I Love Travel Planning

Do you love travel planning?

I get that it might not be everybody’s cup of tea. Perhaps you prefer to just rock up at the airport and jump on a flight. Wander the streets of a strange town and find a great place to stay. Waltz into a ramshackle old cafe and grab a bite to eat.

Me?

I prefer to spend hours, days, weeks, agonising over the details.

I am going to spend longer planning our family year away than we are actually going to spend travelling.

Why?

Because I can, but also because I love doing it.

We are counting down the weeks now, until our departure next March, so the planning is starting to intensify. The stack of travel books on my coffee table is starting to grow. My reluctance to book anything without having first weighed up all the options…well that never goes away.

Is this healthy?

Probably not if I try to micro manage our entire year away. I am restricting myself to booking the odd week here and there, based on our loose itinerary, rather than attempting to fill 365 days.

We want freedom while we’re travelling. We want to be flexible, to stay somewhere for another week just because we’re having a good time. To run away from somewhere else because: (a) I can’t get a decent cup of coffee; (b) Anja is too cold; (c) the kids are driving us mad because they’ve run out of organic rice cakes.

But, and this is mainly me, I also don’t want to spend 24 hours on a plane to New Zealand, get there, then miss all the good bits and spend a week in wherever is the Kiwi equivalent of Swindon. No offence meant to the lovely residents of this fine Wiltshire town, which currently provides me with gainful employment, but you don’t see too many queues outside the Swindon tourist information kiosk…if indeed anybody has bothered to build one.

I need to get back to Lonely Planet, so that’s enough for now.

If you have any tips for our stay in New Zealand or Tasmania please share.