Planning your next trip

I am in constant planning mode. We usually book our fall trip for the next year while we are on this fall’s trip. I will have tickets for about Sept 1 as soon as they are released and I can make points and miles work for me. I have itineraries sketched out for spring and fall 2025 already.

You are in the right group, Linnae!

You're just planning your next trip now?? We leave for Portugal in 10 days and already have the framework and some reservations for our trip next May. On the agenda for the weekend is figuring out something for next Fall-the RS Sicily tour perhaps? Oh, and some friends are twisting our arms about Phoenix in March, they're leaving it awfully late for us to get that planning in....

Allan, I'm earlier in my career so I don't get the luxury of more than one European trip a year (at max), both due to cost and PTO. I already will likely be going to Belize in the spring, potentially a US road trip sometime in the summer, plus several smaller trips. I was more looking at other European destinations, which wouldn't happen until at least next fall, potentially winter 2026 depending on finances :-)

2025? Already planned! I’m working on a long itinerary to max out our Schengen time in 2026! And for 2027, well just ideas for now.

Linnae - you are not alone. we are ALWAYS in planning mode......we got back from Germany the end of August and already had the trip set for Italy in October and we will start planning our next spring trip soon.

I am currently planning my next five trips.

1. The trip I'm leaving on in three weeks is essentially all planned out.
2. The trip I leave on three weeks after I get back from #1 is also essentially all planned out.
3. The trip I leave on a month after I get back from #2, I have booked all my airfare and lodging, but still have to plan activities.
4. The trip I leave on six weeks after I get back from #3, I just finished booking flights and lodging.
5. The trip I leave on four months after #4 is a tour. Haven't booked airfare yet.

So in answer to your question, you're definitely not the only one!

Linnae, Alas, you are not alone. We leave in October for Florence and a cooking school in Lucca. Just one thing planned for every day, including a night in the Republic of San Marino because we've never been there. My plan was to be spontaneous and wait to see what comes up next year. Then I got to thinking... We've never been to western France and are wine lovers. So, maybe Bordeaux, then I saw the RS Basque tour, and I've never been to Barcelona and could use hotel points. RS trip booked and starting to sketch out the rest. I spend hours researching over the course of a year. That doesn't include the briefer US trips. Glad to be in such good company. My 30 year old daughter recounted her first trip with her new husband to Boston and New England and it was clear that obsessive planning is genetic. Good thing we both married guys who are happy to go along for the ride.

With my retirement in Feb 2026 and starting my Slow Travel Mar 2026 of 5 months out, 1 month back, 5 months out & 1 month back schedule, I have been busy with mapping out 2026 & ideas for 2027. Forcing myself not to plan any European trips for 2025, finding it difficult though, Paris is always calling me. But I am saving 2025 to visit family and friends within the U.S. and finish my downsizing. I usually worked on planning two trips at the same time, my never ending plans for travel. I too fall into the limited PTO days for my trips, well for at least the next 17 months. :)

Safe Travels.

Brushtim, 2025 may also be a year of no Europe for me, focusing instead on friends and family around the USA. I've come to accept that there will never be enough time to travel to all the places I want to go or read all the books I want to read, so I do my best with the time I have :-)

Linnae, I started planning my second trip to Scotland while I was still there on my first trip! I booked the flights about three weeks after I returned home.

I too have modest amounts of money and vacation time available for travel, though I’m in a much later stage of my (not very lucrative) career. So I’ll content myself with short jaunts to close destinations for at least another year, maybe two, while reading and dreaming about another big trip.