I think it's good to have a list of recommended restaurants but you have to give yourself some room to be spontaneous. The longer the trip the more room I give myself to wander off the beaten track or to linger a little longer in places that capture my heart. I have often moved on from a place sooner than planned if it doesn't appeal to me. You have to be ready to go with the flow.

I downloaded a blank calender that allowed me to slot in exactly where I was staying and what I was doing each day. I got completely lambasted by my friends for doing so, but it allowed me to carve out an acurate budget and helped me be sure I would arrive at a site on a day it was open etc.

Yet within such a plan there was always room for flexibility. I had a sense because of all of my planning which "sites" were most important to me and which would be the first to get tossed if things changed.

I loved this way of planning and will do it again. Everything ran quite smoothly for the most part. I find without a plan I have to battle my own laziness too much and I waste time getting organized.

I don't plan restaruants at all though - I leave that to the foodies :D

Good Travels,

Murphy

I love to plan but it can really stress me out if I go overboard with too many details. The best advice I ever heard on this was plan all you want before you go and then be spontaneous when you get there.

&gt;&gt;On a recent trip with some of my family I discovered that, despite all of my weeks of careful planning that would give them the benefit of my experience, <b>they didn't want to do what I thought they should do</b>.&lt;&lt;
LOL, Ira -- been there, done that. :-)Got over it...not going there again!

Planning and anticipating a trip is half the fun for me. If I hadn't found the great help of all you fodorites, I don't know what I'd have done when venturing to Europe for the first time. This board is the best for hotel recommendations, and special travel tips no one else would think of. So kudos to Travel Talk!

I usually plan doing one special activity a day. The rest is left up to serendipity which has led us to some of our best travel experiences.

Just planning one activity a day also gives us the feeling of really being on vacation.

We tend to spend lots of time just wandering around- how lovely to wander through the side streets of Venice or Rome or a small town in England.

Yes, it's possible to overplan. I think if you're planning every single meal, it's too rigid a schedule. After all, it's not the army, it's a vacation! Of course, if there's a restaurant you want to go to and it's only open a certain night, then by all means reserve.

What we do is a make a list of restaurants that would interest us (we're foodies, so this is understandable ;)) and we keep the list in our bag. Depending on where we are in a city, we'll consult the list and see if anything is close by, and if not, we'll just walk around and find something that looks alright.

I've even started being more leniant with sightseeing. You can't possibly see everything unless you spend weeks, so why kill yourself trying to? I realized that we weren't making our travels enough of a vacation.

We usually plan about 75% of the restaurants ahead and leave the sightseeing pretty much ad lib.

The 2 times we've planned every step of the way, some major disaster cancelled the trip and both times we were going to Italy.

2001 it was 9/11. 2005 we had just evacuated for Hurricane Katrina.

Now we don't plan so much. And we're doubly afraid to plan a trip to Italy.

I enjoy the research (and the anticipation) but don't assign specific activities to specific days. Instead, I keep a list of possibilities. Then we pick according to the weather and our mood. But it helps to make longer stays and have several days to see a place. (Of course, some tours, etc. have to be scheduled.)

You must seek out Melissa5 if you want to see some classic over planning. I would guess that between this and the irelandyes board she wrote enough to publish a long novel. Topics like &quot;will my highlighters explode on the plane&quot; come to mind.

Bill

Bill, that is HILARIOUS.

Me, I like the IDEA of planning, and I will research on-line and read and
re-read guidebooks and it gets me excited about my trip, but when it comes down to it: I basically know what I want to see. I don't need or want to visit EVERY SINGLE SIGHT in every city I visit. I only see what interests me, and allow plenty of time for not-sightseeing interests such as visiting foodshops to learn about the cuisine, visiting record shops, etc..

Sometimes if I'm bored, I'll make a list of what I want to see each day I am on holiday--but do you know I have never not once followed it? It's more to see if I'll have time for things and gives me a rough idea of how my day will break down, but in the end, I just don't care. I go, I see things I want to see, I eat well, I meet people, get to know the culture, and that is it.

She needs something to keep her biologist husband occupied. :-) ((b))

It all depends on your personality, some people like to plan every minute, some don't even bother with hotel reservations.

I always wonder what happens when something goes wrong, like a museum got closed a week before my arrival, and I didn't know. What would happen in this situation to people who plan every moment? Or maybe a road got closed and a village is not accessible?

I like to &quot;dream a plan&quot; but act accordingly to the moment, like do I feel like walking around or people watching today?

Yes, it's better to know which restaurant is nice, which place is worth a long hike, but be flexible when you get there. For example, you walked out of a museum at lunch time, wouldn't you like to know that the restaurant across is overpriced, but the one around the corner is a real find?

I like to plan because I would hate to get home and read an article only to find out I had been just a block away from something I really would have loved to have seen. Also, it is neccessary from a budgetting perspective for me. I even slot in restaurants so I can estimate the cost. However, 90 per cent of the times we won't eat at those restaurants. But at least I know that even if every other restaurant costs 10 times as much, I have accurately budgeted enough money to eat somewhere.

The problem with planning is not overplanning, but not showing flexibility when following the plan. However, I would hate to be like the people whose video of Rome I saw last week: &quot;There we are by some old building&quot; (the Colloseum). &quot;We saw this nice palace in distance all lit up at night&quot; (The Vatican). Sure, they had a good time, but were they reall ygetting everything they could out of the experience?

My final thought on this topic is: I love to plan. I'm always planning for trips even though I'm not going to take them (well, not anytime soon).

Does anyone else just plan for fun?

I really enjoy planning all the details, often including where to eat. I'd hate to spend time wandering around w/o knowing where to go or what I wanted to see, when those places are open, etc. I do often like just wandering into a place to eat, but I am a budget traveler and eat based on price and how fast it takes.

I dont think it's possible to overplan. I just think sticking to that plan might be a mistake.

I love planning my trips. As a matter of fact the ratio of plan to trip time MIGHT be 20 to 1. It sure is when it comes to thinking about my trip anyway.

When I went to Dingle I looked at the street and knew the way I had seen so many pics of it, etc....

I LOVE great food. I would rather over plan and have 10 possiblities of where to eat for that meal than not really know and HATE where I ate. I do it all the time tho.. end up in a crappy tourist trap and say damn- I wish I considered we were going to overnight here.

But I LOVE planning so for me it works and I hate sticking to a plan so OVER planning is great for me because I consider all the possibilities.

I think you can over plan for a trip. We (myself, husband and 2 teen sons)returned last week from 3 weeks in France and Italy. We always have our car and accommodations booked before we leave home, but never plan out restaurants ahead of time. I can't imagine doing that as for us half the fun is strolling around and checking out the different restaurants and pizzerias.

As for sightseeing, we do know what we want to see but you do have to be careful and not push it too hard as it is hot in the summer. There were days that we did go local and take a siesta in the afternoon. As for prebooking popular museums, etc. that would be a good idea, although we have never done this and been lucky to miss the lines.

This was our family's 5th trip to Europe and I think we still want to see the sights but we also enjoy just being in the moment. We spent a week at an agriturismo in Tuscany, doing unplanned daytrips around the region, and it was so relaxing. Shopping for groceries at the local Co-op grocery was even fun!

Nothing will ever top walking each a.m. to the local bakery in Provence for croissants and baguettes, sitting on the harbor in Vernazza at dusk, enjoying the countryside of Tuscany sipping wine and eating parmigiano-reggiano cheese with the scents of jasmine in the air, and being in Sorrento, Italy, when they won the World Cup! See the sights but remember to slow down and just enjoy the moment!

<i>My name is kswl, and I am an overplanner.&quot; </i>

Hiii, kswl!

My answer would be yes and no. I plan our trips and sometimes may go overboard, but it's surprising how often some detail I came upon in my planning has been of great help in our travels. On the other hand, I currently have a file folder about 2&quot; thick which contains all the print-outs and other materials I've gathered for our September trip. The November trip file is thinner, but growing. Both of which must be sorted through and reworked. I guess for us it really depends on where we're going and how complicated it might be (multi-city, tons of sightseeing, very popular destinations) whether or not lots of details or very few are preplanned.

However, I can't remember ever having picked &quot;each and every restaurant for each meal&quot; in my plans. We enjoy good food, but can't really say we are &quot;foodies&quot; and that dining is the most important aspect of our travels. I agree with the others who enjoy strolling about, checking menus and then deciding on a place to eat. Likewise we have had some terrific meals at places suggested by our hotel personnel (for example where locals eat).

After dates are picked, air comes first, followed by train info if that's part of the trip (but usually not reservations), hotel(s) are reserved (don't want to spend precious vacation time searching for a place to stay, lugging luggage, etc.). If museums and other sites usually have lines, then reservations are made.

I think the most reservations and specific things to see on certain days were preplanned for our trip to Washington, D.C. and it worked out extremely well. Arranged tours through our Congresswoman; reserved tickets for Kennedy Center and Ford Theatre plays; boat trip to Mt. Vernon; had reservation for dedication of the WWII Memorial. We usually don't have that much set up in advance.

Now my preplanning problem is going through the 2&quot; file folder and condensing down and picking out the info I want and need, and coming up with a file to take with us. Air reserved months ago, also hotels. We still need to reserve a car. I'm reasonably certain it will all come together; at least it always has in the past. In fact, I ended up with long files for a couple of our trips that I've saved and have been sharing with other travelers. Will probably do the same thing with the September trip info.