... not your shortest trip, but the least amount of time you have spent to pull trip arrangements together?

I shocked myself this past week when I decided I really *needed* a vacation to Mexico asap. From getting the idea, to time-off approval at work, purchase of plane ticket, and hotel reservation confirmed... under 72 hours! A personal best!

How about you?

I made the arrangements for my trip to Maui last year in just under an hour. That included air, car, and a rented condo.

But that did include a bit of cheating. I had been considering the trip for a while, and had pulled together a set of bookmarks of Web sites for promising accommodations. I was also periodically watching the wild gyration of airfares. When the friend I was planning to go with definitively told me he couldn't go (the story of my life), I decided I would book it right now, as a solo trip (the other half of the story of my life).

So I opened the bookmarks, quickly prioritized them for suitability as solo accommodations, and began checking them for availability. When I found one, I called the owner (despite an automated booking system) and verified availability. He was willing to hold it for a day or so pending airfare availability. Within an hour I found an airfare less outrageous than the others, booked it, booked the condo, booked a car rental through my employer's contract (which applies to personal rentals as well), and bought travel insurance.

That's probably the shortest time I've spent on actually pulling together trip arrangements. But it was only possible because of some "background" research that I had been gradually doing as my friend strung me along. With friends like that, who needs enemas?

I have made spur of the moment trip plans in one afternoon.

Something on tv spurred the idea, I was at work so I logged onto economytravel.com and found a special fare that was good only that one day and only by booking on the internet, so I booked it right then.

Then I held my breath as I asked The Keeper of the Vacation Forms if anyone else had booked my dates. That was backwards I know but I sort of blacked and blanked out when I saw the fare. But what an adrenaline rush! She said all was clear and that I could book my tickets, ha, little did she know!

In the afternoon during a lull I went online and booked my hotel.

Before I left work at 5pm, I wrote an email to a friend across the country and told her my plans and said she could join me in Paris if she would like.

So the whim and the desire and the confirmation all took one afternoon!

I'm not good with last-minute travel - mostly because of the critters and getting someone to sit them.

The shortest prep time was my very first trip. I had been saving money to go to Hawaii and the friend I was going with decided 6 months prior to the plan that she didn't want to go.

I went home depressed, saw my sister sitting around and said "do you want to go to Hawaii?" Two weeks later we were on the plane.

Longest prep time - I'm planning on going to England, Scotland and Wales for my 50th birthday. I've been planning it since I was about 16 years old and there's still almost 10 years to go. The lodgings and transportation change as I get older, but the sights have stayed the same for that entire time.

hey thanks everyone. great comments all. thanks for sharing your different ways and methods of doing things.

this latest trip for me got done so quickly (similar to what JBHapgood mentions) because I had done some preliminary plane ticket research earlier, and probably more important am going to a place i have been many many times before.

I woke up one morning and decided to go from ATL to MCO that afternoon, called AirTran, packed, headed out. As for International, I asked a friend to pick me up something in Cancun the next day when he went and he said "why don't you just come with me", so I did.

Way to go Wednesday!