You're right Laurie, for many of us planning is part of the fun! But there's very little I wouldn't throw aside for a longer lunch where the food is great and the wait staff want to chat, or meeting an amazing 90 year old Italian woman who'd climbed all those darn steps up to the top of the Capitoline Museum cafe..... We like to have a list of options - We still have Ostia Antica, an e-bike tour to the Aurelian walls and a day trip to Trevi on the list, but we just never got around to it. When our feet hurt and we're tired of museums, it's time for gelato and a siesta.
Thank you TTM. I rummaged around looking for that other feed on travel planning, glad to see you found it.
There were some good ideas on how to store things, thanks everyone! I just use TripIt and Notes. Jean's comment about starting with a paper calendar and sticky notes is great, I've added it to my (much looser) planning strategy.
Right now I have a separate Note on Bologna, Budapest, Sicily and South of France. I cut & paste ideas from the Forum into separate Notes as I go along, (man those Bookmarks are tough to track, unless I save them separately onto my laptop, yikes I’m not THAT organized.) Physical guide books ripped apart - Thought I would use these more than I have recently, I think we will leave them at home next time, we can always look things up on our iPads.
Youtube video watching (link in Notes). There are some amazing shows that help me understand a place better before we get there. We were looking at some Caravaggios in a church in Rome, I couldn't figure out what the guy at the dining table meant, only discovered later it was the 'Calling of St Matthew', ah well.
I too put restaurants, museum times etc into a 'Save' setting on Google Maps. I have saved maps for places I'm hoping to go, just add them as they appear in books etc. It's really nice to have restaurant options when you find yourself tired and hungry.
Weirdly, I'm not too worried about reliance on apps such as TripIt and Notes, we're carrying 4 electronic devices between 2 people, and have emails of much that's then been put into TripIt. Like many others, I still print out some reservations. Before leaving for Rome in December, I printed out 15 pages off Notes, to highlight with colored highlighters museums, areas and restaurants, that turned out to be the best guide book.
And if most of this sounds awful, that's OK. For me, the fun of travel starts the first time I think, 'Hmmmm I'd really like to go to Bologna!'