"Pin in the map" travel

I can't say we do a "pin in the map" or throw a dart at a map, but often in a trip, we just randomly pick a place and go there. It might be looking at a map and seeing something like it should be interesting, often, since we only like to travel 3-4 hours between stops, it will be a place between two stops, that we decide to spend a night or two. That took us to Zaragoza in Spain, to Marina di Patti in Sicily, and several other places over the years. We do expect usually more just some down time, than seeing huge sights, but no place has been a disappointment.

If driving, we also look on Google maps for "flags" of ancient sites, points of interest, things that never make a guidebook. We will be in Cornwall in May, already have a list of oddities to stop by and take a look.

I haven't done it, but I like the idea!!

Over many trips to London I’ve done something similar in an effort to explore different neighborhoods. I’ve simply boarded an Underground Train, Overground Train or bus and ridden to the last stop. Gotten off and meandered.
Usually seeking a coffee shop/cafe ( NEVER Starbucks) a bookstore, or pub.

Its how I had a great lunch and chat in the Estcourt Arms in Watford. Discovered the Epping Ongar Railway. The nicest folks. Gone to mass at St Anthony of Padua in Edgware.

I travel to explore and amble.

That’s how I discovered Eel Pie Island, Strawberry Hill and Garden, Orange Pekoe in Barnes, Hurlingham Books in Putney and came across the Crystal Park Dinosaurs.

Claudia, I've been wanting to plan a visit to London. I lived in England for 3 years (several months of that in Central London) and there's more to see every time I return. I did the same as you described when I first lived in San Francisco, and again when I moved to New York City, and it was always random fun. It hadn't occurred to me to use AussieNomad's "pin in the map" idea to explore more of London. Love it!

We just started doing a version of this. I want to have everything scheduled. My partner wants to be more spontaneous. So we compromised & scheduled 2 weeks in Paris & left the 2nd 2 weeks open. Day before our scheduled time was up we found a roof top apartment in Chaville. It was awesome. Monoprix across the street so chacuterie & wine on the patio overlooking the town with the church bells ringing. 10 minutes to Versailles. Then we went to Strasbourg with nothing confirmed. We sat at a cafe at 4:00 pm & searched & found a nice hotel. Then extended our stay a day in order to see some wineries outside Colmar,

Probably doesn't work well in high season or during festivals. But it was pretty awesome

This is a great idea. For urban exploration I usually go to my travel notes and choose a place I've recorded as a possibility (the list is always far longer than I could manage for the length of my trip). Once I've seen my sightseeing target, I often do a lot of exploring in the vicinity and may walk all the way back to the center of town.

In the past I did something similar to what AussieNomad is suggesting in Greece. I'd just hop on a bus heading out across an island and ride to the end of the line. Sometimes (depending on the schedule) I'd ride straight back to the main town, to the puzzlement of the bus driver.

My "pin in the map" story was back in my university days in the eighties. I was backpacking Europe with a Eurail pass. I was halfway in my trip and had just taken an overnight train to Brindisi. I was burned out. While waiting to embark on the ferry to Greece, I saw a bunch of students get off the boat. One of them had the deepest of tans. I asked him where he got his tan. He said "Man, you have to go to Skyros, nothing there but goat farmers." After a couple of nights in ugly (to me) Athens, I hopped on a bus to Kimi and took a ferry to Skyros. Only two others disembarked and we were the only 3 tourists on the whole island. I ended up sharing a room with a guy from the UK and stayed a week to completely decompress living on calamari and tomato and olive salads. Left Greece with a really dark tan.

I have very fond memories of that first trip in Europe. I had a general idea of what I wanted to see, and armed with the latest volume of "Let's Go Europe", I would just hop on and off trains, go to the local tourist office to find a hotel. When all the cheap hotels in Venice were booked up, I just hopped back on the train and backtracked to Padua to find a place to sleep.

Nowadays, I am on tripadvisor and this forum, planning months in advance. All hotels and trains are pre-booked and usually all tix for attractions are bought online ahead of time. The only spontaneous thing we did in our November Spain trip was to make a last minute day trip to Toledo on our last day. Even then, I was a bit nervous because we still had to get back to the Madrid hotel to pack and check out later that night at 3am to catch a flight home.

I just head out the door of the hotel and go off in a different direction.

My husband got to do this for 5 days in Stockholm in September this year after I tested positive for COVID and was sick in bed. He just headed out of our hotel in Sodermalm and picked a direction for the day and walked.

I have very fond memories of that first trip in Europe. I had a general idea of what I wanted to see, and armed with the latest volume of "Let's Go Europe", I would just hop on and off trains, go to the local tourist office to find a hotel.

My sister and I did this in Britain on our first overseas trip in 1986, but we stayed in bed and breakfasts, not hotels. I remember we lost our b&b in Bristol because although we knew the street we hadn't written down the house number. We knew it had a green front door ... as did about a dozen other houses in the street. Fortunately, the presence of we two Australians had been the talk of the street so someone told us where we were staying.