Travel Essentials

These are the travel make-or-breaks. The quality of my trip largely depends on these things and they are all within my control. If you are at all curious to find out what I think makes a trip great, then read on...

Choose Your Traveling Companions with Care:

A good companion can save a bad vacation, and bad companion can ruin a well planned vacation. If you have a well planned vacation and a good travel buddy, the results will be the best time of your life! In my experience, the more people you travel with, the more stressful it will be. It totally feels like herding cats to me. Not only is it harder to move a large group around, it is more stressful if something goes wrong. Then I screwed up every body's trip, not just mine. Really consider how many people you feel comfortable traveling with--I think my limit is 4--and only travel with people who will either A) Happily go along with the itinerary you've laid out or B) Happily let you go along with the itinerary they've laid out. That's not to say that more than one person can't plan a trip, just choose to travel and plan with people who will accept and enjoy the same kind of vacation you would.

If you don't choose your companions with care, you could spend your trip to Savai'i stopping at every LDS Stake Center--there are a LOT of them and they all look the same!--instead of swimming with freaking SEA TURTLES.

Lee is an excellent travel companion, I must be too as he never complains.

Tour Bus or Independent Travel?:

To each his own and all that, but me? I am all about independent travel. I find traveling tour group style to be a little frustrating, more expensive, and less hands on. Tour groups can't stay at little B&B's because there isn't enough room, there is less room for spontaneity, and depending on the tour group you might end up wasting your free time because the group itinerary is unclear.

Traveling with a performance group or service organization can give you cultural experiences you wouldn't get any other way, they can add meaning and value to your travels. I enjoyed my trips with groups, but I prefer to be the master of my own itinerary.

My Mom at a great hotel that is too small for a tour group.

Research, Research, Research:

If you show up at the Louvre on a Tuesday, you'll be disappointed to learn that it is closed. If you have your heart set on seeing Hamilton on Broadway, don't expect same day discount tickets. You won't know what you need to know before you start researching, so get researching!

Make sure you find out when things you want to do are open, when sights are the most crowded, what little hidden gems you can find at your destination. What you don't know can, and certainly will, hurt you.

There are lots of travel writers, guidebooks, Internet forums, and TV programs that will help you prepare for your trip. A lot of them are free! I will absolutely be buying a guidebook for our next Europe trip as I found our Paris guidebook to be invaluable. I listened to podcasts, read tons of blogs, and I asked questions on a travel forum and got good responses within minutes. I followed the advice of the other posters to stay in a hotel that was more central to the touristy stuff we would be doing and I am so glad I did. I wouldn't have realized how far away we were staying until it was too late to find a new place to stay. Good preparation can make a vacation, no preparation will break it.

Make sure you've learned about the history and culture you will be immersing yourself in. Visiting a historic sight without understanding it's story, it's value, is a really good way to be bored on your trip. The more you know, the more fun you will have!

Go Google Mona Lisa images right now so you can understand how few people this is.

Seriously, knowing how to avoid crowds on your trip is a major stress reducer!

Enjoy all the parts of your vacation:

There are three parts to every vacation, at least according to that guy on youtube. The first part is the anticipation and planning stage. Looking forward to your trip and preparing for it is part of your vacation. The more you do in this stage, the better the rest of your trip will be.

The second part of your vacation is the actual vacation. This is usually the shortest of the three parts. The third part is looking back on your vacation and enjoying the memories. In order to get the most out of both the second and third phase requires and balance between making memories and recording memories. Take photos. Take lots of photos. If you see something photo worthy, get several shots so you can make sure at least one turns out really well. most cameras have settings for night time, flash, back lighting, and auto mode. Try taking the picture with a few different modes on and see which one turns out the best. If you are a pro, then have fun capturing great images in a new place.

Have a variety of pictures! Some with people, some without, some at odd angles, some with nice smiles, some with silly faces and poses, these photos will probably come to define a lot of the memories you keep of your travels.

You don't have to take pictures and make movies of every single thing you see. Will you or anyone else really care what your lunch looked like? When you get your camera out snap lots of pictures, but don't always have your camera out. Take time to enjoy the moment first, then take a couple pictures, but make sure you really do both. If you've planned well, focused on enjoying the moment, and taken some quality photos, you are all set to enjoy your vacation for the rest of your life. To round off that third phase, write down some of the funny or poignant experiences and stories from your trip, good and bad, so you can remember them long term.

Don't Skip Meals:

You may be thinking what I was thinking, "I'm a big kid. I can handle going a few hours without eating." Yes, you can. But should you? Are you really happy when you're hungry? You may be able to go without eating from 8 AM till 2 PM at home or in the office, but now you are traveling. That may mean you are walking, biking, or hiking a lot more than on your typical day. Walking around Paris, we were averaging 8 miles a day, London we averaged 6 miles a day. That's a few hundred calories extra we were burning.

I found a direct correlation between how much I enjoyed what I was seeing and how long it had been since my last meal or snack. Any time I realized I was being snippy, that was a sign that it's lunch time and we'd better take a break. And if you've done some food related research ahead of time, then you might already know about a kebab stand or café nearby that has good prices and good reviews. Then you don't have to wander aimlessly hoping it will start raining hamburgers or you will magically find a non-tourist trap restaurant next to the Eiffel Tower (not a thing.)

You'll be so hungry you could eat a pig!

Take a Break for a Couple Hours Every Day:

Paul usually naps for a couple hours between 1 and 4 PM, So family trips kind of require us to use that time as quiet rest time. What I didn't realize was that time was just as important for me as it is for my 2 year old. Think about it, when you go to Disneyland what time do you start to feel burned out? Just after lunch? You just want to crawl inside Goofy's house and take a nap.

Well, do it! Maybe not in Goofy's house, but head back to your hotel if you can, or sit down somewhere comfortable for a while. Maybe you travel to lounge and relax but I don't, in general, travel that way. I travel so that by the time my trip is over I am so exhausted that I am ready to get back to my usual routine. I find that taking a break sometime during the afternoon to recharge the ole batteries helps me enjoy my evenings more. My sister told me that taking afternoon breaks when her kids started to get grouchy-- and Disneyland gets the biggest crowds--helped keep everyone in good spirits. I found the same worked for me in Paris. We'd head back to our hotel to kick off our shoes, send an e-mail home and rest before dinner.

If you aren't a baby, then you might need to nap at your hotel, not the street.

Bring Only the Best, Most Comfortable Shoes:

This is an obvious tip, but an important one nonetheless. It's not like I don't know this, but I have consistently screwed this one up. I keep bringing the superfluous extra pair of shoes. I always tell myself, "If your feet start getting tired from wearing the same shoes everyday, you'll be glad you brought a back up pair." I did this in Orlando last year, I brought my never-gives-me-blisters-perfect-for-warm-weather athletic shoes, and an extra pair of tennis shoes, just in case. My feet were starting to feel tired midweek, so I switched shoes. I only did wear the back up pair once and I just spent the whole day wishing I'd just worn the other shoes. The soles just weren't thick enough for real comfort and the arch support was lacking. My feet got more tired more quickly, and I wore my better shoes every day after that. I never did get any blisters.

In Paris, I brought a back up pair of tennis shoes that, I'll admit, I knew weren't great. I figured they'd be okay for a couple miles. Six miles later I am limping and I have blisters the size of my pinkie toes on my pinkie toes. Blisters that puffed up despite my generous layers of mole skin. I threw the offending shoes away that night and I will always remember the very painful lesson they taught me. Never again.

Yes, a good pair of shoes can take you anywhere.

Take Jet Lag into Consideration Where Applicable:

I sometimes hear the advice that you should do the things you want to do most right away, in case something goes wrong (sickness, strikes, closures, inclement weather) so you can make sure you have done what matters most to you. I agree with this, except when you are going to do some drastic time zone changes.

The battle against jet lag is real. Trying to stay away late enough so that you are on a normal schedule is a serious challenge and sight seeing--outdoors, in the sunshine, not in overly warm museums--is a good way to combat the exhaustion. I have spent my jet lagged hours in some cool places, but they were not nearly as cool as they would have been if I had been fully alert and rested. I have some good memories from those days, good travel experiences, but they are all a little hazy, a little tainted by exhaustion. Try your best to stay awake and have fun, but know your limits. Don't try to dive into the deep end on 0 hours of sleep. Test the waters, eat, drink, and sleep well, then you can really dive in when you are ready.

Enjoy the Memories, Good and Bad:

Bad vacations often make the best stories. Having things go wrong just adds a little spice to your travel, though a little goes a long way. You will always love telling people about the place you stayed where you had to take icy cold showers (done that) or the water didn't work so your showered in the rain (Lee's done that.)

It's fun to talk about the meal of a seafood pasta that scared you to death because all the seafood still had it's shells, antenna, and faces. And let's not forget the hostel bathrooms that smelled like Sasquatch died in there but not before taking off his moldy hiking boots and wrecking the toilet (this one is almost too recent to be funny.) Sometimes the things that go wrong are the most entertaining parts of your trip, so enjoy the ups and downs. Write the good and bad down in a journal or a blog or photo album, and tell your travel stories to all your disinterested friends and family for years to come.