It's so hard to be spontaneous.

The trouble with spontaneity these days is that all the tourirsts have got everything completely booked up.

When I was still at university, one of our professors used to say: "Fail to plan is plan to fail".

It is difficult to afford to be spontaneous when one has limited time. If you move to Utrecht for a year, you can be spontaineous. Now, you need to take into account opening times, waiting times, transport schedules, budget, and safety. Your parents probably had a safer environment and trusted in good. Now, I personally do not go on a trip if I do not know how and when I am going home.

You can be spontaneous on your trip but brace for some disappoinment if you cannot get into the place you want to see because you had not booked it two weeks in advance. If you don't care about disappointment (much), then take care of your safety and be spontaneous as you like.

I agree with both Lin and Kootah. I've mentioned this before, but even here in London things I used to be able to do spontaneously, like go to a museum exhibition, are no longer possible without advanced planning due to getting booked up quickly. I don't even mean for really huge events like the Bayeux Tapestery, even smaller ones with less familiar artists/topics/etc.

I personally am a planner- both because I like to know what I'm doing in advance and because I genuinely enjoy the planning, which to me is half the fun of a trip. If I'm going all the way to a new destination, and I have things in mind I know I want to see, I'm not going to leave that to chance if I can book ahead. Plus things like transport and accommodation are often less expensive if booked in advance (i.e. the best value hotels may be the first to sell out).

Of course people who want to be spontaneous should be! But just be prepared you may not get your first choice of food/accommodation/etc and you may miss out on things you wanted to see. But for some people they are happy to make that trade-off. There's no right or wrong way.

Agree with the two previous posters.
When I first visited Europe in the early 80s, you could easily go on your own, not book hotels or sites in advance. My guide was Frommer's guide or Europe on $10 a day.
NOW, WAY more people are touring Europe. Most of the important sites you much book in advance. Also, for lodgings, it can be a huge problem if you visit a city where a big event is taking place. Example, I wanted to visit London for about a week last year after our Cornwall and Devan tour. I found that all the hotels near Victoria Station were full. I changed our plans and did London after the tour, and it worked out fine.

One thing about basing in a city and taking the train, it works ok if your trip is less than an hour, because you waste time getting to the station and waiting for the train. Further, you waste more money on travel.
Also, we didn't book our rail trips when we visited Bavaria two years ago and all our trains had standing room only, which was not good since I have a bad knee.

Do your research and enjoy learning about what is great to see. Find nice lodging and enjoy it, don't take chances on touring.

You can build some spontaneity into a planned trip: you can plan to see an area within a given province without knowing exactly what to expect, or you can write a list of things you'd like to see and choose from the list. Must-sees can be fixed in stone but you might have a number of other things that are maybes and can choose one at random. And you can get around your problem of not planning accommodation by only choosing to book while you are at the destination before (i.e. phoning a day or two ahead). That means you haven't left it all to chance (hard to do nowadays), but you build in flexibility so if you come across something you'd like to do, you can change plans.

My daughter hates planning ahead and prefers spontaneity so I do a version of the above on my trips with her. There is enough give so that if we decide we'd prefer people-watching one day instead of that gallery, we can do it.

Lavandula

I'm more on the spontaneous side - when we're in London, we have accomodation booked and that's it, and that's the way we tend to travel to most places. I was in Myanmar a couple of weeks ago and had a hotel booked, and everything else was just spur of the moment, including train trips- nothing planned in advance. We're in Penang next month and we haven't even sorted accomodation. In Istanbul earlier in the year, we booked a hotel, but nothing else - one day we took a two hour ferry ride to Bursa without any preplanning- had a great time. We're in Mumbai in November, hotel booked, but no other plans yet.

That said, I'm not fussed by fancy restaurants, and prefer not to go where everyone else is queuing up to see. We did miss the Sagrada Familia when we were in Barcelona in February due to not prebooking, but havent missed anything else I can think of.

The other problem is that you need to plan at least a bit to know which things can still be spontaneous! A current example: given the weather forecast, I want to go to the nearby coast - about 90 minutes on the slow local train - for a few days and get on a ferry or two to an island.

That seems to have potential for spontaneity ... except that at this time of year, none of the [small] islands have available accommodation, or if they do, it's subject to minimum stay requirements. Oh, and the cheap ferry to the nice car-free island that doesn't require advance booking is tidal and only runs once a day, so a day trip requires the expensive (and pre-booked!) fast ferry unless I want an immediate turnaround. And the swimming times at the coastal beaches are also tide-dependent, so no quick dips after lunch if the tide is out ...

Now, as a local I know all this and have made my arrangements accordingly. But someone just looking at the map and the weather and hoping for a nice short break is going to be pretty disappointed. Just as somone arriving at 1pm to discover the cool weekly market closes at 12 noon would be.

There are options where lots of flexibility is possible (e.g. the Baltic beaches aren't tidal; you can hire a pedal boat all day every day in front of the local castle; the market is four times a week in summer) but again, you need to have done the research to know what options there are.

The 'turn up and hope' approach really only works these days when you a) have a fairly big budget, b) are in a place big enough to have multiple accommodation options, and c) no particular preconceptions about what you want to see and do beyond generalities like 'mountains', 'old buildings' and 'eat ice cream'. Otherwise, you're really riding your luck.

I find there is room to be spontaneous within careful planning. I want to know where I am staying and how I am getting there. I don’t mind being a bit more spontaneous about what I am doing once I am in the location, even though I will have researched some ideas.

An example was when I decided to follow a crowd of locals all making their way in an orderly manner to a location in Tokyo. I had started off with a vague notion of going to a park but literally decided to “go with the flow.” I followed them to a field set up with a large security screening set up. I wondered, “ Am I going to a concert? Do they really take walking in parks this seriously?” but decided to see it through. After security I followed the crowd through a gate and discovered I had just entered the grounds of the Imperial Palace! A worker with a sign “English” answered my questions. I had managed to arrive one of the 8 days each spring that the palace grounds are open to the public to enjoy the cherry blossoms. I thoroughly enjoyed this unexpected treat and my walk through the grounds.

On the flip side, another Tokyo highlight, Team Lab Planets, could never have happened without preplanning. Timed tickets must be purchased in advance. I watched disappointed people turned away.

My position is that there is no such thing as 100% spontaneity. Even things like renting a car, driving, and taking one fork or another are choices based on parameters. When I travel, those are usually time, money, endurance, and taste. If I have any of the first three items to spare, I decide to do something that was not on my original itinerary. Trujillo and Sahagún in Spain, Mazara del Vallo in Italy, and the Louis Vuitton Museum in Paris come to mind. However, I still made a conscious choice, probably the night before.

It’s good to be informed about the range of possibilities. You can still make decisions on the fly. I plan to do this on an upcoming trip — I’ll have a place for 10 days but “plan” to leave it empty for a night or two and make an overnight trip somewhere. We will figure it out when we get over there.

It takes a lot of planning to be spontaneous! (That’s the theme of a Frank Herbert novel.)

Happy travels!

I think you might get away with spontaneity if you don't mind where you sleep, how much it costs, where and what you might find to eat etc, etc. Here in Scotland on the Isle of Skye the number of visitors way exceeds the number of beds and dining places available and not just in the summer, but basically from Easter until the end of October. I see folk sleeping in their cars and grabbing the last available sandwich in the supermarket because they didn't book any accommodation or meals. Running a small B&B I always email guests as soon as they make their reservation to give them a list of recommended restaurants and encourage them to make dinner reservations. In more than 75% of bookings, guests have not booked dinner. It then seems to miraculously become my problem to find them somewhere to eat. Or perhaps I could whip them up a 3 course meal? Er no. Fail to plan = plan to fail.

Of course it depends highly on where you are. For example there are more than a few hotels available in Utrecht, NL for tomorrow night (according to booking.com)

I still laugh at this, but I guess it was in the late 60s or early 70s, when I was a teenager, my parents would suddenly appear in the living room and wave goodbye.

"Goodbye! See you in two weeks! Take care of the house!"

"Huh? Where are you going?"

"We're going to France. We told you a couple of weeks ago."

They'd leave, and my brother and I would immediately throw a party and wreck the place. But we always managed to have things back in order by the time they got back.

As I mentioned in the OP, they would just fly to somewhere in France, rent a car, and drive until they found a nice picturesque little village where they could rent a hotel room. That's what they did for 2 weeks. No plan. No reservations.

I have always envied them for doing that.

I plan. I over plan. I know everything before we land. Where we're going to be, what we're going to see, everything. Maybe it's unavoidable. The information technology we have makes it possible to eliminate all uncertainty. No uncertainty anymore. But no discovery. We've smoothed out the highs and lows. Fewer disappointments, but in return, fewer thrills.

I still envy them.

While living in Europe in the mid 1960s, we thought nothing of throwing a weekend bag in the VW Bug and heading out without any plan at all. Even did that in the 1970s in the U.S. But it appears those days are gone forever. Oh, to be young and dumb again.

It's extremely hard to be spontaneous. I began my travel career in 1993 with a visit to Ireland and would go to visit Europe four more times in the 1990s. Back then, I would make a reservation for the first night but none other. I'd sweep into a town and find a place without problem. By the late 1990s, I found that was harder to do, so I changed my strategy: I'd call ahead the day before to make reservations. That changed in the 2000s: By then I made all my reservations in advance via email or internet.

Since my first trip, I've continued traveling, visiting 23 countries on three continents. Practically every detail must be planned in advance, but I still love travel. In 2027, my plans entail countries No. 24, 25 and 26.

Though I think traveling is more arduous than it used to be, I don't resent the larger number of travelers. I've sung the gospel of travel as a way to grow, renew the soul and love life. Though I believe a lot of today's vacationers are tourists rather than pilgrims, I still will incorporate travel into my life.

One way I've responded to increased tourism is to take long-distance hikes. I've hiked around 100 miles three times, twice in Ireland and once in England. (I know of trails in Poland, Romania and Israel that I wouldn't mind hiking.) Hiking allows people to still get off the beaten path and become pilgrims. This year, I hiked in the Lake District in England for more than a week. It was a grand adventure even in 2026.

When we were working, vacation time was limited, so we wanted to maximize what we were doing. (For our first twenty years, my husband only had two weeks of vacation, so those vacation days were all taken visiting out-of-state relatives.). So the RS tours starting on our 25th anniversary nicely gave us exactly what we were hoping.

Later traveling independently, I over-prepared ahead of time. This gave us lots of options that I would share on the train to the next city because most activities didn’t need reservations. From my husband’s point of view, our plans were spontaneous. We loved the flexibility of “what do we feel like doing today?”

Now that I’ve traveled a lot, I still can have the spontaneous experiences because I’m going to some less touristy destinations. Last year on arrival at Pavia, Italy, I had nothing planned for two days - zip. The castle museum I found had one other couple who I saw during my time there, and it was an excellent museum! Last year I also switched a planned city last-minute & made a reservation for Bologna & train ticket over breakfast. There is a bit of thrill of adventure to know I have zero plans as I board a train!

I think it’s a mindset and habits. I plan very well, daily. Then I can afford myself a smaller amount of spontaneity once there. I have a child who can travel like your parents (and sometimes does). But I know myself - and I can’t. Lol.

I come from a long line of non-spontneity. In the 70's, my parents would pack up and head to the lake for the same 3 weeks every July, same time, same campground, same campsite. At the end of the the weeks as we were leaving, he'd stop at the office at book the same time next year. With my kids, we made multiple Disney trips over the years and that's no place for spontaneity.

Now, with no kids in tow, my wife and I still love our planning. Some days on vacation we may wake up before we decide what we're going to see and that's the extent of the spontaneity. But sometimes even on these days we feel we're wasting time because we have to waste time coming up with a plan. That frustrates me. Two years ago we did a trip with friends to Portugal and while we had a plan for each day, the friends drove me nuts with their self professed "serendipity". Sometimes a planned start to the day wouldn't get going until after a second breakfast and then sometimes a coffee break. They'd smile and say "serendipity." And I'd smile back while dreaming of punching them in the nose.

I would love to just go to the airport, pick a destination, get on the plane with minimal luggage, like a small backpack and go with the wind...I think it could be done, but it would take a very fearless approach. Think about the adventure that would be though...

I remember seeing this “last minute airline ticket” sales place in the Frankfurt airport and thought how much fun that could be.

https://onemileatatime.com/insights/last-minute-ticket-counter-airport/

If you want to be spontaneous I still think it’s doable if you want to do it.

20+ years ago you could do it but not so much these days. In 2006 we took the train from Rome to Sorrento with no reservations but toting the handy RS guidebook. One of the recommended hotels was Hotel Lorelei right on the cliff. We walked over; they had rooms and asked if we wanted ocean-facing. Sure, why not? It was spectacular! They even had their own elevator cut into the cliff down to a lounge area. The hotel was a bit rundown but every morning they'd ask at the reception if we were checking out and we'd decide to stay another nite. Finally we moved on, went to Pesaro where again we had no reservation and easily found a room. The Lorelei closed in 2007 and was empty for many years, finally being restored as a boutique hotel at over $1,000 per nite.

We went once again without reservations to Umbria in 2008 and already it was becoming harder to find rooms. The change has been a mixed blessing, to be sure.

Oh how planning our trips abroad have changed since we have the internet and booking.com. In the last century we had our airline tickets and a well researched RS and Lonely Planet guide books. This gave us a rough outline of cities we would visit, train schedules, places to see and a list of 3 or 4 places to stay. Using a phone card you would call the hotels on the list the day before you arrive. I would add one day to our city stays for serendipitous events.

We are a lot older and nightly rooms, transportation purchased for long distance trains and planes, and the list of optional activities are made. We aren’t picky eaters so no fancy eating or reservations. Don’t do reservations for sites except when in town. That means some places are sadly missed. Most big sites in Europe have been visited already. We travel in the fringe seasons so there is some flexibility. I still add one day to plans in each city and read billboards everywhere for special events. I actually like to stay a neighborhoods just outside the historic areas. These B and B’s usually have nice families running them and walking the area gives a look into local life.

Was there ever truly a time of absolute spontaneity, or are we chasing a romantic myth?

My spontaneity was the domestic road trip. When I was younger, I could get in a car, drive off with no plans, and just see where I ended up. I didn't need reservations. If a hotel was full, it required very little effort to simply drive up the road to find a cheap, predictable room. But I was never so far from home that I couldn't just pack it in and go home.

I think of international travel differently and plan on securing my baseline. When I go abroad, I hammer down my accommodations and transportation ahead of time. That is firm. But once I am there, what I actually do, see, and experience is left entirely open. I do not pre-book entry times for museums weeks in advance, and don't pre-plan restaurants, though I will book a specific local activity like a tour or class.

In the ol’ days, the traveler was under a "guidebook dictatorship." If you traveled by a guidebook, you weren't discovering anything on a whim; you were part of a herd being funneled to the exact three hotels and cafes listed on page 214. That era gave you immediate flexibility, but it came with a hint of anxiety. Today, we're dealing with an "algorithm dictatorship." The internet has changed the environment, forcing us to lock things down early because real inventory is open and updated in seconds. But the upside is instant certainty. Knowing exactly where you are sleeping and how you are getting there strips away the logistics stress, freeing you up to actually experience the destination.

Spontaneously purchasing plane, train and hotels is for rich folk. But if its about the number of tourists, that's crazy because tgere are still significsnt parts of europe that are far from over touristed.

For me, the planning and researching is half the fun!

I didn't travel overseas until 14 years ago. Couldn't afford it, and even if we could have, being educators and having 3 kids in school would have meant travelling during peak season only--probably not the best time to be spontaneous.

I remember, though, visiting Santa Fe sans kids for our 10th anniversary (28 years ago). We didn't know much about it. We knew only that it was an art mecca, and the scenery was beautiful. The Internet did exist, albeit in a more limited way. We booked our accommodation online (little casita on Canyon Road, in a compound owned by an artist). We knew we wanted to see Taos Pueblo, the Georgia O'Keefe museum, the Wheelright Museum of the American Indian, and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture. We did find some recommendations for restaurants. (We ate at our favourite, Whistling Moon Cafe, twice.) But it didn't even occur to me to do more in-depth research, beyond museums and restaurants.

On the flight on the way there, I sat beside a local woman who suggested we to go to Bandelier National Monument. I hadn't even heard of it, but we decided to check it out based on her recommendation. It turned out to be our favourite, most memorable sight in the area, and we would have missed it had it not been for that chance encounter.

Ever since then, I do my research, and I don't regret it in the least, nor do I get all dewy-eyed over some quixotic travel experience I never had. Travel overseas is far too expensive to leave everything to chance.

(Allan, I would have left those people to their 2nd breakfast and lingering coffee and (maybe) arranged to meet up with them later. I hate sitting around, waiting.)

It's very different than it used to be, but I absolutely believe that you can still be spontaneous if you are able to travel during slack times.

Allan, I would have left those people to their 2nd breakfast and
lingering coffee and (maybe) arranged to meet up with them later. I
hate sitting around, waiting.

Here's an excerpt from my Trip Report to Portugal from 2 years ago. I did skip out on them (and my wife) a couple of times; not mentioned below. One time they wanted lunch, so I took off and came back 90 minutes later and they were weren't done yet. On another day I convinced everyone to get an early start, meaning we were out of our apartment at 8am, however after all of the 'serendipity' moments we didn't get to our first site-seeing location until after 11am. Sometimes we wouldn't eat dinner until 8am which means I sat at watched them eat because I hate going to bed on a full stomach. I know I'm regimented, but I make no apologies that spontaneity is not for me.

What was tough were two distinct methods for approaching the day. Mine is to walk and explore from morning to evening, skipping daytime meals and bathroom breaks because we can do those things at home, while theirs is a more relaxed pace with frequent stops for coffee, snacks, bathroom breaks, meals, drinks, sitting, and maybe try to squeeze in an hour or two of exploring in between. It was frustrating for me at times, but I was under strict orders to play nice. As for socializing in the evening, while Carla would frown at me, everyone appeared/tolerated to be OK with me disappearing once I was peopled out at the end of the day. At the end, we are still close, and maybe we’ll do it again because we understand each other’s travel styles now. Phil mentioned while it was good, he would have liked more breaks. I, on the other hand, am not sure how we could have possibly fit in more breaks.

Allan, sounds like you made the best of it, and it sounds as if you and I have somewhat similar travel styles.

I've done a ton of spontaneous travel.

"I'm going to walk into the train station and get on the next train that goes somewhere more than 6 hours away."

"I'm going to ride this touring bike south out of Baden Baden and sleep wherever I end up."

That sort of thing.

Which like most things it has pluses and minuses. One reason I do this sort of travel less nowadays is that necessary planning while you are freewheeling hither and yon distracts your attention from the yon and the hither. In some ways it's harder to be present on a trip where you are spontaneously darting around from one place to another. Particularly if you become more picky about your hotels, have more desire to see the most interesting sites, etc.

So I script more structure into my trips nowadays, even the solo ones where I used to just show up and go wherever my face pointed me. For instance, on my next trip I have 4 or 5 days to get from Lyon to Arles, and I'm going to take that section as it comes. But I know that the Rhone Valley is going to be interesting and that it will be hard to screw up and miss the good stuff.

So anyway, that's what I would recommend. Split the difference between full wander and full scripted by blocking out some places in the script for improvisation.

When I started traveling independently back in the '80s, it was with a rail pass and a guidebook and no plans. It was part of the adventure to not know where you were going next. Do "Zimmer frei" and true B&Bs (guest rooms in someone's home), and people waiting in rail stations with room offers, still exist? With a car, I think you can always move on to the next town if you don't find a vacancy.

I've done the spontaneous travel and I love it. Even on our recent trip to Italy, I left some days completely open with only a general idea of which direction we would go.

I mean literally we were looking at a map of Italy and choosing small cities at random, then booking an Aibnb for the next night and off we went. We are seniors, not college kids backpacking through Europe, and yet we can still get away with this. I love it!

For example, one town selected at random was the coastal village of Nettuno. We'd never even heard of it, but we ended up in quaint little seaside town where there were no other American tourists that we ever saw - few people in the town spoke English - and that was perfect. At dinner one night, the couple at the next table started up a conversation with us - she was French, he was Italian - and we ended up chatting in Franglais all through dinner. We exchanged contact info, and have kept in touch. We are actually going to visit them on our trip to France in December - they have invited us for Christmas Eve dinner, in fact. All because we chose some dinky little town at random from the map!

Then I found myself in lengthy conversations with AI, trying to
engineer the perfect spontaneous route.

You see where this is going. It's planning. I'm losing the
spontaneity.

I think you hit the nail on the head. You tried to "engineer the perfect spontaneous route" which is a contradictory statement right there! If you "engineer" something, then by definition it is no longer spontaneous.

Sometimes, you just trust your instinct and GO. This is western Europe we're talking about, where everything is organized and civilized - you're not navigating the Amazon Basin or the Darién Gap. Worse comes to worst, there is always SOME hotel in town even if it's not a great one. There is always a train available to whisk you off to the next place if you don't like where you ended up. I'm not a super adventurous person by nature, but in western Europe I feel confident enough to go off the beaten path and see something different on the spur of the moment.

It can be challenging to be spontaneous when traveling these days. The cost, the time needed, life's responsibilities, etc. all make it less accessible then when I was a young back packer. Back then, I had no agenda. Nothing planned or reserved. I simply showed up and hoped for the best.

Adulthood has made many of our trips pre-planned, particularly when the kids were younger. And, it's harder to be spontaneous when you are coming from US to Europe, Asia, Africa, etc. and have a limited amount of time and/or a limited budget as well as a laundry list of other commitments.

Now that the nest is empty, and we straddle our year between Europe and US, we have been fortunate to be able add more spontaneity into our travels. For example, this summer during one (of many) heatwaves, and a house with no AC, we decided to roll the dice and book a room at a popular beach resort on the Atlantic. There was a room so we hopped in the car and it was a great, unplanned few days. We've also managed last minute trips to San Sebastiàn, Sète, Pamplona and others. Usually we check the afternoon before we want to arrive and, so far, it's worked out. The same is true for the US. I've managed to book quick, last minute unplanned trips in the winter down to Arizona and California with out any preplanning. And, I'll add, that none of these last minute adventures were expensive, quite the opposite. The biggest hurdle was flexibility, which we had (and have.)