distraction.)

My ex, on the other hand, was mostly the traveler on the right, and it made me BUGNUTS. ("I did not come all the way up to Boston to ONLY sit in the hotel coffee shop and people watch.") ("You're the one who wanted to leave at 9, what do you mean you aren't packed yet?")

Thankfully, my wife and I are mostly in the middle, and I really appreciate having married someone whose travel style is much like mine, since I love to travel. I lean spreadsheet-overplanning, but mostly from the "I don't want to land in Atlanta, be hangry, and not know where to find food" standpoint. (I'm also the kind of traveler that will forget my phone charger every time if I don't make a packing list every time). We do a little lounging and a little doing. It's perfect. :)
posted by joycehealy at 1:50 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I like to know where I'm sleeping ahead of time, hence have a chain of 5 hotel and apartment bookings when we go for a 2 week jaunt around Germany in July. Other than that I like to know what is out there to do (hence AskMe) but won't plan anything solid unless its a big deal. However, I have fucked up in the past and missed significant things due to poor planning. Missing out on the Taj Mahal while free in Delhi for 5 days = bad shortfall on planning ahead.
posted by biffa at 1:53 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm a fan of waking up in the morning on a trip, and discussing "what should we do today?" and then letting it happen.

Yep. This is Mrs. Benway and I. We are in NYC right now, and aborted a ferry trip on South street because...ya know, these guys are waaay too pushy. We went back to the upper west side and now there is a nice local concert in a community garden. Let it flow.
posted by Benway at 1:53 PM on June 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Email yourself a copy of your passport, visa, ticket, birth certificate and marriage license (if relevant)

That is great advice. Even if I never go anywhere.
posted by yesster at 1:54 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I can't quite relate to either of these "types" because they're both too extreme.

I love travelling. Mr hgg and and I plan and prepare ahead of time, but once we are there, it's a nice balance between spontaneous stuff and planned activities. That suits me well. I also can't handle travelling with someone who HAS to be on the go from morning to night every day on a trip. My need for down time doesn't go away just because I'm not in my own home.

soren_lorensen: my spreadsheets aren't of the "at noon we shall spend precisely 88.3 minutes at the museum" sort

Your comment reminded me...many years ago, I went on a four day trip with a friend who, unbeknownst to me, had planned our days down to the hour in an effort to manage her anxiety. It may have worked to soothe her anxiety, but I was a wreck afterward. We never travelled together again!
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:58 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I have the hardest time preparing for traveling just because the whole idea is so stressful that even thinking about it enough to figure out how many socks to pack sends me into a panic. So I invariably show up with no underwear, power cables, toothbrush or some other non-optional item. So the first day anywhere is a scavenger hunt trying to find the stuff that I didn't manage to pack.

Traveling is one of those things that always sounds great in the abstract but when I actually do it, I spend all of my brain power worrying about not losing my camera bag or if I properly arranged for the cats to be fed or if I'm going to get sick or a hundred other things that might happen and don't actually pay any attention to where I am. I still have never actually used my passport and feel guilty about not doing any international travel since it's one of those things that you're supposed to do and again, in abstract I'd like to travel to Europe but I'm not sure I could figure out how to enjoy it while I was doing it.
posted by octothorpe at 1:59 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Like with most things, I'm somewhere in the middle. I did just this morning send my partner a shared Evernote document about our upcoming anniversary trip that included the expected weather that time of year, details about our hotel, a list of places to get coffee in geographical order, a list of places to eat, a list of potential things to do in order from Must Do to Sure, Whatever, and a suggested packing list. That said, when we get there, we're going to wing it according to what we feel like on any given day. We'll just have a solid foundation from which to wing, so we're not spending half our vacation researching things on our phones.

My ex was also in the middle, but in the opposite way: he overplanned and overthought and overpacked, and insisted on squeezing as much as possible into the time allotted--but still managed to consistently run late, forget crucial items, and get so overwhelmed and anxious that he needed to seek comfort and familiarity.
posted by rhiannonstone at 2:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I like to use spreadsheets for plans and orientation and sorting out the general framework of the trip, then I throw it away and just improvise once the trip gets started, because, as others have said: No plan survives contact with reality.

It's like reading a map or a new city. Study the map, use it to orient yourself, plot out what is close to what so you know how to setup your day, but don't spend your entire trip focused on the map.

Also, my favorite travel partner shares my love for planning spreadsheets and also for blowing hours in a teahouse or bar writing postcards and watching people going by. I look at both of these people in these checklists and I find them both insufferable.
posted by bl1nk at 2:03 PM on June 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

> Mr. Machine made a three ring binder with a detailed itinerary for each day, including not just attractions to visit and where we were staying each night, but also the mileage we would need to drive each day, ... it was more than 50 pages long for our two week trip, and was organized in a three ring binder and tabbed with section dividers.

When I prepared for the Coast to Coast walk two summers ago, I created a little binder with the itinerary for each day and elevation maps for each segment of the walk. In addition I had the flight numbers for each leg of my journey from Vancouver to Manchester and all the train reservations (and names of the B&Bs) that would put me at the start line of the walk; and again the bus and train times that would get me from the finish to the central station in York. And of course hotel in York and hotel in Manchester and flights back home.

It was more than a few pages, with all information clearly laid out - in the binder I also had the day-by-day of the walk, the elevation map and the names of the places where we would stay.

My walking partner was horrified at the sight of my yellow duotang - she got herself to England, stayed with family, then showed up to the start line a day before the start, and that was that.

For me, this method of organizing freed me of the macro decisions (where should I stay? What time is the flight/train/bus) and left me open to the entire experience.

There was a lot of spontaneity left in my trip, with time to enjoy the people, the sights, the sounds, take photos, have good beer with delicious lamb. Knowing the distances in advance also enabled me to plan enough water, food etc for the day.

Basically I did this (and continue to do this) to avoid having to think about the basic stuff while I travel. Get the big pieces sorted ahead of time, then just connect the dots. It was a great trip.
posted by seawallrunner at 2:19 PM on June 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

Doing a lot of research ahead of time has also enabled me to do stuff that I never in a million years would have encountered naturally. I signed up for Edinburgh Groupon a couple months before my last trip to Scotland and through that found a falconry education centre in Gleneagles where I spent a day learning about all manner of raptors, their care and feeding, the tradition of falconry in Scotland, and having very large birds land on me. Finding that was total pre-planing serendipity.

Before that same trip, I was telling a friend about all the things I'd been researching and what I hoped to get to do and he was like, I feel tired just listening to that, but my attitude towards travel to a place that doesn't involve beaches and fruity umbrella drinks is I'LL SLEEP WHEN I'M DEAD. I just paid like a thousand bucks to fly here, I'm going to squeeze every dime of experience out of that.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:45 PM on June 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

And now, I just don't understand the spreadsheet overplanning. It's a vacation. That sounds like WORK.

I have made detailed itineraries for trips I haven't even taken. It's fun. It's like being on vacation without going anywhere. And having those plans when I do travel makes me comfortable enough to meet a guy on the plane to Cusco, offer to split a cab to Ollantaytambo because I already know it's the best option for getting there, and arrange the next day to meet up back in Cusco five days later because we both knew we'd be back there then. (His boyfriend was the one who barely knew where he was at any moment).
posted by the agents of KAOS at 2:49 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I always waaaay overestimate what I can do in a day and end up eliminating 2/3rds of the agenda.
posted by AFABulous at 2:57 PM on June 26, 2016

Between my wife and I, I'm generally the one that pre-plans, sets up restaurant reservations, buys attraction tickets, etc. And I'd prefer to be at the airport 2 hours early rather than 30 minutes before boarding like she does.

But oh man, when it comes to packing... she'll still wait until the last second to do it, but then it's meticulous. We went on a week long vacation to Europe (with 3 extra days for her since she was there early for a conference) and we only took carry-on luggage, with room for a bag of souvenirs. And we don't have those ridiculous oversized carry-on rollers either, nor did we do any laundry.

Anyway, our actual plans were a mix between set points (specific dinners, shows, etc) and "do something in this general area" and I think it worked out pretty darn well!
posted by kmz at 3:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Frustrated travel agents, holla!

I've been trying to convince my in-laws (who are spending their defined benefit public pension retirements in style by traveling to Europe several times a year) to organize a group of their similarly well heeled friends who want to travel to the UK and hire me as their guide. Just pay for my plane ticket and I will have you all over England, Wales and Scotland with the power of my spreadsheets. If someone would pay me to make detailed, mildly adventurous travel plans, I'd be a pig in shit.

But then I remember that a key aspect of my solo traveling preference is that when something goes less-favorably than planned, I can roll with it in a way that a lot of people can't, and there's no need to feel guilty for messing up someone else's day. (My dad is perhaps the world's worst roller-with-it and I learned from growing up with him just exactly how ridiculous a grown-ass person throwing a tantrum looks and how much easier it is to just move on quickly to Plan B.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 3:15 PM on June 26, 2016 [9 favorites]

My style is sort of a hybrid of crazy planning and spontaneous exploration. I like to do a lot of research ahead of time, because it's fun! It helps me get excited for my trip. But once I am on the ground, I like to play it by ear as much as possible and leave myself with time to take suggestions from other people.

Me too! I'm preparing for a trip to Paris (my second!) and I'm actually plotting out a lot of the things I want to see on a Googlemap, picking little icons for all the shops and cafes and museums and everything, with a star on the map where my AirBnB is. And I also have a notebook where I'm keeping track of the various things I want to do, broken down by category, AND broken down by day, with notes about which museums are closed on which days and hours for various things.

And it is all going to go out the window to an extent when I get there, wake up and think, "hmm, what do I feel like today?" There are one or two things I know I definitely want to do, and I've got a hunch what days those will happen, but for the rest of it, I'm probably going to just wing it. But a big part of why I'm doing so much of that now is because I wish I was in Paris now instead of two weeks from now and I'm trying to soothe a craving.

Also, having a detailed map of the immediate neighborhood around my AirBnB is going to be really useful for when I arrive in Paris at like 2 pm with the jet lag from hell and my lizard brain is taking over, so when the only thought I can form is "eat food now yes", I know exactly where the cafes are and what they serve, so I can just stagger in and mumble something like "croissant, s'il vous plait" and eat something without having to think about it.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:36 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's not quite as binary as the OP makes it out to be. My wife is in most respects the OCD totally prepared traveller. She's been all over the world, mostly cheap or for free by wonking the frequent flyer system, and when we fly together she gets the first-class upgrade but she always makes sure I at least get the exit row seat with extra legroom. Once there she has the hotels, streets, food places, and all well researched.

But where it all goes south is when there are BIRDS. She's a birder, and the main reason she travels is birding. For many years I went with her and enjoyed hiking in nature with her and seeing the birds and other creatures even though they weren't my jones to her extent. But one by one, the incidents accumulated. We are in the desert or a jungle in Costa Rica where there is no artificial light for miles, the light is fading fast, and we are a mile from the car or lodge and we need to get going but we can't because THERE ARE BIRDS. We are clearly lost, the terrain does not resemble the description of the trail at all (she can't read a map herself so never brings one), and we should clearly turn back before getting really lost but hey if we top that next hill there might be MORE BIRDS. I've gone on tours with her and other birders and that's been fun too, except for the part where we are driving along a mountainside with a thousand foot drop on one side of the road and the driver of the car is more interested in THAT BIRD OUT THERE than the road.

After one too many near death experiences I declared myself done with travel. I have been to lots of interesting places I'd never have seen except for her and I'm glad I went, but I already live in a place people come to from all over the world for vacation. From now on we can do our together exotic getaways with her airline miles at a nice hotel in the French Quarter where the only BIRDS are pigeons, the exotic drinks are at Latitude 29, and the trip back is just a drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.
posted by Bringer Tom at 3:43 PM on June 26, 2016 [7 favorites]

I'm also in the middle, but my travels are almost entirely related to my job as an academic, which means that there's often limited time for sight-seeing (my last trip to the UK was pretty much "I need to be in the British Library from opening until closing, five days a week, for the next six weeks"). I do plan ahead in terms of looking up transit details &c. (also: bookstores), but if I have time to sight-see, I often opt to be a bit more spontaneous. Not a negotiator, though.

Admittedly, I drop in at a McD's a few times whenever I'm in the UK just so that I can have an USAian-style soda filled with ice.
posted by thomas j wise at 4:03 PM on June 26, 2016

The major problem I have with traveling is that I spend so long wandering around unable to decide between various delicious-looking places to eat until I'm tired and hungry and sunburnt and just walk into the next thing I see and hope it's decent. Which is, apart from the tired and sunburnt part, a pretty good way to do travel.

Accordingly, though, one of my best travel experiences was a small town in Maine that only had like five restaurants, four of which all served the same variations on the typical seafood dishes at varying levels of formality. (The fifth was like a steakhouse or something, and look: I'm sure it's a nice change of pace for locals, but I can eat land food any old time.)
posted by tobascodagama at 4:55 PM on June 26, 2016

While I was spending three months in Germany with my brother, I decided to visit Rome for a weekend. I got on a night train, sat in the wrong compartment and almost ended up in France instead (Breakfast companion: "So, do you have business in Ventimigilia?"). Hopped off at the next station and eventually made it to Rome, where I got off at Termini Station and tried unsuccessfully to recall a single word of actual Italian. Sat on a nearby hill watching preteen pickpockets successfully work their magic and had a great conversation with an Algerian man in our only shared language, French (although I apparently told him I had three kids, so a somewhat faulty verbal Venn). Grabbed some random lunch (I pointed and paid), and wandered the streets where I accidentally joined a Communist march (with police helicopters overhead), stumbled across the Trevi Fountain, and ended up in a wide open patch of grass to finally enjoy my meal. While munching away I marveled at their being an unused bit of land in such a developed city, but of course it was fairly narrow and long, with sloping sides that were great for sitting but probably didn't have much... other... use..., which is about the time I realized I was sitting at the Circus Maximus where they once held the chariot races.

Screw your notebooks and spreadsheets. Plans? Where I go, I have no need for plans.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [15 favorites]

People make vacation spreadsheets? For real? My mind is being blown. Before reading this conversation I would have thought I was more on the control-freak side of the spectrum, but comparatively I am obviously way more at the loosey-goosey end of things. My ideal trip is going somewhere and having those random conversations that end up with you being invited to the art students' graduation party or having the owner walk you through a factory. There's no way to spreadsheet yourself into serendipity, but I am also aware that it means that I always miss a lot of the "you can't miss it!" kinds of attractions.

and the driver of the car is more interested in THAT BIRD OUT THERE than the road

I used to work with that guy, and people would fight for the keys to try and keep him out of the driver's seat. Being able to identify anonymous small brown birds at 65 miles an hour is an amazing skill, but terrifying for the passengers.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:03 PM on June 26, 2016

I'm really flexible when travelling (IE: Destination and when I have to be back) for the most part except when I've got to hook up with inflexible travel options. Like I need to get to the airport four hours early in case something goes wrong.

joyceanmachine: "For our honeymoon, Mr. Machine made a three ring binder with a detailed itinerary for each day,"

It wasn't detailed, more a regular list of options, but AAA used to do this for free for members. It was great when you were on a long road trip.
posted by Mitheral at 5:07 PM on June 26, 2016

And now, I just don't understand the spreadsheet overplanning. It's a vacation. That sounds like WORK.

I think a lot Of people just like making spreadsheets! I spent my adult life never remembering when my period was until one nice boyfriend made me a spreadsheet. To be helpful, yes, but mostly an excuse for spreadsheet fun, I think.
posted by Room 641-A at 5:07 PM on June 26, 2016

And now, I just don't understand the spreadsheet overplanning. It's a vacation. That sounds like WORK.

Well, most of us planners seem to be Americans, and I can't speak for anyone else but I only get 19 days worth of time off per year. That time includes any sick days I might need to take in a calendar year, or days off I might need to go to the doctor or take care of personal business, so it's not like I get 19 vacation days. In a really good year I might get, like, 14 vacation days. But then I have to use some vacation time to go visit loved ones in exotic locations like Akron, so that brings my "zooming off to a new location for a fun adventure" time down a bit. So let's say I actually get 9 vacation days a year, and I want to go to Thailand. Which is actually true, I'm trying to plan a vacation to Thailand right now. It's pretty damn hard to manage, even if I make plans around holiday weekends so I can squeeze a few extra days into my itinerary without going into the negative on my PTO balance at work. I could throw caution to the wind and just book a ticket to Bangkok and then hope that I manage to figure things out well enough to have an enjoyable time in a place that takes huge amounts of effort and money for me to get to... or I could spend some time making up loose itineraries and booking some rooms in advance to take the strain off of myself during actual travel time so that I can enjoy my trip instead of worrying about where I'm going to sleep on a given night in a foreign country.

It would actually be more work to NOT make plans for some vacations, when you stop and think about it. Not having a plan would be complete idiocy for a person flying halfway around the world to try to enjoy their meager annual time off.
posted by palomar at 5:22 PM on June 26, 2016 [13 favorites]

People make vacation spreadsheets? For real? My mind is being blown.

honestly, for me, "spreadsheet" is really more like "to-do list and notepad that I can sort and filter as needed"

My last big international trip was a 2 week jaunt through Turkey and my spreadsheet was more of a collection of notes and advice that I got from crowdsourcing friends who had visited, as well as interesting things that I read about in travel blogs or Atlas Obscura. Basic itinerary on one sheet, with travel times and costs for flights or buses between each city, so I could weigh whether I wanted to go with the cheap but long or expensive but fast route based on how I was feeling that far into the trip and make day-before / day-of decisions without wrestling with either local wi-fi or trying to find an English speaking ticket agent.

Another spreadsheet tab had interesting hotels, restaurants and sights organized by different cities/neighborhoods. Back in the early 90s, I made my first independent international trip to Paris, my equivalent for this was just waking up in my hotel room, grabbing the big phone book in the night table, looking up all of the comic book stores, record shops, and english-language bookstores, and writing them into a notebook, then drawing them on a map. Then, I noticed on the map how many of them were just clustered in one neighborhood like The Bastille, and I'd just tell myself, "oh, that's probably a cool neighborhood. I should just hangout there and see what happens."

None of that got in the way of me nerding out with a hipster store clerk about an Aphex Twin single that led him to give me a flyer for his DJ night. Nor did it get in the way of my own entry into the shop-worn travel cliche of talking to someone else whose language I didn't know (in this case, the dude was Greek) by using our commonly terrible second hand French and letting comedically bad grammar ensue.

So, again, as many of us have described, planning and study can be in service of creating valuable opportunities for spontaneity.
posted by bl1nk at 6:02 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Screw your notebooks and spreadsheets. Plans? Where I go, I have no need for plans.

I don't mean to be (too) snarky, but for every "look at this beautiful serendipitous day that I had with no plans!" story, I'd bet a lot of money there's a "I wandered around with no plans, got hungry and thirsty but couldn't find anywhere decent to eat, accidentally walked through a dodgy neighborhood, got extremely cranky because it was so hot but there was nowhere shady I could sit and no parks in sight, paid an exorbitant cab fee that was definitely a foreigner ripoff because I didn't realize the trains weren't running that day, and finally made it back to my hotel where I reflected on this wasted day" story.

(A version of this may have happened to me.)

I sure it's because I'm a pessimist but I'm just not convinced that the potential joys of plan-less travel are worth the potential risks of a bad day, especially when I'm in a place where I can't read or speak the language.
posted by andrewesque at 6:16 PM on June 26, 2016 [8 favorites]

I am the type of traveler who follows cats around Amsterdam to navigate.

If you always know exactly where you are in Amsterdam at nite, then you're missing some fun vague wandering about. Just keep walking randomly, and eventually your hotel just appears.
posted by ovvl at 6:44 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm all OCD about preping the bike, tool kit, maintainence kit, repair kit all go in the sidecar trunk under the camping gear. Day pack checked and on the rear fender, bug out bag checked and strapped over the spare wheel then the wet weather gear and every day stuffed in the nose of the sidecar. Then cram more water in the crannies.

After stressing over all that, the dog jumps in the sidecar and we're headed off toward "x"National Park, who knows where we'll end up. When we'll have to do at least 200 miles a day to get home its time to start back.
posted by ridgerunner at 6:46 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I travel fairly frequently for work, and it's gotten to the point where I honestly didn't know what time the plane left last week. I checked the morning of my departure, but I had everything packed the night before. After a while, you just get used to it, I guess.

That being said, I've never missed a flight or a train and we've always been satisfied with our vacations. What's the worst that's going to happen? I mean, if you're a million miles from nowhere you might want to do a little extra planning but just about anywhere in the world you can always find a tube of toothpaste and a hot meal.
posted by backseatpilot at 6:48 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Screw your notebooks and spreadsheets. Plans? Where I go, I have no need for plans

This was always my view before I worked in the business (and remains largely my view after). My first trip across Canada and the US was done sans reservations; I would just turn up and see what was available. This mostly worked out okay*; the only really uncomfortable night was spent hanging out on the lawn of a post office all night waiting for the bus station across the way to open up at 5:30 AM so I could be on my way.

The most delightful happenstance bit of that trip was arriving in Montreal early one morning to find everything I could afford was booked solid for that night. I pondered how to solve this problem and decided to head for this great bakery in Mile End which made superb and cheap croissants and pains au chocolat. A friend of mine used to live above it, and when I had crashed with him for a fortnight several years earlier, it was the source of many a delicious breakfast.

I went up there looking only for some comfort food but I noticed my pal's old apartment had a sign in the window reading á louer (for rent). A peek in the darkened windows showed it was empty. I checked my key ring; yes, I still had his spare key from years earlier. When nothing better presented itself all day, I returned at midnight, gingerly let myself in and slept on his erstwhile living room floor until 6:00 AM, then let myself out.

Not an option open to everyone, of course, but it worked for me. Once I started working in hostels, I found myself dealing with a lot of people in the same boat, turning up in a strange city with no reservation and no connections. I used to spend a lot of time finding people alternate accommodations – especially women in a new city – but it often disappointed me how little creativity people showed. This place is sold out? Well, I guess it is a park bench then! I remember once telling a young guy that every big city has hospitals and almost every hospital had a maternity ward, and every maternity ward has guys skimped on couches all night. Do the math, dude. I pondered at one point writing a book on improvisation urban survival.

*I of course realize that being a relatively cleancut white man gave me a degree of privilege to go tra-la-la and improvise my trip.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:04 PM on June 26, 2016 [4 favorites]

One worthwhile aspect of planning that seems to be overlooked here is learning about and avoiding local scams. One of the more notorious are the Beijing 'tour guides' that recruit tourists at the Forbidden City to go the Great Wall. A buddy of mine (who's a total seat-of-the-pants traveler) and his wife got looped in to one of these, which involved being packed on a tour bus and taken to tourist trap after tourist trap, while the tour guide barked sales pitches incessantly over the speakers. After seven hours of torture, they finally made it to the crowded Badaling section, where they had maybe 45 minutes before getting herded back on to the bus. I, on the other hand, booked a trip to Mutianyu through my hostel, and got a couple local meals and a six hour hike (including a brutal 600-some stair section) on the Great Wall out of it.
posted by Existential Dread at 7:17 PM on June 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

I have found my people!

My spreadsheets help me work out a vague idea of how much it's going to cost per day including the best train passes to buy. A small amount of the other planning is useful stuff like train routes and times but a lot it is to soothe my fear of missing out on something.

The moment we get to the first hotel the folder is given to my husband who picks out what we're doing for the day. I get the folder back when we next have a travel day. This works well and it means we're not rushing from here to there and not enjoying anything and travel days run smoothly.
posted by poxandplague at 7:38 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

I only do this kind of planning when I'm going abroad (I'm American) because it costs a lot of money and I get to do it like once every 3-5 years and I get ten vacation days a year, so this sort of travel is not a casual jaunt for me, it's the culmination of years of goal-setting and financial planning and sacrifice. And I have to watch my budget when I'm in-country too, which is why I plan ahead to take advantage of the cheaper train fares you get when you book them well in advance. I try to book my hotel rooms in advance during semi-annual room sales that certain hotel chains have to get deals. Or I research to see if a B&B would be cheaper, which it sometimes is, sometimes isn't. (I've done the hostel thing but I am just too fucking old, I've concluded). Also: I'm a lady and I travel solo, so there's that, too. Not planning can waste both my money and my time, which are two things I have in very short supply.

Also it is fun for me and all that and well suits my personality, but I'd be much less motivated to get serious with it if I was going to Italy three times a year like my in-laws. As it is, my passport was last stamped in 2011 and not a day goes by without me thinking about when I can go back to the places abroad that I love, but it'll probably be a couple more years at least.
posted by soren_lorensen at 8:00 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just reading about these spreasheets is giving me hives. To me, it feels like the method of one who is sent into a blind panic if something happens that they didn't expect. But the whole point of going other places is that you should not know what to expect. That's the interesting bit. Seriously, the thought of trudging around somewhere, knowing that for the next few days every possible contingency had been planned for ahead of time....it's a visceral distaste. The image that floats into my mind is the little boy on the alien planet in A Wrinkle in Time, being given an electric shock until he learns to bounce his rubber ball exaclty in rythmn with all the others....
posted by Diablevert at 8:15 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, you can still have serendipitous moments even if you do plan things. Like, for instance, the shop you've made a note that you want to visit because the guide book said it was good might be closed, but you're too hungry to want to go much further so you try your luck at the place two doors down because hell, it's open. Or you are on your way to a place and something eye-boggling happens and you gotta watch for a second, and if you hadn't been on your way you might have missed it. Or you are looking for a shop, but you're lost and you decide to stop inside a little random boutique to ask directions - but the boutique itself catches your eye and there are two other women in there with infectious laughs and so you stick around that place instead. or you do everything right and you end up where you planned to go but they're sold out of what you want, and the shopkeeper can't speak Emglish so she uses CHARADES to explain that to you, or the church you've gone to visit happens to be across the street from a gelato festival you didn't know about, or....

Don't knock plans. That's the bones. Serendipity still comes in to flesh your trip out while you're there.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:16 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I've tried the "wander around and see what happens" and "don't plan anything, be open to adventure" type of thing. What usually happens is... nothing in particular. Adventures might happen randomly to the very lucky, but a lot of the time, things are just normal. Nothing especially thrilling happens (without putting oneself in danger, in many cases). And frequently, large inconveniences accompany that "nothing thrilling" in one way or another.

But if I plan? If I have maps and spreadsheets and options and I've familiarized myself with that location and how it works, then I feel secure enough to deviate when something interesting *does* happen. I know that whatever silly thing I get into now, I can get back easily and deal with whatever comes up, because I made those spreadsheets.

It's a variation on "know the rules to break them" - if you just hit random keys on a piano, you MIGHT get something nice, but more likely you'll get garbage. If you learn to play, and then you improvise, that's when the magic happens.
posted by gloriouslyincandescent at 8:37 PM on June 26, 2016 [5 favorites]

Prepare, but don't plan.

We do some research (and the various rating and local guide sites make this much, much easier than the days of Fodor's and Lonely Planet), and figure out some stuff that looks interesting. We'll book a few things in advance that need reservation, but we generally don't bother with the rest, and don't fill up our time table. We'll have a list of things we might want to see, time permitting, in some order of preference. We might have an event or festival that we're anchoring a trip with, but we also may not.

We figure out transportation to the extent that we have sufficient opportunity to see all that we want to see, be that transit, hired car or simply our own feet. Having transit right is key, that's what gives options and what allows us to get to what might be fun to do next. Travel times (and effort) are really important in what we can do in a day. Choice of transportation is more important to fun, opportunities and stress levels than even rooms or food.

Beds and meals we usually leave open but plan a few signature meals and perhaps the start and ending stay so we're not worried about getting to the airport from some obscure hotel or B&B. We might book rooms in advance, especially if using points or if travelling in high seasons, but we've also just winged it. Neither seems to have a strong advantage over the other, IMO.

What we try to do is not have a fixed itinerary, but goals and priorities, things we really want to do and those which sound like they might be fun if we get the chance. But we also want to give ourselves time for the odd lazy morning or rest and do laundry days which are essential to maintaining cool on a holiday---it is a holiday not work, after all, and keeping a schedule too strictly keeps the clock your master. And that's not a break from work. At least in our opinion.
posted by bonehead at 9:01 PM on June 26, 2016 [2 favorites]

it's the Travelers who are usually the ones smoking while standing in front of the No Smoking signs. (I'm looking at you, AFI attendees.)

Apologies to the AFI, which I'm sure promotes a smoke-free environment. I meant to call out the AFM attendees.

posted by Room 641-A at 9:20 PM on June 26, 2016

What bonehead said. Many years ago I used to spreadsheet my trips to death, but with each trip the amount and type of detail decreased. Now it's minimal. From Australia, pretty much everything foreign except a cruise involves a flight. So I know when we're leaving home and when we're arriving at our destination. Our first night gets booked online in advance, because it solves the issue of what to put in that pesky "local address" field in customs forms, gives us a pre-researched script we can follow to a safe haven no matter how jetlagged we are, and provides searchers with a starting point in case of disaster. After that, we play it by ear. We have an idea of the main things we want to see and do: beyond that, sightseeing plans are made the night before. Transport is something I do focus on, but that's mainly compiling a rough set of timetables, routes and modes that can be fitted into whatever we decide to do. Simply knowing that the last bus back from a site is 4pm or that the marshrutka costs about 20,000 local currency * is a huge help.

* Plus 20,000 "foreigner fee" ...
posted by Autumn Leaf at 9:26 PM on June 26, 2016

A couple of comments deleted. If you disagree with something, it's fine to explain your thinking; jumping to accusatory sarcasm against other commenters is less great and turns into a big personal derail.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:01 PM on June 26, 2016

I do not at all understand those of you who turn up with no hotels booked and insisting it's funner and planners are doing too much work. But you're doing the work part ON THE ACTUAL VACATION! It is madness!

I also do note that none of the freeform travelers are talking about dragging multiple small children, which I suppose makes a difference! I know we're making a potty break every two hours and eating every three and if we're not in a hotel by seven the world will literally end, so I guess I'm a bit more constrained to start with.

But I always have wacky adventures on my highly-itineraried vacations from dinner with the Irish Olympic Judo team to a dude rising out of the sidewalk which led to the discovery of the last working coal elevator in the city to joining up with planless backpackers to weird little house museums and so on. And plenty of car breakdowns and transit delays and botched hotels and once a dire stomach flu. The difference is I already have the hotel/cab company/local map information on my phone or in my itinerary, so it's a much shorter and easier to fix delay than if it threw my day into chaos and I had to spend half the day figuring out how to fix it and then half fixing it. I can jump right to fixing because the contingency contacts are already to hand! And when a fellow traveler is like "omg I'm stranded" I can be like "Here are two reputable taxi company numbers and a local hotel that will refer you out if they don't have vacancies, and there's a bar with food around the corner."

(I am a terrible packer, though. Last minute, bad job, forget things. Just awful and I never improve.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:08 PM on June 26, 2016

This was amusing, but not very accurate as a description of how people actually behave.

I'm in-between the two. I like to know where I'm sleeping, so I'll generally book a bed in an AirBnB or a hostel in advance, plus train/bus/car rental and how many days I'll stay in a given place. I'll buy tickets or make reservations in advance when that is necessary. I'll also do a fair bit of research on things like public transit systems and road networks (partly because I enjoy reading about public transit systems and road networks).

Beyond that, I just buy a guidebook, look at some websites, and make a note of things that interest me. I might think up a loose itinerary along the lines of "On Day 1, I'll go to attraction x, then walk around neighborhood y," but I don't even write it down. And if plans change, that's fine.

One thing I'm a big believer in: No more than one Big Attraction per day (I can stretch this to two if one of them is something that entails very little time and effort, but generally, one). You gotta leave time to wander around. Wandering around is the best.
posted by breakin' the law at 10:08 PM on June 26, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure which traveler I am but I have learned to never ever let my husband pick accommodations as he has a horrible talent for finding the dingiest worst place and booking us for multiple nonrefundable nights there. Restaurants, too; every time, terrible. He's great with maps and bus schedules though so I let him do that part.
posted by emjaybee at 10:26 PM on June 26, 2016

And now, I just don't understand the spreadsheet overplanning. It's a vacation. That sounds like WORK.

Amen. Work is when I have to be somewhere and do something. I don't like work. Any itinerary sucks the enjoyment out of things for me. I like exploring, that is the fun part, doing things on a list is work. If I book something in advance that means I have to be there. That's work.

I may go to the extreme though. I have landed in cities and realized I didn't even have an address or know where I was supposed to be staying.

People make vacation spreadsheets? For real? My mind is being blown.

I have only discovered in recent years that people actually use spreadsheets, NOT for work. It took me a while to wrap my head around it. I've had people want to send me, or send me spreadsheets for work and whatever and finally got open source Office programs to open them.
"What do you mean you don't have Office?"
"For what?"

I'm a fan of waking up in the morning on a trip, and discussing "what should we do today?" and then letting it happen.

Not for many years, because I don't have fun anymore, but we used to take road trips like this. Just start driving, stop when we got tired, get up in the morning and pick a new direction.

I am the type of traveler who follows cats around Amsterdam to navigate.

I have a "pick a random person and follow them" method in a walk-able city. They're probably going somewhere. Just don't get to close so they don't think you're stalking them, so inevitably I lose them and have to pick a new person.

Not having a plan would be complete idiocy for a person flying halfway around the world to try to enjoy their meager annual time off.

Well, that depends on your expectations and what you enjoy, wouldn't it?
posted by bongo_x at 11:44 PM on June 26, 2016 [1 favorite]

the first kind of traveler is great to travel with as long as they're not a whiny resentful pushy type of organized traveler. i didn't ASK you to schedule 15 activities in one day starting at 7am, you CHOSE to do that, not for me, but for YOURSELF. if you think you did it for me then you have clearly mistaken me for someone else, to a frankly shocking degree. leave me your itinerary and i will meet up with you after your lunchtime, when i have finally woken up. this is a vacation, not the bataan death march of landmarks. never again so long as i live will i wake up at 5am to endlessly queue to see something allegedly "unmissable" alongside 20,000 other angry hot sweaty exhausted tourists, all of whom have rancid coffee breath because they too were forced to get up at 5am.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:28 AM on June 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

"oh but seeing the sun rise over-" DID I FUCKING STUTTER
posted by poffin boffin at 12:28 AM on June 27, 2016 [15 favorites]

Well, this thread did not to disprove the thesis of the FPP. There really is two types of traveller...
posted by Harald74 at 1:26 AM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

(A version of this may have happened to me.)

For me, that's the great thing. You have a story to tell about your vacation. Can you tell a story about your vacation to a stranger a month, a year, a decade from now that they'll find interesting? For me (again, for me), that makes a vacation worthwhile. Being bored is the opposite feeling I want from a vacation. Not for everybody, obviously, and that's perfectly fine.

I also do note that none of the freeform travelers are talking about dragging multiple small children, which I suppose makes a difference!

Agree completely. The more people you're responsible for, the more responsible you need to be. We didn't realize Disney World (Disney World!) only had ONE area designated for nursing mothers, near the front of the park. Having a park attendant direct my wife to a nearby washroom stall while I waited with big brother managed to be unpleasant for all four of us. Sea World had stations dotted throughout its park, and we have very pleasant memories of Sea World.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 2:36 AM on June 27, 2016

I guess the way I see it, the reason I plan travel isn't to make "88.3 minutes in the museum at 12:17 pm" type of plans, but to have the same amount of base knowledge that I do about my home city, which allows me some success at home and abroad.

For example, I live in New York, and I know that the subway runs 24 hours a day but not all lines do overnight or on weekends, that there's very interrupted cell service on the train, that $1 pizza almost always tastes like cardboard, and where perhaps slightly more "dodgy" neighborhoods are (no specifics here, because I'm not trying to start a flamewar derail).

This means that I feel comfortable staying out late/far from my house and not worrying that I'm going to get stuck somewhere with a high cab fee, that I don't sit at 72 St on the weekends waiting for a nonexistent B train, that I know to text my friends I'm heading over BEFORE I get on the train so we don't totally mess up our restaurant plans, that when I have my random walking-around-the-boroughs days I am a bit aware of my surroundings, and I don't get suckered into wasting money on bad cheese and tomato sauce on rubbery dough masquerading as food (I'm sorry but I really dislike $1 pizza!)

I just want to have a similar level of knowledge when I travel -- at least for me, I don't plan how long I will stay at any attraction, exact walking routes, hourly schedules, or anything like that. Just pieces of logistic knowledge -- how often and late trains run, how not to get suckered in by cab fees, tourist food traps to avoid, etc.

You have a story to tell about your vacation.

This is true! But would I rather have just had a pleasant day instead of one that made left me cranky for days? Absolutely, even if that came at the expense of storytelling later. (It cost me $1000+ to get there!)
posted by andrewesque at 4:38 AM on June 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

(throws up hands in time-out gesture) I think I know how to call for a truce here.

Can we all agree that everyone has vastly different levels of comfort with, and adaptability to, different levels of risk? (Actually - can we take a step back and agree that there are differing degrees of risk?)

Can we all agree that these different leves of comfort and adaptability are not moral failings, but may be because of differing personal histories, lifestyles, physical and mental abilities, and differing levels of privilege? Economics, gender, sexuality, and education can all affect a persons' adaptability to different kinds of risk, yes?

Okay: if you agree with that premise, then - it stands to reason, then, that everyone is going to have highly-individual responses to those differing degrees of risk. The people who have not had the education necessary to learn a given foreign language are not going to be comfortable trying to "wing it" in a specific country speaking that language. The people who have been victims of various crime are not going to be comfortable trying to navigate in a dicey neighborhood. The people who people who haven't traveled much before are not going to be comfortable knowing what to do in an unfamiliar place. And so on. We can agree on that, yeah?

So - perhaps the planners are simply trying to use a means that will allow them to compensate for this lower-level of comfort, so that they can still travel, because the alternative is that they stay home and don't do anything. Can we agree on that?

Also - tangentially - the whole idea of a bad experience leading to an "interesting story" only works if you don't go past a certain level of fear. If a given experience flat-out terrifies you, or pisses you off, it isn't going to be something you talk about as an amusing story later.

We all travel differently. We all bring different personal histories to that traveling, and those personal histories are highly individual. And those personal histories lead us to prepare for travel in different ways. And - none of them are wrong.

Though I've been just as guilty of the finger-pointing at some tourists, but I hereby pledge to cut that out because I don't know their life.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:43 AM on June 27, 2016 [6 favorites]

And to add a note of snark in the epilogue - some preplanning and research would have certainly helped the couple who stopped me in the middle of Greenwich Village to ask for directions to Cannery Row. There's spontenaety, and then there is being hella wrong.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:46 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mrs. Ghidorah and I have stumbled onto the one true (for us at least) way of traveling. Decide where to go. Ask friends for a recommendation for a good beer bar in our intended destination. Make vague plans for said destination. Go to destination, head to beer bar. Mention whoever sent us (it's a small community in Japan, hi Armage!), and chat with the bar staff. Mention we're in town for a couple days, talk about our vague ideas for sightseeing, food, and so on, and ask what the staff think. Without fail, we get told what to avoid, as well as hidden gems we had no idea about. We usually find out about more good places to drink, too.

Offer likely void in Utah.
posted by Ghidorah at 4:47 AM on June 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

So - perhaps the planners are simply trying to use a means that will allow them to compensate for this lower-level of comfort, so that they can still travel, because the alternative is that they stay home and don't do anything. Can we agree on that?

One of my takeaways from some of the comments here is how much some of the planners and spreadsheet makers enjoy their work, rather than the planning just being a way of avoiding risk and change. Like this one:

I have made detailed itineraries for trips I haven't even taken. It's fun. It's like being on vacation without going anywhere.

And the comments about how traveling with children is more complicated are well-taken. My parents weren't big planners or preparers, and I can vividly remember the misery of all of us dragging our suitcases down crowded sidewalks while they tried to figure out a place to stay. A little bit of planning goes a long way with children in tow.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:08 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

honestly, I don't care if the rudderless travelers don't do spreadsheets. I'd just prefer if they stopped referring to those who do some level of planning as some form of spiritless conformist.

fwiw, I've also done the spontaneous, improvisational international trips. I've picked spots on a map at more or less random, booked some flight tickets on a spur of the moment sale, and just gone, and had a good time. I've done "the go to a bar recommended by a friend (or friends of friends, or meet friends of friends of friends for dinner) and let part of your journey flow from there." I've done the aimless wandering and been through the "oh shit, where do I sleep tonight because plans fell through." I'm not saying this to brag, but just, you know, I've sampled the wares that some of you are offering in your stories, and I'm glad that it makes you feel like you had a satisfactory experience, but I know that I prefer to have done some homework ahead of time.

I like that travel sends you out of your routine self, encourages adaptation, and I've benefitted from privilege in being a guy with enough income to navigate these scenarios confidently and with savvy enough travel partners who will always have my back. So, I don't make plans for the sake of safety (though I do appreciate and respect how that is the reason for many), I just do it because I just like to do so. I like making plans because I hate going home and then reading about a really neat event or experience that was happening while I was visiting, that I totally missed out on because I didn't do my research. I actually enjoy seeing the trip materialize in notes and sketches, and the way that a couple of tidbits of information will spark inspiration for something else to do. Afterwards, I also like looking back at the old artifacts of my notes and the way that forms a memento of its own.

You don't have to do that, but I'd appreciate it if you stopped telling the rest of us that we're doing it wrong.
posted by bl1nk at 5:17 AM on June 27, 2016 [7 favorites]

And the comments about how traveling with children is more complicated are well-taken. My parents weren't big planners or preparers, and I can vividly remember the misery of all of us dragging our suitcases down crowded sidewalks while they tried to figure out a place to stay. A little bit of planning goes a long way with children in tow.

my dad will make draft timetables and do vacation research for trip ideas that I casually mention to him with no intention of actually taking. I realized, as I once watched him create spreadsheets of new cars and computers that he will never buy, that I am unmistakably his son.

He was also the sort of parent who did micromanage our vacations so that all of our meals were at fancy restaurants that needed reservations and all of our itinerary was overpacked with experiences that we just had to do, and when there were the eventual surprises that caused a timetable to go off the rails, he would often take out his stress and frustration on us kids because we wrecked his artisanal plans by taking too much time sleeping in or asking for one ice cream too many.

So, yeah, I don't do timetables. I don't make myself or my friends do anything that requires a reservation on the same day that we're transiting from one city to another. I leave whole blocks of my travel spreadsheet vague and improvisational. But I still have a spreadsheet because genetics are weird that way.
posted by bl1nk at 5:26 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

And - none of them are wrong.

+1. Do what works for you and your situation. It is, after all, supposed to be an enjoyable vacation, for whatever definition of "enjoyable" that you have. I don't understand the spreadsheet crowd, and I'd never do it that way myself, but if it works for you, go for it.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 5:33 AM on June 27, 2016

+1. Do what works for you and your situation. It is, after all, supposed to be an enjoyable vacation, for whatever definition of "enjoyable" that you have. I don't understand the spreadsheet crowd, and I'd never do it that way myself, but if it works for you, go for it.

It's also good to adjust and adapt as things change. We took an impromptu week-long trip a while back, with zero planning or prep, and while almost everything worked out well, the hotel choice we made managed to hit the exact wrong spot between expensive, uncomfortable, and poorly located (along with unrefundable, caused by the last minute nature of it all). That was something where even a couple hours of reading reviews and thinking about it would have added a lot of comfort, without any negative trade-offs.

So while I'll never be a spreadsheet person, I'm recognizing that my standards have gone a bit up since my 20s, and if I want that slightly higher level of comfort I'm going to have to do a bit more planning.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:50 AM on June 27, 2016

One of my takeaways from some of the comments here is how much some of the planners and spreadsheet makers enjoy their work, rather than the planning just being a way of avoiding risk and change.

Indeed. I get to experience my trip three times: the planning (especially if it's somewhere we've been before, then the people I'm traveling with an I get the delicious "oh, yea, we loved X, we have to do that again!" stage), the doing, and the after with the pictures and telling people about it and such. It's luscious.
posted by joycehealy at 6:03 AM on June 27, 2016

My parents weren't big planners or preparers, and I can vividly remember the misery of all of us dragging our suitcases down crowded sidewalks while they tried to figure out a place to stay. A little bit of planning goes a long way with children in tow.

Heh. We took lots of road trips, mostly around CA, NV, and AZ when I was a kid, and there were so many times we'd roll into a little town late at night and see nothing but No Vacancy signs so we spent many nights sleeping in the car* in a hotel parking lots. This informed a lot of my "roll with it" attitude. On the other hand, my RL nickname is Wrong Way, and my single biggest fear isn't crime, it's being lost, and that informs the way I plan trips. Once I feel comfortable navigating then everything else gets factored in. I think this is another reason I think travelling with someone who plans differently can be a good thing.

*This was back when they made cars you could sleep in.
posted by Room 641-A at 6:07 AM on June 27, 2016

I am so happy that other people make vacation spreadsheets!

We went to Scotland with a friend last year, and I had a 3 page spreadsheet workbook to keep track of where we were staying each night, must-see attractions, could-see attractions, hours each attraction was open, suggested places to eat, links to websites, and shared expenses we'd have to divvy up at the end. It was magnificent. I almost had more fun making the spreadsheet and planning than going on the actual trip (almost!). I also got a small notebook and hand-wrote driving directions for our entire itinerary, in case we lost reception on the one phone we had between the three of us that worked in Scotland. Google maps led me astray so many times, though, my poor little planning notebook got us lost a few times.

We got the discount pass that lets you into a bunch of tourist spots pre-paid, and I noted on the spreadsheet which attractions were covered by the pass. At one point in casual conversation while we were planning the trip, my husband thought he was being all helpful, and he was like "oh, I looked it up, that castle is covered by the pass." To which I replied through my teeth "did you LOOK at the spreadsheet, it's clearly indicated in bold which castles are covered by the pass!" And I used italics for the would-be-nice-to-see-but-not-must-see attractions.

We joke that our family motto is "Efficiency in all things!"... it's not really that much of a joke.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 6:10 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Do what works for you and your situation. It is, after all, supposed to be an enjoyable vacation, for whatever definition of "enjoyable" that you have

And to be fair, in the same spirit of how some people use the planning and spreadsheets as a way of developing a base comfort level before going on an adventure, I think it's also worth acknowledging that some people may be intimidated by travel if they feel that they need to do all of these upfront plans and homework. All of that stuff can serve as insurance but it isn't strictly necessary.

You do you. Whatever side of the spectrum you fall in, don't let this conversation deter you from going out and enjoying the world.
posted by bl1nk at 6:17 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Screw your notebooks and spreadsheets. Plans? Where I go, I have no need for plans

I do a lot of road trips with my mother. My mother a) cannot read a map, b) cannot tell left from right, and most importantly, c) will steadfastly refuse to give any input as to what she would like to do. Naturally, c) is coupled with her right to complain about an activity afterwards. I will narrow the entire universe of possibilities down to two, and you simply cannot get her to say which one she would prefer.

She will get up in the morning, and cheerfully ask "So what's the plan?"

It's all up to me.

So as a matter of necessity, both to preserve my sanity and to prevent impromptu matricide, I have become a spreadsheeter. These are the routes we can take. These are the trains we can catch. You can visit sales racks at Banana here, here, and here. There is something here which is interesting and will take this many hours to do. If we want to go to Museum X, it has to be on Tuesday, which means we can only do Museum Y on Sunday, which means we need to decide on Saturday what we want to do Tuesday.

I wouldn't say that I enjoy spreadsheeting as such, and it's not a firm thing or anything, but I find it necessary. Mother isn't going to say what we should do. She will just sit there on the bed with her purse in her lap and wait for instructions. She has time. She has all the time in the world. She'll wait.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:46 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

One of my takeaways from some of the comments here is how much some of the planners and spreadsheet makers enjoy their work, rather than the planning just being a way of avoiding risk and change.

That's as may be. I was speaking more to the "screw making plans, who needs them" crowd, to point out that for a not-insignificant percentage of people, plans ARE something they need, so let's chill with the judgyness.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:00 AM on June 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

I met this pair in Lisbon. They were both Americans, about 21 years old. He'd been forced to come by his mom, who was a friend of her mom, she wouldn't have been allowed to come if he hadn't accompanied her. They weren't friends, more like an arranged marriage who hated each other.

She was fun, excited, ready for adventure, etc., he was a brat, didn't really want to come in the first place, hated everything, thought it was stupid, whined about how X wasn't the same as in the U.S. for all values of X. He basically stayed in the hostel reading like sports magazines, while she went out with us into one the most amazing cities in the world.

For a few months after meeting them I kept scanning the paper for news that she'd finally snapped and choked him to death.
posted by signal at 7:00 AM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

A long time ago, I read that the best improvisational performances are done by people who practice a LOT and have a firm grasp of the foundations of whatever they're improving. I feel the same way about travel.

No matter if it's a few days for work, my beloved trips to Walt Disney World, or a vacation in a new city, I think having a notebook with nearby things to do, restaurants, and timetables provides a good enough foundation that we can go and 'wing it' with the knowledge that if that thing doesn't work, we won't waste valuable travel time trying to come up with a Plan B. (Or C.)
posted by kimberussell at 7:55 AM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

When I was 17 I traveled to the UK with a (similarly-aged) friend of mine, sans adults. This was pre-internet, pre cell phones, and the planning was fairly minimal aside from cities and housing (staying with friends a couple times, and B&Bs a couple times). Whilst in Bath, I decided I had to go to Glastonbury because I read the Mists of Avalon in middle school and surely there would be magical fairies and swords in stones there. (Not really, but I was curious about the abbey ruins and the Tor.) We somehow figured out public transit to get there but my god what a shit day we had thereafter. Through poor planning, we wound up missing our bus back to Bath and had to take several connecting buses through the backwaters of Somerset (pretty sure we wound up in Bristol at one point) and didn't get back to Bath until waaaay after dinner time, both of us hangry and exhausted. I really could have done without the unplanned 4 hour tour of all the least interesting parts of the West Country.

I can tell a fairly amusing story about it now all about how we drank from the Chalice Well and thereafter became cursed to roam the Summerlands forevermore but honestly? I would have preferred to get back to Bath in time for tea and an opportunity to spend more time roaming around that lovely town. I mean, shit happens (last time I was in Durham, trying to get to York, the entire Northeastern line went down due to signals failure and I spent 7 hours on a train with a bunch of drunk Scottish rugby fans on their way to a Four Nations match--on the up side, that was also when I learned of the existence of Geordie Shore as a thing), but funny stories now were usually really shitty days at the time.

For the planners, I highly recommended the Moleskine City Notebooks. My one for London is a treasured keepsake.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:56 AM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm very much of the "make a base plan so you can wing it if you want to" sort of traveler. This has paid off well for us, whether we went to Disney World or toured around San Francisco or Savannah. Many times on our journeys, we will complete our list of "must see" items and have time left over to explore and wander.
posted by Fleebnork at 8:53 AM on June 27, 2016

I am a terrible packer, though. Last minute, bad job, forget things. Just awful and I never improve.

Kits and routines. Defined "kits", sub-groups of stuff, often packed seperately (kitchen bag, stove kit, bath bag, day bag, even cold and hot weather bags, etc...), and a packing checklist if you need it. A spreadsheet with a list for everyone. A routine to do a pre-flight check, a routine to unpack and a routine to repack. Double-policing the room/camp before you go.

It's not that I never forget stuff, but this set of routine, this discipline of self-care, built from best practices from work field campaigns, has saved a great deal of hassle over years of travelling for business and for fun.
posted by bonehead at 9:50 AM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

this set of routine, this discipline of self-care,

And to get it into muscle memory.
posted by infini at 9:57 AM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

Absolutely. Getting it to be a habit is crucial. I largely don't need paper lists for my personal bags or most of me individual work gear anymore, but it sure helps to go through a real checklist the first few times.
posted by bonehead at 10:11 AM on June 27, 2016

Mrs Molerats laughs a little at my lovingly curated master-packing-list in Google Docs, but it has drastically cut down on forgotten items!

Why yes it does have subcategories for Camping and Trips With Dog
posted by nakedmolerats at 11:06 AM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I keep all the previous checklists right in the suitcase so even if it's a last-minute trip I have basic lists at hand.
posted by Room 641-A at 11:08 AM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

I keep all the previous checklists right in the suitcase so even if it's a last-minute trip I have basic lists at hand.

I have a girlfriend who passed along this tip: Make two checklist columns on your packing list, so you can check off items as you pack them before departure, and then check them off again as you're packing for your return. I've modified this slightly: On multi-stop trips, I'll put a checklist column for every stop.

I like having the Google Sheets workbook with my checklists in my travel folder. I like having a few things (my first-aid kit, my tech kit, the kiddo's road trip bag) packed and ready to go. I like having my spreadsheet templates. I like having my spreadsheet of kid-friendly stuff within a day's drive of home. And I like having my Evernote notebook of places I want to go, tagged by location and activity. I've been able to sit down on a Wednesday, say, "Where can we go for three days?" and have the entire at-whim trip planned, the whole family packed and everything prepared for in 2 hours, allowing for doing a load of laundry and gassing up the car.

Have spreadsheet, will travel.
posted by sobell at 12:01 PM on June 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ooh, a packing-related tip for the planners:

I have an account on the fashion site Polyvore, which ostensibly you can use as a wardrobe tracker - you save various pieces of clothing into your "collection" and can then use them to play around and create outfits, or look up outfit ideas for a given piece of clothing.

Everyone else seems to use it as a glorified lookbook generator ("hey, everyone, look what I did with this pair of plaid pants!") complete with photoshopping various scenes into the background, but I use it exclusively to plan out the items I'll pack for a trip - I'll play around with various clothing pieces, trying to see how many outfits I can generate from the least amount of clothing, and then I save it all (in private view) so I have a ready-made visual depiction of "my packing list for this trip".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:17 PM on June 27, 2016 [5 favorites]

This thread made me curious -- one of the things I really enjoy before a trip somewhere is reading stuff related to that place. If it's a big first-time trip, I'll usually read a history of that place, and then two or three novels set there. (I'm not super-picky about the novels -- if I'm going to Paris, say, it might be Les Miz but it might just as easily be a trashy romance novel set 1840 Paris or a YA novel about the French Revolution or a current buzzy literary novel set in modern Paris ... I'm not like "I am going to read the THREE GREATEST NOVELS ABOUT PARIS" but more like "I wanna get in a Parisian mood, what's something Paris-y? Sure, this'll do!") When I have a big trip planned, like going to a country for the first time, I'll be reading maybe six months in advance just sprinkled among my regular reading and it really helps me get excited for the trip, and the history reading helps give me some context for what I'm seeing.

I'm curious who else among ye likes to pre-read for your trips, what you like to pre-read, and if you pre-read, if you're a planner or a free-former.

(Also I just realized I am my parents because I got my kids a train coloring book for their first train vacation and we went to the library for books about the Smithsonian and Washington DC before their first DC trip and OH GOD I AM THAT PARENT. But it just seems natural that you'd want to learn about it before you go and that that's part of the fun!)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:05 PM on June 27, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm curious who else among ye likes to pre-read for your trips, what you like to pre-read, and if you pre-read, if you're a planner or a free-former.

I'll pick nonfiction that offers me a grasp of the context and background, in an engaging readable manner. This usually means its a travelogue, or the business journalist's intro to the country or region. For examples,

For South Africa, I read a travelogue by a gay man, and The Mind of South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid by Allister Sparks - possibly the best ever introduction ever

For Kenya, I shied away from the Isak Danisen Out of Africa/Born Free cliches and stumbled on I LAUGH SO I WON'T CRY: Kenya's Women Tell the Story of Their Lives, by Helena Halperin

For India, Edward Luce's Inspite of the Gods

And just before my first trip to Europe, Thomas R. Reid’s United States of Europe

As to your second question, I'm a free form planner due to the nature of my of work.
posted by infini at 3:03 PM on June 27, 2016

It just occurred to me that ADD and other issues might play a big part in how people plan. I mostly don't want to compile my own travel guide to take with me places, but I kind of have to.
posted by Room 641-A at 3:18 PM on June 27, 2016

I'm curious who else among ye likes to pre-read for your trips, what you like to pre-read, and if you pre-read, if you're a planner or a free-former.

I pre-read, too! I also want something with some good atmosphere about the place, not necessarily great literature or hefty tomes about it. Before we went to Scotland I had a hankering for gothics or mysteries set in Scotland. And I totally pre-read with my kid before we go places with him. Before we went to NYC with him in December we read lots of books set in NYC (and watched Night at the Museum, since we were going to that museum). Before we go to the Renaissance Festival every fall I amp up the books about knights and castles. I am a nerd.
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 3:51 PM on June 27, 2016

I'm curious who else among ye likes to pre-read for your trips, what you like to pre-read, and if you pre-read, if you're a planner or a free-former.

I invariably got to the library and dutifully check out a travel guide for the place I'm going, then hastily skim through it at the last moment, which is why I both (a) make exciting plans like reserving a stay at a remote mountain retreat in Japan and (b) somehow fail to notice that Japan requires an international driver's permit to rent a car, making it impossible to get to said mountain retreat and necessitating a scramble for a second option the day before.
posted by psoas at 4:27 PM on June 27, 2016

Wow, I am totally a "just roll with it" type of traveler but I'd love to be dragged along on a trip with one of you overplanners because then I wouldn't have to think about ANYTHING.
posted by Jacqueline at 6:38 PM on June 27, 2016 [1 favorite]

"I'd love to be dragged along on a trip with one of you overplanners because then I wouldn't have to think about ANYTHING."

My husband did admit that my over-planning was really nice after we did a family wedding trip where he had sole charge of the kids a couple of days because I had to be attending bridesmaid events. He'd be like "OMG the kids are getting wild, what do I do? Oh look, Eyebrows noted the nearest park to our hotel, we can go there and run around!" or "They're hungry and I don't know where any restaurants are -- oh, look, Eyebrows gave me three options within a block of the museum for sandwiches, Italian, or hot dogs, and she highlighted the nearest McDonald's in case of emergency food refusal!" His emergency backup adult was always listed along with their phone number (as I'd arranged from among my relatives (as it was my side of the family) who would be available to help him if he needed backup for basically every hour I wasn't available) and I'd made a google map of locations I loaded into his phone. The itinerary was both printed AND saved in google docs with hotlinks so he could immediately pull up museum maps and things from within the itinerary. Even for our long driving days, I had scouted out parks along the way so the kids could get out of the car and run around for a couple hours so they weren't stuck in the car for two solid days (I even asked here and found a great park on our route and we met the lovely churachura there!).

Afterwards he was like "I was totally mocking your itinerary but that was actually really great, every time I had a question or a problem you'd already solved it and it was on the itinerary, I just got to go to fun places with the kids and not worry about details." Of course there were bumps in the plan -- an escalator was out of service at one metro station so they had to climb a TON of stairs; one of my kids got so excited he barfed on his brother; we had some minor car and parking issues -- but in general the kids were entertained, educated, and worn out the appropriate amount to behave nicely at fancy wedding-related dinners and go to bed right after, even though it was a super-chaotic long weekend where everyone had a lot of obligations beyond just "parenting kids at a wedding."

(I even specifically researched transit because my kids VERY BADLY wanted to ride a subway so one day the activity was taking the subway to the zoo, and we drove a route that went through Allegheny Tunnel, and we took taxis and buses, and went trolley watching, and basically fulfilled many little-boy transit dreams. And if you ask them about the vacation they're like, "Yeah there were baby pandas, whatever, LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE MAGIC OF THE RED LINE.")

He's more tolerant of my over-planning since then. I'm not a pack-every-second planner, though; I get very antsy if things are too closely scheduled -- it makes me nervous I'll be late -- so there's always plenty of bumper time in my itineraries. I loosely divide activities into "half-day" and "whole-day" activities and figure you can always fill in the bumper time with people watching and wandering and eating street food and shopping and whatnot. I also think schedule-every-second is exhausting and I've done the cathedral-fatigue trips where you do All The Things in the minimum amount of time necessary to check off the things on the cultured-person list, and I do not like them, so my schedules aren't like that. I'd rather see fewer things and spend more time at each than rush from place to place, and I definitely want a little time to decompress and digest what I did that day!
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:40 PM on June 27, 2016 [4 favorites]

I'm firmly in camp "plan the big stuff, familiarize yourself with where to be/avoid, jot down a list of things you might want to do around where you plan to be, and then wing it from there." That's a camp, right?

Speaking of camps, almost all of this conversation pertains to travel in/among cities; I'd love to see one for packing/camping/hiking. Type 2 wouldn't even be there and type 1 would break down into all sorts of subdivisions.

Too, it might be interesting to compare people's day-to-day level of packing--say, car commuter vs. metro commuter vs. bike commuter--and see how that scales to one type or another, and how it plays out generally WRT say, the amount of stress people have about packing/being prepared.

Someone above mentioned having lots of small kits, and this is totally how I operate as a bike/metro commuter: a little bike emergency/tools bag; a shoe bag; a change of clothes; a compartmentalized bag full of spare contacts, various pills, dentifrice, battery bank/chargers, tools/knife . . . I plan every day knowing that having to return home for something would be a giant inconvenience, and after having done that for more than a decade I feel like I've just gotten into a rhythm where traveling overseas just means expanding the kit a little and swapping out the knife and tools for plug adapters and a couple physical books.
posted by aspersioncast at 8:51 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's funny, I am all about reading guide books and nonfiction stuff about a place I'm going too, but not fiction. I get really really annoyed at the liberties fiction writers take with real places, for one, and find that their vision of it interrupts my experience. I want to experience a new place without scenes from a novel set there playing in my head and distracting me. Same with movies.

I also plan differently if traveling solo (least planning), as a couple (slightly more) or as a family (lots). By myself I'm happy to wander aimlessly and be constantly lost and have random conversations, and possibly waste an entire day never getting anywhere, with other people attached I'm more concerned that they have a good time.
posted by emjaybee at 9:17 PM on June 27, 2016 [2 favorites]

Another pre-reader here! I like both non-fiction and fiction to both inform me and help me imagine the feel of a place before I go. One of my favourites was The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile, by Edward Mullins.

I like to plan and research, and mr hgg is the same way, which is probably why we travel together so well--we always have accommodation in place before we arrive anywhere, and we like to research potential restaurants, markets, places to go, things to see. But they're all put in big lists of possibilities which we then choose from as the mood strikes us, and we are always up for the odd sidetrack if it comes up (eg a serendipitous meeting with a local who suggests something going on that we didn't know about, or eating at a place we had never heard of)...so maybe I am somewhere in between a planner and a free-former.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 10:52 PM on June 27, 2016

Do you count as a "pre-reader" if it's stuff that you just read before in the course of your life, rather than stuff you intentionally read prior to the trip? Because I can only think of one instance where I intentionally read a History Of Paris prior to my trip there, but my trips to Florence and London were definitely fueled by my having read The Decameron and 84, Charing Cross Road at other points in my life. And my trips to Ireland were fueled by a 20-years-and-counting penpal friendship with someone in Cork and an entire college course in Irish literature.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:38 AM on June 28, 2016

for various reasons, I'm a post-reader. Like I read A Moveable Feast after visiting Paris, and I read Bruce Chatwin's In Patagonia after trekking through southern Argentina. I somewhat enjoy the fact that it's a way of revisiting the memories, but I also realize that I can (and should) do both pre-reading before I leave and revisiting reading after I return.

on the topic of traveling solo vs. groups vs. couple, I visited Turkey for my 40th birthday a couple of years ago, and it was an interesting mix of solo and group travel, because we all decided to share the cost of chartering a small Aegean yacht for four days; but all traveled there independently. So it was like, one day of solo travel while each of us made our own staggered arrangements to arrive in Istanbul, one day of pair travel after my first friend arrived and we waited for the other two, then a week of group hanging out as we saw more of Istanbul, then took a bus down to the Aegean and hung out on the boat, then we all split up with each of us going to different destinations and occasionally emailing each other to be all "hey, I think I'm going to go Ephesus tomorrow, were you still going to be there or are you going to Pammukkale instead? Want to split a hotel room?"

It was a great way to sample a mixture of both and savor some of the highlights of the independence of solo travel and the fun communal experience of group travel, while also avoiding some of the downsides (loneliness w/ solo, consensus/coordination time with group travel), also, since we were all independent planners, having the One Thing We Can Do Together bookended by optional things we can do solo or together was a good way for all of us to indulge our individual spreadsheet instincts without denying the other folks all of their agency or participation.

(oh, and on the note of ensuring that the group has a good time, the other visceral memory I had of that yacht trip was how both I and my best friend had these huge balls of anxiety in our stomachs as we approached the harbor because I had arranged the charter over the Internet, and the entire idea of splitting a charter was her idea in the first place. And we were both super worried that the yacht would be some danky little piss pot and all of our friends would hate us and think that we wasted their travel savings, but then we go to this secluded beach with a beautiful view of sea cliffs, and a single gorgeous boat bobbing in the water, and I said, "hey I think that's us."

My friend sneered and said, "nah, that's too big. Can't possibly be us."

Then a a little dinghy detached itself from the boat and motored up to us, and tan, shirtless man waved and said, "I am Mustafa, I am your captain."

And the yacht turned out to be perfect, and the sea was warm and crystal clear, and my friend and I looked at each other and said, "ok, this is awesome and now we can relax.")
posted by bl1nk at 6:03 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Speaking of camps, almost all of this conversation pertains to travel in/among cities; I'd love to see one for packing/camping/hiking. Type 2 wouldn't even be there and type 1 would break down into all sorts of subdivisions.

Too, it might be interesting to compare people's day-to-day level of packing--say, car commuter vs. metro commuter vs. bike commuter--and see how that scales to one type or another, and how it plays out generally WRT say, the amount of stress people have about packing/being prepared.

The general thing to consider with packing is that each of these modes of travel has a set of packing priorities based on what you need for that day and that they don't completely overlap.

For an urban context I like to pack a bunch of different clothes and shoes for restaurants or all day walking outside or all day museums in super frigid AC. I don't necessarily want to carry all of those extra clothes and shoes when on a camping or bike touring trip. Similarly, in the outdoors I may need my tent, my stove, my water filter and my first aid kit. But I won't touch those things in a city. And on a bike touring trip, I have my bike, my tools, and my spare parts, but I am not going to lug them up a hiking trail.

When planning a trip, I plan for, at most having to switch out of only two daily contexts. Camp and city or hike and bike or city and rock climb, not camp and city and rock climb and bike. Because it's just too much fucking gear and too many situations when you need to figure out where/how to securely stash the stuff that's just dead weight for the day.

Generally speaking the only part of my camping kits that universally get included in my overseas bag are a few comfort items:toiletries, travel pillow, microfiber towel, headlamp, water bottle. I don't even bother to bring the first aid kit if I am going to be mostly in cities. If I am planning on day tripping somewhere wild, then sure: first aid kit, hiking boots, and camping toilet paper goes in too. That list generally stays the same if I am overnighting but the plan is to sleep somewhere constructed (ie. Refugio / mountain lodge / monastery). Actual camping then brings in the rest of the kit:. Stove, tent, sleeping bag, big backpack, multtool, knife. I am also assuming at this point that I am checking a bag so stuff gets more permissive.
posted by bl1nk at 6:49 AM on June 28, 2016

Jacqueline: "I'd love to be dragged along on a trip with one of you overplanners because then I wouldn't have to think about ANYTHING."

I'm a just do it traveller, too, and I've been on trips with overplanners. It gets ugly, fast. I like not knowing where I'm going, getting up whenever and doing and eating whatever. That's the point of traveling to me, not getting to cram in as many 'sights' as possible within a given time frame. I plan and schedule all day long in my regular life. I don't need to do it on vacation.
posted by signal at 6:58 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

packing/camping/hiking

The answer for me is contextual, but ultimately built on choosing appropriate prepacked or purpose-built "kits" as I describe above. This can be as simple as a toiletry bag or a plastic bag with all the plates and cutlery in it, or a bit more complicated, like a week's worth of clothing.

For work, extra heavy. We not only bring the kitchen sink, we bring two in case one fails (you think I'm not being literal here, I'm supposing). Typical load outs are on the order of 300-400kg per person (+vehicles and trailers). Our checklists have checklists. This can be for setting up awy where, from a city parking lot to bush sites. It's expensive and a lot of work, but we've never had mission failure because of equipment malfunction or missing supplies. These trips are highly scheduled and highly complex in their planning because we're not there to just be out in the woods or whatever, we're there to do a task and we can't be spending energy or time on deciding what to do next, if that's avoidable. Keeping as much prepped and packed as possible is critical to maintaining readiness and flexibility. We're minimally deployable at 6-hours notice---and I've personally been on planes that fast more than once for weeks-long deployments. I can't emphasise enough how preplanning and ready-to-go kits are what make that possible.

For personal, I dial that way back, and in fact prefer not to travel like it was work. But the ideas do transfer pretty well.

For car camping, I don't care about weight too much. I also don't use lists or SOPs, but we do copy the modular packing and multiple kitbags of stuff. Canoe camping is similar, I prioritize comfort over weight, but the only major difference is that everything is waterproof, most of it floats and it can all go into a portage bag. Animal safety (bear cans, not taking scents, etc..) is the other consideration.

For hiking, multi-day trails, I've been moving more and more to being an ultralighter. I used to carry fairly heavy loads, but you know, life is too short and there are lots of things you can do without. If you're camping with kids, you do have to do the guide/scoutmaster thing and bring extras, but the major same principles apply, kits (smaller and lighter now) and routines to make certain nothing gets left behind. Day trips are much simpler, but it's still a form of packing. I keep a small survival/first aid kit in my daybag along with insect repellent, sunscreen, and a bit of clothing. The 8/10 essentials. All I need to do then is add a sandwich and water and I know I'm covered. Prepping kits you leave packed up takes a lot of the effort out on the day.

With hikes and canoe trips you are often on a clock because you have to meet a ride/boat/bus back. Most everyone has to be back at work/school by a certain date anyway, so you can't not have a deadline. And so, that does mean hitting distance targets/waypoints every day. Car trips have a flexibility with time and routes that make winging it much more possible---even with little kids involved. Hiking or canoeing typically doesn't give much choice of routes for a particular trail, so you're generally fairly limited in options anyway. With cars (and bikes), route planning becomes a lot more interesting, and so I tend to defer that to the day.
posted by bonehead at 9:18 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm a just do it traveller, too, and I've been on trips with overplanners. It gets ugly, fast. I like not knowing where I'm going, getting up whenever and doing and eating whatever.

But you wouldn't have to know! The overplanners know, and you just do "whatever" they planned!

Maybe I just really enjoy tagging along. Like, my husband says "I'm going to the hardware store, wanna come?" and I get excited despite having no need or independent desire to visit the hardware store.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:35 AM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Kits and routines.

Don't being socks and maybe underwear home with you. Depending on what you wear and how long your trip is they can take up a lot of space. I know people that just leave socks in the hotel in a bag. For places I travel regularly for work I just bring enough for the first couple of days and buy new ones. There are some places I just leave clothes so I only have to bring a few.

I keep my travel toiletries bag packed all the time and never unpack it. Most of that stuff is cheap. Same with my computer work bag. At the last minute I can grab that and some clothes and go and not worry about whether I have toothbrush, etc.
posted by bongo_x at 12:13 PM on June 28, 2016

Jacqueline: "But you wouldn't have to know! The overplanners know, and you just do "whatever" they planned!"

Not for me. Being a non-planner doesn't mean I'm happy to run behind somebody who has a 'schedule' in order to fulfill whatever deep, dark unmet desires push him to try to visit 31 churches in Potosí in three hours.

To me, being a non-planner means getting up, lounging around the hostel, maybe meeting somebody interesting, maybe tagging along with them. Or not. It could be an evening spent watching bolivian TV with the 60 year old hostel administrator.
posted by signal at 12:59 PM on June 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Probably the difference between us is I have ADD, depression, and anxiety, so I already do enough lounging around undecided about what to do with my day. Being able to just follow someone else and their itinerary would be a welcome vacation from my usual ennui.
posted by Jacqueline at 1:22 PM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

There still seems to be a disconnect here. I don't see any planners saying anything about a schedule and "it's noon so this must be the Met, everyone back on the bus, we've got 80 more things to see before sundown" itineraries. We've mostly stated that our plans are of the "here's a list of trains" and "here's a list of things I might want to do and when they are open" and "I make hotel bookings in advance because I am too damn old/female to be sleeping on strange park benches" variety, but the non-planners keep referring to these mysterious set-in-stone minute-by-minute itineraries that no one is actually talking about.
posted by soren_lorensen at 2:05 PM on June 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

A few comments deleted; we can have this kind of conversation without it being a meta-debate about what Metafilter is like, or a circular fight over who's being mean.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:19 PM on June 28, 2016

And there is one good argument in favor of at least planning ahead enough to decide on what DAY you are visiting an especially popular site -

If you've decided in advance that "on this day I shall see [thing]", then that makes it possible to buy any tickets you need for [thing] in advance. And if you buy them in advance, then you get to swan past the super-long line of people who DIDN'T plan ahead and are now going to be in line for an hour while you can just walk right in and toss them a Nelson Muntz "HA-ha!" as you do.

I have done both approaches with this and I greatly prefer the advance buying, because the sooner I get out of line the sooner I can be inside [thing] looking at [stuff].
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:02 PM on June 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

The problem is that there aren't "two types" of travelers, there are infinite variations along a spectrum. The folks on at least one half of it seem to be assuming that everyone on the other half is all the way at the end.

The article talks about two extremes but most of us are somewhere in the middle, just like with everything else.

It's mostly navigating airports that I hat, especially with some of my in-laws. First, pack less stuff. There is a bunch of stuff that we used to pack "just in case we need it" but we almost never need it and we're not leaving civilization when we travel so if we really need that thing, we can buy it there. It's not like we're going on a trip to save money. All that extra stuff just makes it hard to move around and get anything done and it always takes extra time. Travel light.

Second, calm the fuck down. Millions of people fly all over the place just fine every day, we have plenty of time, if there are problems, we can work them out. Just let the competent professionals be competent and professional and we'll be fine.

Third, look, I know they have this system for boarding the plane but being on the plane sucks. As long as you don't cause the plane to stay at the terminal for longer than it has to, just get on the plane at the end. It seems dumb to get up from my seat to go stand in line so I can wait to sit down in re-circulated fart/cough/sneeze air. In a perfect world, I'd always be the last one on and the first one off.

Lastly, get off the fucking place already. Nothing aggravates me more than having gone through the gauntlet of rights violations, crowds, and clueless people, then sitting on a place for three hours before having to wait for your slow ass to get up and get your shit down from the overhead bin for five damn minutes while I've been ready to go for the last ten and the plane is empty behind you. You have an obligation to the people behind you to get out of the way. I don't care whether that means you get your stuff down and hustle off the plane, wait for other people to go by, or ask someone to help you with your stuff.
posted by VTX at 7:01 AM on June 29, 2016 [2 favorites]

VTX: "You have an obligation to the people behind you to get out of the way."

Nope. You have an obligation to chill and realize that 2, 5 or even 10 minutes doesn't really make a difference one way or the other, and you have no reasonable expectation that other people share your specific neuroses.(For example, the tables are turned in your previous comment about getting in line for the plane.)
posted by signal at 8:17 AM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

No they aren't when I'm getting on the plane, I make sure that I don't hold anyone up. Obviously not everyone can apply the same strategy but as long as the plane leaves when it's supposed to, I don't really care.

Your time is not more important than mine, you don't get to tell me how to value MY time just like I don't get to tell you how to value yours.

What you're saying is that your time is more important than all of the 30 people behind you. I've been sitting in the same place for three hours, now I'm sitting surrounded by a crowd of people, if I'm lucky, I get to stand in the isle, if not, I get to stand off to the side with my head cocked sideways so I can straighten my legs.

I'm not saying that you have to scramble to get off the plane like it's on fire, just don't waste time. If you want to take longer because you don't mind waiting an extra 10 minutes, that's fine, it's YOUR choice and as long as it doesn't affect anyone else, it doesn't bother me. But when you decide that the other people behind have to wait just because you feel like taking your sweet time, that's a problem. Especially when it's so easy to accommodate everyone with a little bit of consideration.
posted by VTX at 8:53 AM on June 29, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't being socks and maybe underwear home with you. Depending on what you wear and how long your trip is they can take up a lot of space. I know people that just leave socks in the hotel in a bag. For places I travel regularly for work I just bring enough for the first couple of days and buy new ones. There are some places I just leave clothes so I only have to bring a few.
. . . Most of that stuff is cheap.

So . . . I feel like whatever gains you make on efficiency here you lose on morality.
posted by aspersioncast at 11:30 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

So . . . I feel like whatever gains you make on efficiency here you lose on morality.

Wow, that's pretty judgemental, but then I saw your name, so...

I don't know, I donate clothes all the time and buy mostly used clothes. I'm not really seeing what's immoral about leaving clothes for the next trip instead carrying them back and forth, or just giving them to someone else.
posted by bongo_x at 11:43 PM on July 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't being socks and maybe underwear home with you. Depending on what you wear and how long your trip is they can take up a lot of space. I know people that just leave socks in the hotel in a bag. For places I travel regularly for work I just bring enough for the first couple of days and buy new ones. There are some places I just leave clothes so I only have to bring a few.
. . . Most of that stuff is cheap.

1. Not cheap enough for me. (Women's' stuff is more expensive than mens' on average.)

2. Most used-clothing places, even Goodwill, do not accept socks and underwear, so whatever you leave behind will most likely be thrown away, and the cleaning staff will end up thinking you're a jerk or a weird kind of pervert if you just leave behind a bag of used underwear.

3. I am at a loss to ascertain what this suggestion has to do with the subject of "travel planning, pro or con" anyway.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:16 AM on July 3, 2016 [2 favorites]

that's pretty judgemental

No offense intended. As a general travel strategy it seems environmentally problematic. But then so is airplane travel and air conditioning, so John 8:7 I guess.

The general thing to consider with packing is that each of these modes of travel has a set of packing priorities based on what you need for that day and that they don't completely overlap.

I think for me a lot of them do overlap, but what I was trying to get at I think is similar to what you're saying--and at least partially what bongo_x was saying--in that it's helpful for it to be modular/compartmentalized. E.g. here are the things I always have in a bag, here are a few different pre-organized situational pouches/bags depending on the scenario I'm going into, etc. etc.

Kits and routines, mentally and physically.
posted by aspersioncast at 1:09 AM on July 4, 2016 [1 favorite]

Don't being socks and maybe underwear home with you. Depending on what you wear and how long your trip is they can take up a lot of space. I know people that just leave socks in the hotel in a bag. For places I travel regularly for work I just bring

I was out west at one point teaching a course (when I had to be kind of a grownup) and then I had a couple of weeks kicking around much more informally. The hostel I was staying in in Vancouver had a set-up with local organizations helping the homeless: when you checked out of the hostel you could leave surplus clothing with them and they would get it to the orgs for the homeless. This was mainly aimed at, say, Aussies going home after a ski trip and who would have little use for their parkas back in Sydney. However, I donated the shoes I had worn during the course and spent the rest of my trip in sandals. I reckoned that if the eventual recipient (a) is homeless and (b) takes size 15 shoes, he has two problems. I could solve one of them.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:40 AM on July 7, 2016 [3 favorites]

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