(and why do you care what anyone else says about your travel style?)

As I wander through various forums and discussion boards and social media platforms I am sooo excited to see that so many people are comfortable being super-judgy about how other people choose to travel. I mean, the passive-aggressive (and outright-aggressive) responses are very encouraging. </sarcasm>

“I would NEVER do <XYZ>, that’s stupid” Well, okay Chad, maybe you didn’t notice that I’m not you? 

There are many different approaches to the travel experience and the sooner you figure out your travel style the more satisfied you’ll be with your vacations. Not traveling the same way or with the same level of experience and intensity as your friends (or some random stranger on the interwebz) do is not wrong; it’s different. 

– I’m talking here particularly about short-term vacation travel; long-term travel, which I will arbitrarily define as 3 months or more in one country, allows for even more variances in the approach –  

Some folks are ‘go-go-go’ travelers who get up early and cram the day full of activities. 

Some are more laid back and enjoy a late, leisurely breakfast before stumbling out to figure out what they’re going to see that day. 

Some people really like to have it all laid out for them so they do bus tours and cruises where someone else has handed them an itinerary and they just go where the group goes. 

Some people need 3 roller bags and a carry-on to survive for a week; some of us can do a week in a 30 litre backpack without too much effort

All equally valid options but you need to sort out who YOU are when traveling. 

Comfortable travelers are happy travelers and that comfort is mental, emotional and physical. Don’t let someone else bully you into packing more or less than you are comfortable with. Don’t let them bully you into eating at places you aren’t comfortable with. Don’t let them bully you into walking when you really want to take an Uber. It’s YOUR trip.

We are (and it took quite a few trips to learn this about ourselves) casual travelers who walk quite a lot which leads to many unplanned stops to check out little shops and cafes. Friends have teased me about eating our way through the city because we tend to have many small snacks throughout the day rather than 3 set meals. “Ooooh, those pastries look fantastic. Maybe we need a coffee break?” Sure. I mean, we’ve covered 6 blocks since the last one, LOL

Some people aren’t okay walking 8 blocks to a restaurant and weirdly, their choice doesn’t affect me so I’m happy to not pass judgment; you do you, boo.

We mix and match wardrobe items and recycle clothes, the fact that I wore it once doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be laundered. Some folks just can’t do that for a variety of reasons that don’t impact my life at all so I feel free to not criticize them for doing things differently.

I have learned over the years that for most of our ‘to-do’ items we need one ‘anchor item’ to be the focus of the day; I used to schedule so much stuff that we would exhaust ourselves and be stressed out about time. I’ve also learned that my wife doesn’t like choosing activities. She is of the opinion that a vacation shouldn’t require a lot of decision making; you just go to a place and do stuff while you’re there. I am a little more organized which gives her the freedom to just go. For most of our trips I’m going with a purpose – there are specific things that I want to accomplish so I schedule them. On the other hand, I no longer over-schedule and I leave ‘no idea what we’re going to do’ time in that schedule. Sometimes entire days. When we went to New Zealand I had the first portion of the trip pretty well sorted; while we were in the north we would go and do specific things each day. Once we flew down to Wellington, though, I hadn’t scheduled anything except ‘be in Wellington’ because I knew we would be winding down our trip and there would be plenty of things to keep us occupied for the couple of days we were there. We probably missed out on some cool adventures but we had a blast with the few things we discovered after arrival.

If you are visiting a city with the purpose of going and seeing and doing all the things then you may miss out on some cool locals stuff because you’re on a bus or taxi or train. And if that’s your travel style, that’s fine. Again – ‘you do you’. However, if you find that you leave a place feeling like you missed a lot of potential fun experiences because the trip was chock-a-block with rushed trips between attractions, make sure you account for that on your next trip. We’ve also found that trying to do too many things leads to blurred memories of the things we’ve done; they can tend to run together if you visit, for example, two major museums on the same day – and if you’re in Paris I recommend not scheduling the Louvre and Musee d’Orsay on back-to-back days. Give yourself a day of architecture or something in between, LOL.

When traveling somewhere new I think it’s important to be prepared to spend time on activities you didn’t anticipate. It’s virtually impossible to research every possible attraction in a specific city or area and identify everything you want to see and do. You’re likely to discover new things while you’re there that didn’t show up on Trip Advisor or the ‘top ten things to do in <city>’ video you found. If you didn’t leave any cushion then you’ll have to miss out on something. Then again, if that’s not your style feel free to ignore my advice

Travel safe and keep in mind these 2 simple things:

1) a vacation is typically meant to be more relaxing than exhausting 

2) anyone who tells you that your traveling style is wrong is likely wrong about that