Planning for trips - is it a chore or a joy?
 

A joy for me!

I enjoy the planning as much as I enjoy the trip!

I get antsy when/ if I don't have a trip to plan!

What about you?

I enjoy the research that goes into deciding where and when to go. And then the research about where to stay, where to eat, and what to do once a destination is chosen.

Sometimes I enjoy the research so much, I don't bother to go on the trip.

For me, it's part joy/part chore, because I'm the designated planner for the family. I get ansty about air fare.

Last night, I made plane reservations for Christmas, as the lowest-fare flights are already selling out on Southwest. Will also reserve today, for DS and DIL, as their Christmas present from us. Won't need a car or hotel for this trip, so that makes it easy.

I like the research and when I get to my destination I know enough to be my own tour guide.

So when I get a Private Tour Guide ,it is a bonus.

Hahahahahaha!

I canceled my 2008 trip to Italy when my schnauzer got sick. I had no idea it would be nine years before I would be able to take it (thanks, recession!). The 21 day plan was tweaked to 16 days and also to include my new travel partner's interests and preferences. But it was an excellent overall plan and it was a dream come true to actually be on the long-delayed trip. The most anticipated lodging turned out to be better than I even imagined. First read about it on slowtrav almost 20 years ago. Used LoveItaly's private driver for the Amalfi coast. Hope to redo parts of that trip again.

I never do much research or planning. So it is neither a chore nor a joy.

lol. I'm not sure if you are joking but there have been plenty of trips that we've researched that we ended up not going on. And a few that were all booked that we ended up not going on (for various reasons).

That happens to me more often than I'd like, most recently with Barcelona.

I think planning is fun. I enjoy reading about where I'm going and deciding where to stay and making a list of some restaurants I might like to try and things I want to do and see. I don't enjoy researching the logistics of transportation options for wherever I'm headed. I do all the airfare and hotel booking and any restaurant reservations, and my husband does all the transportation research.

I'm taking a trip with three of my siblings and my brother's fiance and one of my niece's in March. We found cheap airfare to Paris. I'm not sure how that trip is going to go. They've all traveled in various groups together, but I haven't joined them on any of their trips. I'm kind of surprised I decided to come along on this trip, but I figured it would be fine since I've been to Paris a couple of times and am happy to do my own thing, and I don't really care where we stay.

P.S. We never plan restaurants in advance of taking the trip. I can't imagine planning each day in that much detail. We prefer to wander where we please each day, according to the weather and our preferences. We eat when we happen to be hungry, deciding from menus of interesting places. It's a process that has served us well.

Oh you should take that trip to Barcelona. That was one we researched, booked and went on and we loved it. I've done a lot of research on Lisbon but never ended up booking. Same for Bangkok and Phuket. We had an entire trip booked to Madrid about 11 years ago in February and about a week before we decided we didn't want to stomp around a cold, rainy city and canceled the whole trip and booked a trip to Acapulco instead.

Like tom42 said, I enjoy the planning process, researching hotels, restaurants and activities. Gets me excited for the destination. What’s funny is we are just as likely to ditch our plans once we arrive and just go with the flow of the day as it unfolds.

But with the planning, you know what your options are.
I do the same. :-)

I do all of the planning and I generally enjoy it but the internet allows me to obsess over the minutiae and lose sight of the bigger picture. It's something I struggle with because it can negatively impact a trip. I don't really preplan what we'll be doing but I like to be aware of as many options as possible.

Love the planning. I plan daily itineraries. This works well with my personal style and meshes with the people I usually travel with.

I never plan restaurants. I know a few people who make all their restaurant plans ahead of time because they are so excited to try various restaurants. I have planned a trip around a restaurant before, but unless it is the primary reason for the trip, I don't much care where I eat.

We don't really do daily itineraries beyond knowing what days things are closed so planning around that.

The food part of traveling is something my husband, daughter, and I all enjoy and care about. It's fun to go together because we always order something different so we can share and try more of the menu. We usually book apartments and eat breakfast and dinner in the apartment and just have lunch out. I'll research restaurants and read reviews ahead of time and have kind of general list of places we might like to try, and then if it works to get to a few of them: great. Sometimes there will be a specific restaurant we want to try, and then I'll make those reservations ahead of time.

I never plan daily itineraries, although I will plan ahead if we want to do a specific activity. For example, I just booked a sunset cocktail cruise for next Wednesday and an atv tour for next Friday morning in Maui. But that is all. I also have the menus from about ten different restaurants printed out and we will choose from them when the time comes.

I feel the same.
I'd like to know ahead of time...so I can cancel on the trip.

I used to enjoy the planning more than I do now. I'd love to just have someone plan everything for me and book every ticket but by the time I finish telling someone all the details, I might as well do it myself.

Sometimes it makes my head explode but I get through it. I have lists of things I want to see and when my friend and I went to London and Paris for a month in 2017, I had reservations and tickets for some of the things we wanted to see. Belenciaga at the V & A, Dior at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, the new Yes St. Laurant exhibit at his house, and Versailles. The rest of the time we just kind of figured out that night what we would do the next day and then we'd hit the half price ticket booths for the West End shows first thing so we'd know what we were seeing that night.

I can't plan a schedule allotting every minute of every day and have all those days figured out before leaving the house. That would be absolute "hell" for me.

Mostly a joy!

Sugarmaple, so you guys will be in France at the same time as us. Your itinerary is the _______ area and ours is the Aveyron, so lets rendezvous and drop in on fellow Fodorite 'St Cirq' unannounced and stealth-like.
Seriously, Sugarmaple, Outwest, Muskoka and Goddesstogo (did I miss anyone? sorry) could all vouch for our city's excellent Reference Library. Located downtown and with a massive Travel books section, it is a superb place for research-fanatics like myself. Every single guidebook brand plus many specialty titles plus travel literature. There also is a great maps room there. Bliss.
My idea of a perfect afternoon includes this library.

I am done. The colour copier.

PS I'll soon be self-publishing my musical memoirs through this same library's POD press, a business that they inherited from The University of Toronto.

[QUOTE=starrs;16980115]A joy for me!

I enjoy the planning as much as I enjoy the trip!

I get antsy when/ if I don't have a trip to plan! Starrs



Boy, can I relate to that. I love trip planning, even with the stress and uncertainty sometimes associated.
We had planned a Danube River trip for next spring with extra days on our own in Budapest and Prague. DH felt that was to pricey at this time, that we needed to spend that $$ on a new roof. I was really down in the dumps. However, our fabulous financial advisor told DH we could, indeed, afford the trip, so it is back on! Planning, planning.

And of course, the good folks at Fodors make planning so much more fun!

I enjoy the planning to a degree, but I do get over it when I start to over-plan. Once I have accommodation, and airfares booked, I then tend to spend a lot of time looking for activities etc, and finally decided to go with the flow, so as not to be tired of it all.

LOL, That actually happened to us!

I do enjoy reading about places. By the time we get there, I have a pretty good idea of what things are available to see and do in the area. I like learning about the transit system ahead of time, and currency, customs and a bit of language.

What I don't do is plan. Hate it. Worked as a project manager for awhile and planning stuff just feels like work and not in a good way. And I've grown to dislike working from a plan once we're there almost as much as my wife hates working from a plan. We pre-book the first hotel, then once there... I go out early for morning photos while she sleeps in and enjoys her vacation. I come back, we might find some breakfast and open up copied pages of guide books I brought and talk about what we might start walking towards as today's first choice option. Then we usually see a lot of interesting stuff on the way, sometimes having conversations with strangers somehow. and if lucky we actually make it to and do that option we talked about in the morning.

That has meant missing a lot of museums and stuff but we enjoy it.

CC, I would love that!
Pre-internet, I took Mom to Ireland, England and Scotland. On the first night, we talked to some folks who were about to fly back who said the Aran Islands was their favorite part of the trip. Mom asked if we were going there. I thought we didn't "have time". Mom said "Let's make time". Short version = the first 2.5 days of that trip were the best days ever and completely "off schedule". We said if we had to go back then, it would still have been the best trip ever. We followed our noses for almost three weeks. I had our flight reservations into Shannon and out of Gatwick and the car reserved. That was it. Mom did get stressed when she learned there was a bank holiday at the end of the trip so she did walk into a travel agency (without telling me) to book a hotel for our last night. It was a fabulous trip. Gorgeous weather. If there were "plans", we did a 52 card pick up with them. I do like leaving things open. :-)

srarrs, I so enjoyed planning our trips to Europe. AT least 17/18 were for 4 to 25 travelers.

For our 40th anniversary in 2000, it took me 2 years to arrange 25 of us going up the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam. Dear wife did know about the trip, but not with all our family and friends.
Became friends with the KD cruise line manager and we have visited them a few times in Austria and they have visited us in the US.
Our 35th trip to Europe, Paris was planned, but did/will not happen.
Now, we do 3 /4 overnight and the latest was Saratoga Springs and then Lenox.
We are both doing great. Happy Days.

Wow! Impressive Richard! I know they had to be fabulous trips!

Would Quebec be a reasonable sub for Paris?
If you head over to the Rockies, I highly recommend Chateau Lake Louise.

starrs, that's a nice way to discover that less is more. Ireland is a great place to skip the schedule.

I had to find out the hard way. Someone on another thread summed up my earlier travel attitude very well when she said "I didn't come all the way to Paris to sit around". Our first trip to Ireland was a forced march around the island, making sure we were at our next scheduled inn on time. Too much of my parent's marathon US road trips as training, I think.

Was still at it on my first day in Thailand. Grump on the balcony, looking at the river through some buildings while my wife was very keen on enjoying the big plush king sized. lol. That Paris thing is *exactly* what I was thinking and I was not having fun. It was barely 7am! But then I said I was going out for a bit, grabbed the camera and that was it.

People say a camera causes you to miss things. I say it can do the opposite. Instead of time spent that morning trying to get to some big attraction, I walked around the neighbourhood. Street cart people were busy trying to get their fires going. Shops were propping up awnings with poles. Tuk tuk drivers were standing around laughing and not yet ready to come after me with a pitch to get me to have a ride. The sun was beaming down cross streets in a very comfortable golden glow and it hadn't gotten hot and sticky yet. I'd look for little things and stop to take a photo but had it not been for the looking for opportunities, I might have not seen them at all. And a couple of hours later, I was happy as anything.

That sounds like a wonderful experience for you!

Walking a dog in the early morning opens up a similar world. New Orleans' French Quarter. NYC's Times Square during the peep show days. A whole different side of the city from a few hours before at night. ;)

Now you make me wish I had a camera then!

Oh, gosh... either one of those in "the old days" (FQ, pre-Katrina or TS, pre-Guiliani) would be an awesome place to have a camera in those unguarded morning moments.