How tough is vacation planning these days???
As a child, our vacation planning used to be planning the route on a paper map and marking stopovers. Later on, we started booking ‘all taken care of’ vacation packages. With the advent of the internet, most of our vacation planning is done online. Right from booking flights, hotels, car rentals and even planning the itinerary. This obsessive desire to cover the best places, get the best bargains and have a fantastic time makes us spend so much time online and put in so much effort reading reviews, blogs and forums. I have an information overload now and seems like I had a working weekend.
Grrrr… where is my coffee?
I would love to have a relaxing vacation one day. However, in the ‘do more’ age, all we seem to be doing is cramming as much as possible in one week. Vacation Planning becomes like another chore then. So much to do! Although I got to admit that this chore is much more enjoyable than doing the laundry 😉
What about you. How do you guys do your vacation planning?
In the last 2 weekends, I have read tonnes of tripadvisor posts, looked at thousands of online pics, created Pinterest boards and downloaded 2 apps on my phone. Inspite of all that, the most critical details of the planning are in a small notebook on my dining table!
Speaking of vacations, have you read about my one day vacation in Munich?
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I haven’t really had any major holidays that required planning. Recently I did a hiking trip followed by a road trip with friends but one of them kind of organised the whole thing. The last trip I did solo was in May 2014 and it was a spontaneous road trip — I didn’t book anything and just went with the flow. It was great! 😀
However, I will be encountering this chore shortly as I try and plan my trip to Canada in June.
Wow Sanch… you did a solo unplanned road trip! Salute lady. I CAN NOT even dream of such a thing. I have travelled alone for work and did some sight seeing. The only unplanned travel I did was last November. I was at Hong Kong for work and decided to to go to Macau for a day. Had fun, but I worried too much 🙂
Have you chronicled your solo trip adventures on your blog? I am sure it will make an interesting read 🙂
Before our daughter, we used to pick a place on the map, pick a time to leave, fill up the tank and go. We didn’t even worry about the hotel (which lead to other adventures). Now, it seems like it does take a lot of time and energy. Spring break is coming up and it is even hard to decide where to go. And then the packing comes. I feel your pain.
Whoa! You did that? I can not imagine doing that. EVER! The worry would kill both of us :p
I would love to hear about your ‘adventures’. Are any of them up on the blog???
Oh all the best with your spring break plans 😛 welcome to the club!!
We tend to do not-so-planned vacations. We’ll go with the first decent hotel we find (even if there would have been a better price, shopping around). First decent fare. A rough sketch of activities. It is hard to step back and keep planning like that when you know there are resources out there to help you do it better, more efficiently.
I guess it is just what we enjoy doing. My husband says we should not spend time looking for hotels, restaurants, places after reaching the destination. We should have a clear picture of where to go and what do do! Hence the obsessive planning. I suppose there is an adventure in landing unplanned and figuring it out from there. How did you manage that when the twins were little?
Hahahaaa… that’s too much of a packing! 😀
And too much planning!
sorry… similar to yours 🙂
My vacation planning style is similar to you…internet, Tripadvisor, and finally my travel diary to jot down the tour plan and things to pack 🙂
Hi Five!!! Don’t even get me started on Things to Pack. I have 3 lists of clothes for everyone in the family, one list of shoes and accessories for moi and a separate one for makeup :p
I have this atlas that I bought when I was 20, and I track and plan all my trips in that – part of it is just that its sentimental, but the other part I really enjoy is writing it all down and having it there in front of me. However, I can’t avoid booking things online since that’s really the only way there is!
So basically, you have all your travel routes in one place 🙂 I can understand the sentimental value of it… do you browse the pages sometimes and think back about the trips and the memories?
Wow! Lots of vacation planning happening there! I don’t have much experience in planning vacations as the only place where mom agrees to go to is to visit my grandma. And yes though technology has made our life easier it has also put this demand of getting a lot of things done in short period of time and that is really tiring.
Oh… I hope you can convince her to take a real vacation soon…
But I agree completely with you on the demands on our time. My daughter has been complaining that I am always on the laptop and not able to play with her at all 🙁