Tight Schedule, Sorta Schedule, or No Schedule?

Winters are pretty darn long in Ottawa, so when I have a get away in the winter, it is as unscheduled as I can make it. Rather than an AI (which is a little pricey for a solo traveler) I do a time share exchange. I have to figure out transport and groceries for the first day, but after that is it a vague one or two items to do off resort....and that is only if I can organize it from start to finish. Still haven't embraced the crazy costs of resort day trips.
Otherwise, I have a list of things to see in a place and I book my days there in order to accomplish my tier 1 interests. Depending on the day, I may have more than one item scheduled a.m. and p.m. but I glump them together logistically and I don't spend a lot of time over lunch. By 5, I have had a full day and am done.
When I see folks here with a day by day list of everything they want to see and ask for advice, I move on. I can't fathom it.

Sort of schedule.

If I’m going to a city or town (as opposed to a beach) part of why I’m there is to see specific things. These things like museums, ruins, churches etc often have closed days. So if I’m in town F-M and the museum I want to visit is closed Sunday/Monday then I better know that and schedule my visit for earlier.
Also some things need to be reserved ahead. Some museums let you skip a huge line with pre-bought timed tickets or only let you in with reservations. Some tours only run certain days and sell out ahead. Some well known restaurants require reservations made days/weeks earlier. Etc - leaving it all to whim means you’d miss anything requiring booking ahead. And in Europe these days that’s a lot of why you are there.

BUT there’s a flip side - scheduling too much leaves no time for exploration or serindipity. Or relaxing! One of my favorite things is to walk around an interesting area of a city, stopping in stores, cafes, parks, people watching and just wandering - whatever catches my eye that day. You can’t really schedule that.

What I do is make a SHORT list of absolute must sees. Places I will be very sad if I dont get to see. Then I make a long list of things I’d like to see but am ok with missing if needed.

I schedule up to one must see per daytime, usually in the morning. This might be a tour, museum or sight. If it’s one that doesn’t require reservations I still have in my head that Tuesday I’m going to the cathedral, for example. Then the rest of the day is free. I can walk, wander, go to a like-to-see sight, whatever.
Then some nights I will have a restaurant or evening activity like a concert reserved, other nights will be free.

In short - I find a mix between planned and spontaneous is best for me.

Sorta schedule. I have a notebook with each day listed. I make sure I highlight certain things, such as when a sight when a sight will be closed during my time in that city. I don’t HAVE to go to Museum XYZ on that Monday, but I need to remember it’s closed on Tuesday and if I’m leaving on Wednesday, it’s see it on Monday or save it for the next trip. I use a different colour highlighter for sights/tours/shows that I’ve booked in advance and have already paid for.

I agree that all inclusive vacations sound horrible, but I also don’t think the ‘wing it’ approach works, at least for me. Some structure is good, it’s fine to take a couple of hours for a neighborhood stroll, but it’s nice to research and at least know which neighborhoods in a city are worth a stroll around. It would be a shame to spend those hours wandering around an city seeing nothing but bank buildings.

I do agree that the schedules that look more like a plan for a military drill are sometimes excessive. I understand serious foodies might be planning their restaurants months in advance, but it seems a bit much for a typical traveler to be picking the exact restaurant they’ll be eating at 1 PM-145 on July 18.

Of course, these are just my opinions as a mostly solo traveler with a decent amount of friends in Europe. I always assume I will return. I’ll keep the flexibility to skip a museum if the weather is gorgeous.

BigMike, we do what you do. We have a rough plan of two major sights per day, adding some if time allows. But we remain flexible so that weather and other factors can change plans on the spot. We know a lot of time gets eaten up by the incidentals of getting around, stopping for food, shopping, etc. So planning for occupying every minute is pointless.

But I usually think of travel in two different categories. The stress-reducing kind of travel being island beach time, resorts, cruises, etc., where you don't have to think or plan too much. Then there is the stress-inducing kind (good stress, usually) that involves visiting foreign cities and countries that require research and transportation and logistics. We like to mix them up. Actually, a good tour is a happy compromise.

These are my favourite posts, to learn what makes other people tick while on vacation. I'm always surprised when I hear people caution others on how tired they will be after an 8 hour flight from North America. My wife and I have always hit the ground running and don't stop until we're home. All Inclusives, sitting by the pool, doing nothing...not for us. Last September we landed in London at about 10am, got to our apartment and were out the door within an hour to find lunch and visit the London Film Museum, which was on my list but not something I was going to plan a day around. We explored the city until about 9pm and then to bed. We also had a similar first day the previous year in Venice. We tend to keep ourselves busy for 12 hours a day. I can't imagine not having some form of plan in advance for each day, but we also keep things loose enough so if we see something interesting we can change direction. Planning for a trip usually starts 6-12 months in advance where we start to research a destination and what to see, for us this is half the fun. My wife and I have a scheduled 'date' every Sunday morning at Tim Hortons (Canadian franchise coffee shop) where we plan these vacations. We then come up with a daily plan and prioritize the things we want to see and do the most and fill in daily slots. We are big believers in tour guides and so we do plan and book some major sites in advance, but even those days have enough free time so we can wander at will. Most of our planning means we are out the door by 8 in the morning so we can be first in line for major sites-we were literally first in line for Tower of London. Some of our friends look at us like we have two heads when we describe the planning and daily activities we put into a day, but we love it.

Allen, if you ever head to Madrid, there are Timmy's there as well as China, UAE, several other places in Middle East, Phillippines, UK and, USA. I was trying to remember where I saw my last global Timmy's and it might have been in Madrid.

It all depends on where you're going. Americans don't tend to visit Europe to lie around on beaches, they're going to be rushing around fitting in all the sights. I do that on weekend trips, the longer summer holidays are spent lazing around the pool, long lazy lunches and indulging in far too much wine and with high stress jobs, my wife and I look forward to that relaxation and as for the kids, just give them a pool and some sun.

Even when travelling in the US we'll often stick to one resort or sometimes two (a week in each) if they're reasonably close and sightseeing won't be a rushed affair with the exception of Washington DC, didn't manage to do all the museums we wanted to. The idea of 2 nights here, 2 nights there etc is anathema to our way of travelling, I can't think of anything worse.

My biggest pet peeve when we are at home is the "What do you want to do?" "Oh I don't know, what do you want to do?" I refuse to do that when we have spent so much money on air fare to go overseas. So that said, I will research a place, use Google MyMaps to plot out where things are. (So I can find them if we are interested). This year I am going to add in why I thought it was interesting since this trip has more people than my hubby and me. We don't have to do everything on the list, but it is there if we need something. We will have must do's. But it is not planned down to the minute. I will also wing dinner, unless I come across a must eat place. I do like having my hotels booked before hand. So my answer is sorta schedule

Schedule but not so tight that we are running around at an exhausting pace. I prefer central hotel locations with easy walking/transportation. Example of a typical day: Westminster Abbey, lunch at Abbey Cafe, War Rooms and call it a day. I like to allow time to really see a museum rather than running in and out in 2 hours. In some cities(Bath and Edinburgh) I have found HOHO buses to be very useful for transportation. They are often good for 24 hours, so I can use the ticket on the afternoon of one day and the morning of the next day. When we want to cover a lot of ground easily, I like day tours such as Rabbies to Highlands or MadMax for Cotswolds and Avebury. I plan way in advance because without advance tickets, you will probably not be able to see certain sites, such as the Anne Frank house and Harry Potter Warner Brothers Studios.

We are definitely over planners. We move around every few days, and like to pack as much in as we can. We are like that at home too, though. We don't feel a need to see every single thing at a museum, and loose attention quickly over 2 hours or so. I feel like when I dont plan enough, I end up criss crossing the city in a very inefficient manner, and eating substandard food. Our last trip was the first one in which I actually made dinner reservations, as I had always been afraid of being tied down, but we found that we loved it and had some very memorable meals.

I do, however, try to be flexible. There are one or two sights a day that I will plan as definites, and then a list of possibilities to do as we feel like it. This has served us well so far.

To avoid the crisscrossing the city problem I mark everything on a map app on my phone, color coded (red pins for restaurants, blue for sights etc) and with notes like “open 9-6” or “best gelato in city”.

So I can pull up my map and see that in my wandering I ended up 2 blocks from the famous gelato place and across the street from a church with a Caravaggio painting. So of course I’ll go to both, and I’d probably have forgotten them or not known I was so close if not for the map. These aren’t things I plan to go to for sure, just ideas and if I happen to be there and have time...
It’s a lot of work ahead of the trip but makes my free time on the trip more enjoyable.

Sorta schedule...we usually do one thing in the morning and one thing in the afternoon. We like to sit in outdoor cafes and in cathedrals and soak up the atmosphere. If we have time we might add a 3rd thing. We do research in advance and have a list of what sites are near each other so if we do a third thing we don't have to take time to go across town. I use and excel spreadsheet and use the site name and its nearest public transportation stop. Sort of the stop and everything in that general area is grouped together.

Mira, your 1st post is exactly my/our style. Then i read your 2nd post, and your map and pins planning is a brilliant way to do it... so thank you for that great tip!!

It depends on where we are going, how much time we have, and our goals re site-seeing vs R&R, but we usually balance some planning with flexibility. We just went to Mexico City for 6 nights and Puebla for one night (plus a night before our flight home at the Mexico City airport). We pre-planned the first three days in Mexico City, and then filled in the next two days from our list based on what we felt like doing. That meant a second day in Chapultepec park, including the Castillo and world-class archaeology museum, because there was so much to do (we could easily spend two more days just in the park--maybe another time). In Puebla we had a list of possible attractions in advance, but we really figured out our day-and-a-half after a visit to the TI when we got there.

Similarly, in 7-8 day visits to to London, Paris, and Rome we planned our highest priorities for the first 3-4 days, and then figured out the rest from our list each night for the next day. And when we went to Maui for a week, we tightly planned the first 3 days (Road to Hana and Haleakala), and then did the remaining four day by day with a lot of beach and reading time. We'd originally planned Italy for that year, but realized that it was just too much (time, money, and stress) to plan and be away for two weeks only 8 weeks before our daughter's wedding.

For two weeks this coming late May/early June, we are heading to Barcelona, Provence, and the French Riviera. I've planned in great detail, using help from this forum for the first time, because we have more must-sees than days. Barcelona in particular requires tight planning due to the need to buy advance tickets. For Provence, I have possible days on index cards: the first 3 days will be more tightly planned, the next two days will require hard choices when we see how much we can fit into a day.

Typically I do nearly all the advance and big picture planning and make our flight and apartment or hotel reservations, and then my husband takes over the details when we arrive and we fine tune the plan each evening for the next day or two.

Like Tamara, we usually have a 2-3 hour limit on museums before we lose focus. For that reason, we select part of any large museum for a visit. In some cases, that means we make a second visit on another day.

It all depends on the trip.
If going to Florida or other “relaxing” locations I plan as little as possible
If on a standard vacation I plan the major points but try to leave the exact date a bit lose. So if going to Pennsylvania I may “plan” a trip to Gettysburg but I will leave the day flexible.

For major trips like to Europe I tend to plan out “days”. For instance I know I want to spend a day on a boat trip I will plan out activities that are in the same area as the boat. But I will as much as possible leave the day open so I can swap them back and forth. Obviously some things need reservations and that eliminates all flexibility.

The other thing I do is plan only one major thing a day (two if they are easy or very short activities) And then I have a list of optional things I can do if we feel like doing more on any given day. My “major” things are my must do list for a give area. Vs my secondary list being things we would like to do but that we can live without, For example in London Westminster was a major must do but the Cutty Sark was a secondary.

Please note I travel with my father and he is in his late 80s so this means I have to be flexible as possible as we never know how he will be on any given day,

My biggest pet peeve when we are at home is the "What do you want to
do?" "Oh I don't know, what do you want to do?"

^^ amen to this statement!

I fall in the "sorta" category as well. I always have a longer list of things that I'd like to do (in priority order) so that there is always an option in case of the inevitable hiccup like an unexpectedly closed attraction, bad weather day, etc.. I am a chronic planner so sometimes there is too much squeezed in. As I have traveled more (and get older) I allow myself to call time out and rest for an afternoon or do something less busy, or gasp, take a nap! I have generous vacation time from work, and so I also have the luck of being able to take a 3 week vacation and not rush it too much.

More often than not, I take a tour in combination with independent travel at the front/end of the tour, so some of the planning is taken care of for me. Though I am always shocked to encounter people on tours that expect the tour to do all of the work for them, and were at a complete loss what to do with "free" time (I had my list, no problems!).

CL we also do a tour or two during our independent travel.

I guess I'm lucky in that my wife prefers me to do all the planning, (but with her approval, of course) and she just sort of goes with the flow. 90 percent of the time I'll show her what I've planned and she'll respond, "That's fine." When she doesn't say much that's my cue to make some changes and try again.

We avoid all-inclusive resorts including cruise ships. We don't want to be trapped on a boat. We also avoid traveling by the seat of our pants not knowing where we will stay each night for example.

Sometimes we have days in which we have things we want to do and schedule accordingly; other times we have free days to see where the day leads us. What we don't do is over-schedule because experiential travel is very important to us and to breeze through place to place as a means of making sure we cross these places off a check-list as having "seen" them when we really haven't means nothing to us and is a colossal waste of money and energy.

I approach it the same as BigMike. Generally plan one major sight in the morning, another in the afternoon, then wing it around those depending on available time, energy and desire to see or do more. I once left several days in Paris totally unplanned and felt like I completely wasted the time wondering what to do.

Before the trip, I do a ton of planning. Primarily I want to know all my options. Years ago I visited Okinawa. We hired a taxi driver to show us the sights. He drove around and pointed out gambling and strip joints (I guess what some young military want to see?). None of that interested me. When I got home I saw a story about a 1500's Shogun's palace that would have been my top sight on the island - but I didn't know about it when I was there. Now I do a lot of studying so I know.

I'm going to Ireland next and my girlfriend will come over for one week. That changed the dynamic and forced me to focus my time around picking her up at the airport, what we can see during her visit (without trying to do too much), and what I can see after I drop her off at the airport. I have friends in Leeds who want me to fly over too, so that chops off a weekend from my normal self-paced trips. It will be fun though and I'm a pretty flexible person.

I have pretty good luck sleeping on the plane and being functional on day one. I still plan for a jet lag day, however, because I've had at least a couple trips where I wasn't ready to go on day one. If you're ready, you can always visit a sight ahead of schedule.

I dislike standing in long lines much more than getting up early and being out and about before 0800 - so my days start early and end with enough hours to get a decent night's sleep.

We are sorta schedule travelers, but I (hubby goes with the flow) like to read up before hand to make sure we don't miss something extra special that might be happening during our visit. I will make reservations at sights with long lines - Van Gogh museum, Anne Frank house, Schindler factory etc., and places where reservations are a must such as Borghese Gallery, Corrie Ten Boon Museum, etc. without some preplanning, how would you know - don't want to wait on a long line if it is not necessary. we are not opposed to cruises, we went on a few with small groups of family/friends and had a blast. Did the Baltic Sea one a few years ago with 5 couples, it was great. We haven't done a tour yet, looking to go on the RS Turkey tour in 2020 if it is still offered. We just love to travel so we don't turn down any opportunities or modes of transport.

Mira, I like your map approach. I tried something similar with our last trip, but I didn't like using Google maps for that purpose, so I may try again and look for a different app.

Big Mike, I love the topics you start, they always lead to interesting discussions...thank you!

As a solo traveler I love to do whatever I want, whenever I want and for however long I want to do it, and I generally do make a schedule when visiting cities like Paris, London, Amsterdam, etc that have so many museums and other things I want to see, try to maximize my time and energy. But I always allow plenty of time for happy wandering, I've discovered some of the most wonderful things that way.

My upcoming trip--less than a month away now--was planned when I was facing some changes at work that have now become a full-blown nightmare, leaving me to question why I thought 4 countries in 2 weeks was a good idea, though I start and end in 2 cities I am familiar with, Tallinn and Budapest. Riga and Vilnius are new to me, but small enough to not be overwhelming so thus this trip won't have any schedule at all, just going to explore and eat good things and relax.

Hmmm. Excellent question.

I am the trip planner in our household, but I do it in cooperation with my other half. So when we travel - except for our first trip to Europe - it's always a joint decision about destination(s). I am still the one that books the hotels, looks for things to do, books walking tours in advance, etc., etc., etc.

So my trip planning varies, based on the following three factors :

-- Destination
-- Purpose of trip
-- Have we been to this general area before

For example, I'm currently prepping for my 5th trip to Italy. We will visit a different part of Italy than we've previously traveled. To go to Italy, I do a ton of research. I will book or have planned at least one major thing to do/see/experience on each day of our holiday. We won't use most of my research, but it comes in handy after we've done that one major thing because we don't go to Italy to sit in the hotel room and watch television all day.

Sometimes we plan trips to a beach here in the US. Those trips are generally for the purpose of walking the beach, looking for sea shells, checking out the local cuisine & checking out the local history/sites to see. I also plan things for those trips, but I plan them on a much more relaxed basis. I take advantage of seeing local historical sites, botanical gardens, animal rescue sites, etc. These trips are far more easy going, but I have done enough research ahead of time that if we decide to change gears and go-go-go, then we're able to do so. Same thing if we're doing a US city holiday. I plan a major must do thing, and then everything else is a bonus. That allows us the flexibility to change gears if we realize we'd rather do this than that.

BUT - and this for me is an important but - I plan trips differently now than I once did. At one point in life when our vacation time/funds were more severely limited, I planned to fit as many things as possible into one day. Now that we no longer have to work within the same constraints, I try to deliberately work in some time to do nothing more than get lost, explore and experience certain places which we visit. (The get lost part wasn't on purpose, but once I realized that I ALWAYS get lost when I travel, I gave into it. We've discovered some fabulous restaurants that way.)

Long story short - I plan ahead. A lot. And then I judiciously use what I've learned. But we always have some key outings scheduled, even if only in mind. We like to see/do. And the planning ahead allows us to see/do a lot or a little, based on how we feel that day.

I am an intense planner of comprehensive itineraries for my trips to Europe, but then I casually follow them once on the ground, adjusting on the fly for recommendations from locals, the level of enjoyment of any given activity, the weather, and my general mood. I will admit that my itineraries even have times for pretty much every activity, though the purpose of those is just to give me an idea of what I can accomplish in a day (and to allow me to keep up with scheduled tours, train times, etc.). With the exception of a scheduled tour, I have never looked at an itinerary and said, "It's 10:00. The schedule says I must move on to the next activity now, so time to shut this one down."

Right now, I'm working on a 24-night trip through Slovenia that starts in late August. Plane tickets bought. Lodging set. Working on filling in the itinerary with activities now.

Dave, I'm about the same. There has to be a little bit of go with the flow.

Hey Mike,

I prefer not to be trying out as a contestant on the "Amazing Race."

I plan some things but also adopt a "free spirit" attitude. It has worked favorably for me.

Usually scheduled.

Rarely I have been able to take more than 2-3 weeks off at once and I like to make the most of it. I don't want to loose time figuring out what I want to do once I get there. Plus usually last minute means more money or what we want to see is closed or getting there is complicated... I love working on a trip from home and figuring out my options in advance. For example, Le Louvre has evening hours, Cinque Terre trail should be hit early in the morning, Alhambra is Spain can be seen in the evening and the morning (totally should do both) and you need to reserve your tickets a long time in advance.

I am going to Europe for 6 weeks this summer and that means some days, nothing is planned! I will research to have a list of possibilities, but I will be a lot more flexible.

My husband and I used to travel like we were on the amazing race. Twenty years later, our style is different. I’m the planner, so I do a ton of research. We discuss our “must do’s”, then schedule 1-2 sites per day. Big site in the morning, lesser site in the afternoon. We sometimes skip the afternoon site and our afternoon consists of “wander around and eat ice cream” or “eat ice cream then take a nap”. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon!

Last summer was our first Europe trip with our kids (3 weeks with boys age 11 & 15). We found that we enjoyed this pace, didn’t feel rushed, and could absorb the locations more than if we were running from museum to church to landmark. If we felt like vegging in the apartment for a few hours we didn’t feel guilty. And we didn’t come home exhausted and sick of each other!

Mira, could you please tell me which map app you use?

We do both -- one week a year at Cal family camp in the Sierras where the most important schedules are breakfast, lunch and dinner (when the bell rings, it's time to eat.) Lots of time to hang out at the pool, chat with fellow campers (after 30+ years there are friends I only see once a year), do art projects ...or nap.
For our European trips I am the planner, husband is the driver and sherpa. I have a "things to see" list of items mentioned on this forum or seen on TV/videos -- but sometimes it takes a few trips to get to them. (Azay-le-Rideau had been on my list since 1969, finally saw it last week.) We have planes, trains, rental car and lodgings booked before we arrive but the specifics in each location depend on weather, mood, how we both feel. It's not so much "what shall we do?" but "which ?"