I don't quite understand why anyone cares how others spend their money or how they travel.

My only comment on threads like this is that no one should be here to gratuitously demean other travelers. We all travel differently and no way is the wrong way. There are also many people traveling to Europe for the first time. No matter how many travel books and/or message boards you read, there are some things you will not learn until you get there. So what?

I have to say I do not script my trips minute to minute. There are days on my current 2 month Australia-NZ trip where I have done nothing more strenuous than laundry and read a book. Also, weather may dictate changes of plans.

You plan your own trip and don't worry about the trips of others. And there is no reason to start a message board thread to show how supposedly superior you are to those who don't do it your way.

As someone who flies to Rome and Athens everyweek during the summer for the airlines, I am truly amazed at the number of people who spend thousands of dollars on cruises leaving out of Rome, Venice or Athens and don't know where they are going. They come back in the middle of the night to the galley to chat and when asked, the majority of them say they don't know where they are going on their cruise. When I ask if they read on on any of the cities, I usually get the "deer in headlight look".

I am not superior in my thinking and you all know that I have asked for information through the years. But really.....

LaurenKahn1 wrote: "My only comment on threads like this is that no one should be here to gratuitously demean other travelers."

Come off it. If you were consistent, you would be equally against demeaning other posters.

I don't care how other people choose to organise or execute their travel projects. If they invite my opinion, and I have one, I will gladly say what I think. If they don't follow my advice, that's their prerogative.

But when people, either here or in real life, behave in a way that I think ill-judged or bad-mannered or just plainly stupid (or clever or wise or kind), I am entitled to form an opinion on that, and opinions on how other people behave are fair material for discussion, subject only to reasonable respect for their privacy.

The thread in question was started simply so the OP could declaim her superiority to travelers/posters who are not as savvy as she deems herself to be. These sorts of threads end up with the OP, in my opinion, looking like the unsavvy one.

Asking questions on message boards is legitimate. Starting threads to show supposedly how smart you are by demeaning others is not.

I stand firmly in the camp of people who couldn't care less what other people do or don't do... as long as I'm not traveling with them!

I could not agree more. Each of us plans his own trips (or wings it) and no one has to get anyone else's approval for his trip either.

Also, it is wise to remember that we were all first time travelers somewhere at one time and did not know what we were doing. No one is born in the US that immediately equate to knowledge of the ins and outs of European travel. How many of us who are prone to criticize people for putting in too many locations on their itineraries, for example, did our first trip (maybe more years ago than we want to be reminded) via a student Eurail pass?

I'm with Suze and Lauren on this one. We never booked day to day plans because one never knows when something delightful will happen.
I'm more amazed at those who follow a posters footsteps to an area instead of making it their own. My first time to Paris and Provence, we had no reservations. I knew nothing but my friend and I were open to follow what appealed to us and we had a great time.
It was one of my favorite trips.

For me (and this is only for me), when I go abroad anywhere, I will have in mind a few things I want to do but, for the most part, I just wing most of the trip. This is especially true on home exchanges where I am not usually downtown but in the suburbs. I certainly do research in advance of the trip, but, I have to tell you that, on my current trip to Australia and New Zealand, I had no fixed plans in Sydney except hotel reservations and a ticket at the Opera House when I arrived. It worked out just fine.

bob,

I wouldn't be so quick to glorify the planners -- who too often let their cars and their hotel reservations dominate their vacation experience -- as "people who makes things happen."

Again, I think the "planners" are now over-beating their chests because CarolA's initial post was so "holier-than-thou."

Nobody cares that bobthenavigator is plans to find the best parking. Please don't insult the people who put their faith in the parking gods -- we're a quite respectful lot, believe me -- in an effort to feel superior.

You're not!

LaurenKahn1 wrote: "The thread in question was started simply so the OP could declaim her superiority to travelers/posters who are not as savvy as she deems herself to be. These sorts of threads end up with the OP, in my opinion, looking like the unsavvy one."

You're not getting it, are you? CarolA posted comments on approaches to travel with which you might or might not agree. That opens up a discussion, and many people enjoy such chat.

You chose to impugn CarolA's motives. Is that your way of declaiming your superiority to her?

OK, I'm really very organized-was just trying to be funny.
Hub and I travel each year (no kids) so as soon as we return from one trip, I buy a book (or 3) about the next place. It stays in our "reading room" and I tag things that look interesting all year long. We book plane, hotels and transfers (love having our names on the placard!) about 9 months in advance for better rates. Then I do an Excel plan of all my places of interest with days opened as one category. Then I sort by days open and print out my chart which we then refer to after we have arrived at our destination. "What do you feel like seeing today? Is it open?-let me check the chart!" Pretty nifty, eh?

I'm not sure how this post has degraded into a "planners vs. non planners" argument. I don't think that was the OP's intent.

There's nothing wrong with leaving your trip up to serendipity, I think the point is more about having a clue about where you are going, otherwise, why are you going there?

Earlier in the year I was in Rome at the Borghese Gallery, waiting in line to buy the headset for the self guided tour. Suddenly I hear from ahead of me, "Do you take American?" Really? Now why would they? Do you think they would take the leftover Thai baht I have in my bag too?

I think it's our responsibility as a traveler to know a bit about a country's culture, language, geography and currency. To expect everyone to speak our language (where ever we come from) or use our currency is absurd.

"Not having a clue" can lead to potentially dangerous situations as well. Knowing the various local scams is important as well as being aware of various cultural expectations and laws. Being a tourist does not give one a free pass from being culturally sensitive or being a victim of a crime. Many problems tourists face could have easily been avoided had they read their guidebooks or even done a bit a research here.

On our first trip to Paris, in the days before the Internet and the discovery of Fodors, we bought a guidebook, booked a hotel it recommended, read a little about some sites of interest, and off we went.

The first day in Paris, we went wandering in the area around our Left Bank hotel, enjoying the ambiance. We came upon an impressive columned building, said "Wow, that looks cool! Let's go see what it is."

We found out you could go inside, so we did, and it was really amazing, and down in the basement there were crypts with lots of famous people buried.

We thoroughly enjoyed our serendipitous "find" that we hadn't read a thing about in our guide book. Of course it was the Pantheon!

In the days since then, I've become more of a researcher, although still not too much of a planner. But I don't think we've enjoyed ourselves any more than the day we "discovered" the Pantheon by accident.

I think that it boils down to being streetsmart or not, as opposed to planning something to the nth degree. My planning consists of reading a bit about a place (enough to decide on a list of cities/towns to visit). Then reading a bit about each town (enough to decide how long a good amount of time to spend there is), then book all hotels (after research), most transportation (plane tix, not always train tix). And most of my friends think i'm a planning freak... I don't come up with itineraries for each day, we see how we feel when we get there, some days we have more energy than others, or are tired from something we did the day before and I enjoy my trips the least when i'm exhausted and i force myself to see a "must-see". I would rather miss it all together. I discovered after a while that i'm more interested in walking around cities, eating, shopping, people watching, learning the local language than hitting every church and every museum. We go to the major ones but that's about it. We also enjoy the outdoors more and try to find nice beaches, hikes, views etc. However, I do keep my travel book on me and know how to look up things on the fly if need be, and know where we are, how far things are, how much the currency is etc. Many people are just not streetsmart and some even plan trips without bothering looking at a map, but I think they're that way whether they're traveling or at home. A friend was recently going to the south of france, I asked her about her plans and she said that she was staying in Nice for a while then driving to the Amalfi coast as it's only a 3 hour drive, she was ready to book the hotel there too. So she was doing a certain level of planning but never looked at a map, someone told her that it's only 3 hours so she was going with that. I promptly told her that it was NOT a 3 hour drive, and looked up travel directions on google maps to show otherwise. My parents are also the type of people who don't know where they are and it frustrates me because they make a lot of very very unnecessary errors that end up costing them $$$ to rectify. We were in Naples once and we passed by a couple who were asking the tourist office where Campania was and I was thinking to myself "umm, you are IN Campania". I don't have a problem with people not knowing the best must-see sights or where to get the best cheese but you should at least know where you are and how to go about finding out what to see and do should you find yourself there. Most of the time, all it takes is to ask the hotel reception and they'll give you a tourist map, mark places in the vicinity etc and off you go, no need to spend a year planning it. I also think that if you don't care about the cost you can do things like show up in a place, pay for an expensive ticket, find the closest 5 * hotel as you'll most likely always find availability there, but if you have a more realistic budget it always pays to plan ahead as you get the best prices flights and hotels. When people say that I plan too much (which I don't) i always give the example of my sister who showed up in Paris and payed 160 euros for the same hotel room that I had booked ahead of time for 80 euros and took a taxi for 40 euros from the airport because she didn't know anything about the trains going into Paris when I had taken the train from the airport for free as it was included in my rail pass, both had a good time but I had a much smaller c.card bill at the end of the month :)

Sorry for not breaking up the extremely long paragraph oops :)

I think English speaking
tourist may be more relaxed about being uninformed.
They hope there will always be someone who speaks English and can help them. And they are often right.

( don't try it in some small town in Austria, Spain or even Holland).

>>We were in Naples once and we passed by a couple who were asking the tourist office where Campania was and I was thinking to myself "umm, you are IN Campania".<<

Yes, but at least six times a day someone posts on Fodor's "We are going first to Florence, then to Tuscany." And this from people who've been to Italy many times. So it's such a common mistake, I can't believe people here are having such a hard time understanding that it must be a very easy mistake to make.

Likewise, the instant I read about your friend who thought the Amalfi was 3 hours from Nice, I thought: "Cinque Terre" -- which actually is 3 hours from Nice. So I don't think that's such a laughable mistake if someone is planning a trip using picture books and reports of friends.

As for the OP's motives, she was just sounding off, but I think she would have gotten a much different response if she had posted: "I don't why it bugs me so much to overhear other travelers be so confused about geography or the nearby sights when they travel but it does!" But instead, she tried to make her problem somebody else's responsibility -- like the rest of us have to have done our homework before we get on a plane, nah, nah.

As for this ideology of "I think it's the burden of the travler to know some of the language, the culture, yada yada -- " Most people only get all huffy about this when they are visitors to certain parts of Europe (where most people speak English anyway). Most Europeans and English-speakers traveling to Asia and Africa (even Greece and Turkey!) don't learn much before they go.

There is just this damn mania among American travelers in particular to look sophisticated and knowledgeable when they travel. And when they briefly see another American in a state of confusion in a foreign county, they pounce with glee --- "Look at THEM. I'm never like that."

B.S.

Zeppole-I'm the one who posted that I think it's the burden of the traveler to learn the culture.

You said, "Most people only get all huffy about this when they are visitors to certain parts of Europe (where most people speak English anyway). Most Europeans and English-speakers traveling to Asia and Africa (even Greece and Turkey!) don't learn much before they go."

I'm sorry, but I must respectfully disagree. I've been to over 30 countries (as many outside Europe as in), traveled Asia extensively, and do everything I can to learn about the culture, local scams, and at least a little language before I go.
For example, tourists continue to fall for the ploys used by touts outside the Grand Palace or Wat Po in Bangkok who tell them it's closed and offer to take them some place else (usually a jewelery store). It's important to know that the Royal family is highly revered and it's illegal to disrespect them in any way. And while I don't speak Thai, I did my best to learn how to say hello and thank you and ask how to find a bathroom. :-)

I don't so much mind questions posted here which are perceived to be "ignorant" by some because at least those people are trying to do some research before they go.
Once they arrive, it's their own fault if they have a bad time due to their own lack of research.
What bothers me are the people who don't learn anything and arrive in a place unprepared to the point they are disrespectful of the local culture and then are "shocked" when people are rude to them.

PS: Last year I was about to get on a plane to Ireland and I turned to my husband and said: "The Irish use euros, right?" and before he could answer, another voice of a stranger jumped in to say "Yes, they use euros in Ireland!"

Like, I wasn't talking to this other person.

Truth was, we were transferring through Dublin to Italy on a 90 minute connection and I was wondering if I'd easily be able to buy a cup of coffee. I wasn't "going" to Ireland.

I'm sure that fellow traveler has enjoyed lots of smirky lunches at my expense, amazed at these clueless travelers who just get on a plane without doing all their homework.