How do you plan your vacation?

Parent Cafe
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We were in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons last year and I thought NPs really weren’t my thing. WOW. Had an amazing time and Yellowstone was fascinating with all the thermal activity. The, DD needed to get from Denver to Phoenix and asked me to drive with her, stopping at 5 NPs along the way. If you’re ever in the vicinity, Arches is not to be missed. We also loved Canyonlands. And, of course, I loved the rare opportunity to have those 5 days with just my adult D.

I realize I didn’t answer the original question. Dh and I have a list of places we want to see and we’re trying to get to the more physically demanding ones before we get too old. Mostly we select by something we’ve read, heard, etc. that strikes our interest. I’m the family travel planner and google and TA are my friends. I love planning trips ad have been known to over research.

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I’m the planner in our family—I figure out where I want to go and then get consensus from H and see whether the “kids” will join us.

I try to pick several things that may be if interest (often checking online and sometimes library books), reserve accommodations, car and air and then nail down activities depending on weather and energy levels.

63

Travel is our splurge in life, though we tend not to do the high-end amenities. DH and I are trying to do as much of it as we can now because at some point, I won’t be able to manage a rigorous trip. We are definitely the types who needs a vacation to recover from vacation.

We did a couple of cross-country camping trips when the guys were younger. Had a blast and hit most of the big NPs. We were all very pleasantly surprised at how much we liked Mesa Verde. Yellowstone is spectacular – we camped and made sure to get to Old Faithful and some of the other very popular sites before the tour buses started their daily rounds. We still camp at least a couple times a year.

As far as how we plan: because DH has the FF miles, he tends to arrange the flights. We both work on hotels; he does about 2/3 of it. We avoid major chains and try to stay in small local hotels. I do some recon on restaurants, but DH usually comes up with other places as well. If we take trains, DH gets on the sites early because in many countries, one can;'t make reservations til 60 days out, and it’s good to figure out what the sleeping cars are like before committing to tickets. I figure out what we’ll actually do, come up with an itinerary, and make a long list of places to see with all kinds of detail. I start with Trip Advisor for an overall view, then start drilling down from some of those suggestions. I save a lot of the travel threads from here and go back to pull ideas from them as well. One of our favorite days in Ireland came from a CCer!

I tend to make a list of more things than we could possibly see, because sometimes we are in the mood for something else, the weather doesn’t cooperate, or something offbeat turns out to be the perfect thing, etc. I cut and paste from blogs, threads, TA and Google, then edit. Of course, having invested so much time in research, I then want to actually DO everything on the list. Some of the things on the list aren’t DH’s thing, so we’ve worked out that sometimes he’ll take a morning or afternoon off to nap/read and I’ll go hit some the sites I really want to see, and then we meet up later. This has worked out really well for us.

Last summer, we visited S2 in Ukraine and there is not a ton of tourist info out there. I read a lot of expat blogs, S2 had specific suggestions, and we signed on with a private guide for four days in western Ukraine because everything I read recommended not renting a car and having someone along who spoke Ukrainian. I made a list of places we wanted to see, and the guide helped vet the list and make other suggestions. I did drive in Ukraine one day, and met with a local guide to take us to what remains of the Jewish communities where DH’s family lived. (SOOOO glad we did this. There are other genealogy tours, but this was personal and worked out so well.) We also went to Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and then took an overnight ferry from Tallinn to Stockholm. We took two small group tours (8 people plus driver) to get us from Vilnius to Riga, and from Riga to Tallinn – instead of a regular four hour bus ride, it was 10-11 hours and we stopped at 4-5 historical sites/parks in the countryside along the way. We liked getting to see more of the country than just the cities.

We tend not to do big tour groups or cruises. We’ll do small group tours (8-12 people) for a 1-2 day tour for some parts, but mostly we make our own way. I like renting cars because then I can stop to take pictures whenever I see something interesting. That was probably my biggest frustration with having the guide for western Ukraine. I had to stick my camera out the window, point, shoot and pray as we drove from one place to the next.

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We ask our kids for ideas! Really, they are both great at travel planning. S is also willing to look at flights/hotels, etc. for us. ( Note: when he was in HS he actually was asked to - and did- plan a business trip for some of my co workers).

The downside is that sometimes they expect us to take them with us…

65

It’s funny to read so many posts about a Baltic cruise, I just booked up on a Norwegian cruise line ship to the Baltic’s for September, I’m excited.

But to the OP question on how do I decide a vacation spot?
I have a fairly large bucket list of places I want to see, I subscribe to 2 travel sites (for free) and I get frequent emails about fare sales and I jump on one of these sales if it’s on my list and the dates work out. Just yesterday I got an email for a sale to Australia from the US for close to $500, it’s good to dream of many possibilities these travel sites can give me.

66

I also start with “how much money do I want to spend”, then go from there.

67

I’m a master at vacation planning.

Assuming we have a time slot already…

First, we talk about where each of us is interested in going. Lots of ideas get tossed around: have we been before? (Possibly not ready to go back.) Do we want lots of outdoor scenery? Do we want culture? Physical activity? Access to swimming ala beaches, lakes or rivers? A chance to visit with family?

Once we come up with a shortlist of possibilities (maybe three or four viable options) we then look at the cheapest way to get there. Usually, our first stop is my husband’s multiple air miles accounts. For example, last summer we ended up in Thailand for two weeks. This was primarily because it fit the bill for everything we were interested in doing, and the taxes on the air miles were stupidly cheap. Four of us went RT from NYC to Bangkok for a total of $500.00. And a heck of a lot of air miles! But hey, it was worth it. Before we settled on Thailand, we also thought about Vietnam, Croatia, Iceland, and Russia. But, those places were either going to involve too much travel time or excessive taxes, or very expensive visa fees. (Iceland is now stupidly expensive in the summer, and super busy, plus no northern lights in summer.)

If we are going abroad, I like Trip Advisor for booking holiday villas and hotels. Never steered us wrong so far. We’ve had very nice combinations of villas, B&B, hotels,and specialty lodging. For example, in Thailand, we stayed on rafts on the River Kwai, which had no electricity. Everything was lit by lanterns and mosquito pots. Breakfast and dinner were included, because there is nowhere else to get food. It was delicious, and the whole thing, food and lodging, cost about $50 per person, per night. Amazing. Always check out the speciality lodging on Trip Advisor, which is where I found that place.

If we are planning a domestic vacation, we look at driving times or ease of flight connections and cost. We then get a bunch of excellent and free AAA guides and start looking at their roadmaps. You can’t beat them, because they give you the scenic routes and all the attractions, as well as being really good maps. GPS is a poor substitute. When we get an idea of which itinerary has the most interesting sights, we decide. Then we look at hotels. I’m a big fan of Hampton Inns for family travel, but I like Best Western too. Sometimes we will splurge if we are in a city. If we are going somewhere for a week and staying put, we will rent a house or apartment, depending on where we are. We love to cook when we travel. It’s fun trying to find your favorite ingredients in a new grocery store, especially abroad, and trying to use the one terrible knife the place provides, lol.

When we’ve made our decisions, that’s when the planning begins. We don’t like to just wing it. We want to know what all the coolest things are. We always do have a day or two to do nothing. We always leave time for shopping. We don’t plan actual times to do things, and we are quite happy to change things around. We do prioritize the stuff everyone wants to see. For example, in Vienna, my daughter and I were eager to see The Esperanto Museum. We knew it wouldn’t take long, and it was a neat place. But the fun thing we also discovered, as a result of planning to see that, was there was a fantastic globe museum nearby. The globes were amazing, and we all thought that was a fun excursion.

We also make a point of finding out what cultural events are going on. On that same trip, our dates coincided with an outdoor music festival, whihc was free, with dozens of food stalls and beer tents. That was great, gave us a break from terrible Austrian food. And because we try to save money when possible, we decided to hold off on seeing any classical music performances (my special request) until we got to Prague. Prague offers dozens of very inexpensive but high quality performances every day, for a fraction of the price as in Vienna. We used the money instead to see The Kiss at the Belvedere Palace, which was worth it.

Remember to bring your child’s passport when going to cultural sights in Europe. Many places give youth discounts, but a lot of them are very strict and require ID. It can save a LOT of money, as in enough to buy dinner.

Domestically, If you have AAA or AARP membership, that can save money too, which will add up over the cost of the vacation.

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The last two big foreign trips we did were individual tours. Boy, that is the way to go if you can afford the cost. We did Jordan because our son was there, but it was the Arab spring year and things were dicey. We actually decided that we really would do it about two weeks before we left. I’d spent enough time on TripAdvisor to figure out what we needed to see and what we had time to see in a little over a week. We also wanted to pick up our son from Irbid towards the end of the tour and have him join us, which dictated the order. It was a fabulous trip.

More recently this fall we were in Hong Kong for a couple of months where dh was a visiting prof. We went to the mainland twice again as individual tour. We told them what we wanted to see and they made the arrangements. When we said, no to the Pearl Factory, they took it off the list and suggested something else we liked better. There was some flexibility when the Great Wall turned into the not-so-great wall (very foggy/smoggy day) our tour guide asked if we’d like to bail early and go to a museum in Beijing. She checked to see what would still be open and that ended up being one of the best experiences. (We saw a bunch of contemporary art, both wildly conceptual and some based on traditional ink painting and a wonderful collection of Makonde carvings from Tanzania.)

I know the OP isn’t interested in wine, but we really enjoy trip to California’s wine country - we usually hike in the morning and do wine tastings in the afternoon.

I’m hoping to do some hiking vacations out west before we get too old. Loved Bryce eons ago, but didn’t have time to stay long. Still haven’t been to Yellowstone.

I was at Disneyland once years ago and have zippo interest in returning.

69

Friend did the Rhine cruise in Sept and it was cold. Check that.
Same friend loved Isle of Skye, @TatinG.
Ireland is so easy, a quick flight from the east coast.

70

I am a very last minute planner. Our last vacation to Spain was planned 2 days before we left. I am now in the process of planning a vacation for the end of August and cannot decide on anything (suggestions welcome!) My son and I have spent the summer criss-crossing the east coast going to lax tournaments. I’m sick of driving, sick of the heat, sick of crowds, etc. I’ve researched a ton of places but nothing sounds really great.

71

I generally plan in advance, but I don’t mind jumping on opportunities. Just after 9/11, when flying became a nightmare and folks were still afraid to fly, I scored a deal for us to stay at a very nice hotel in HI for a fraction of what the going rates used to be. HI needed tourists, so we decided to help. Tsunami aftermath, volcano erupting - here we come to get HI economy going again. I scored last minute tickets to the Bid Island right after the eruption started. Obviously, we stayed far away from the volcano at the Mauna Kea resort. The hotel was deserted, the flight to HI had empty seats, and we got upgraded both ways! I don’t think we would have been able to afford this luxury if it weren’t for the vog and public fear. Local residents and flight attendants told us that they were happy to see visitors!

72

Went on a mega ship cruise, you don’t get bored. There are so many things to do and so many places to eat, you just felt that you ARE vacationing. Plus, the port of calls, I have not been to one of those “made for cruise ship vacation islands”, but from what I can see, its like go to a Club Med vacation, every thing is in a controled environment and safe.
There are plenty Youtube Cruise vlogs you can choose from, take a look.