So Much to See, So Little Time

[PawPrint53]

My DH and I are traveling to Ireland (west coast area), Edinburgh, walking in the Lake District, Oxford, Vienna, hiking in Hallstatt, and Dublin. A month in all. As I put together an itinerary for Edinburgh and Vienna, I realize how much there is to see and do. I'm having difficulty paring it down because I keep thinking I might never be in those places again. I feel like I'll miss out on something wonderful if I take it off my list, but then again, I don't want to be exhausted or feel like I'm rushing. I've only been overseas once, 9 years ago, doing a walking tour in England. I guess I need someone to talk me down so to speak. Any advice?

 

[NW-Bound]

It does not matter how much time you have, you will always feel rushed unless you are going to be staying in one place for a month or so.

I think the strategy is to prioritize the places that you want to see, and be sure you hit the must-see. Once you achieve that, think of the rest as bonus, and if you miss them, don't feel sore.

For example, when visiting Florence Italy, I really wanted to climb up inside the famous Duomo Dome (an astounding engineering feat in the 1400s), and did not mind spending 72 euros/person to get the Firenze Card to get priority. After that, the cards allowed us free visit to 72 museums, villas, and gardens. How the heck can we do that in the 72 hours (actually 8 x 3 = 24 hrs as the venues do not open 24 hours) before the cards expired?

And so, we hit as many as we could see in that time. With our brain saturated, I didn't think we could see more and still appreciate and remember what we saw. Just impossible to see it all.

 

[Fshnfool]

Yep, you will always miss out on something wonderful no matter where you go or how long you stay. But you will most likely be rewarded by other wonderful and rewarding things, people and t you will see an experience. We like the middle ground of slower travel seeing a few places on each trip and staying at least a few days in most places. Ten cities in ten days is just not our style. I’m sure that you could enjoy a full month in each of the places you mentioned. I sure hope you enjoy wherever you choose to go!

 

[DrRoy]

You are trying to do too much for me. Break it up into 2 trips. I would spend at least 2+ weeks in Ireland or Austria alone, and a full week in the Lake District. Several days each in the other cities.

 

[marko]

I've never done it, but for me, doing the "ten cities in ten days" routine would be the worst thing imaginable. Maybe because that was my work lifestyle for 30 years.

We like to stay in one place (maybe two) over a two or three week period and either do day trips or a quick overnighter. Sometimes, just sitting in one place and discovering what that city has to offer is the best strategy.

One of the best days of my life was spent just sitting in a sidewalk cafe in France with DW all day and just people watching, drinking wine and eating cheese. We sat there for four hours!

 

[athena53]

I like Marko's philosophy- balance. I still remember sitting on a park bench in Lugano, Switzerland, sharing lunch with DH and throwing crumbs to a group of sparrows and watching their behavior. Allow yourself some down time.

We always started with a list of priorities- I won't even call them "must-sees". Most of the time we got up in the morning and then figured out what we wanted to do. Raining? OK- museum day. Interesting brochure in the lobby about the Zoo? Let's check out the Zoo. We've even found concerts or other events in the local media once we got there. The only exceptions to this: excursions best booked ahead and tickets such as the one NW-Bound mentioned in Florence. DH and I endured really awful lines to get into the Louvre and the d'Orsay. I found later that more expensive tickets or a professional guide would have allowed us to bypass the worst of the lines. Not much virtue in waiting in line other than a little people-watching.


You won't see everything on your list, but you'll know what was there and will have made choices as you go. Be open to change! And hey, you might come back. I'm about to make my 4th trip to Edinburgh.

 

[Nemo2]

Shway, shway.

 

[Bryan Barnfellow]

Unless I really hate a place upon arrival, I usually always travel with the assumption that I will return. That tends to reduce pressure to just, what shall we do on this trip only.

-BB

 

[marko]

The only exceptions to this: excursions best booked ahead and tickets such as the one NW-Bound mentioned in Florence. DH and I endured really awful lines to get into the Louvre and the d'Orsay. I found later that more expensive tickets or a professional guide would have allowed us to bypass the worst of the lines.

We found that true at the Colosseum. We were able to buy a 'tour' of sorts just on the street out front of it for about $5 extra; seemed sort of shady but the tour was for real and we bypassed 1000 people. There were a half-dozen college-age kids offering these tours, more or less hanging around on the street. We didn't care so much about a tour as dodging the long line.

IIRC, Louvre has a free night on Thursdays and there's never a big crowd. (We used to live a block away)

 

[athena53]

IIRC, Louvre has a free night on Thursdays and there's never a big crowd. (We used to live a block away)

I'd read later that evenings were far less crowded. I have a couple of days in Paris in September and will be visiting a special exhibit of Klimt and other Viennese artists at a smaller museum (Atelier des Lumieres). A friend in the US posted about it on FB and I realized it would still be there during my trip. On our trip to Paris, DH and I went to an exhibit of Slovenian Impressionist paintings (who knew there were Slovenian impressionists?) at Le Petit Palais- I'd heard about it in a French news podcast. We pretty much had the place to ourselves. Definitely something to be said for keeping our eyes and ears open for things that aren't on the checklist of the mainstream tourist!

 

[Teacher Terry]

We tend to spend time in one location. We spent 2 weeks in Rome, 2 weeks in Siena with a rental car to explore the Tuscany region during the day. It made for a much more enjoyable trip.

 

[brett]

We have always traveled internationally.

Now retired, we travel more days. Two trips a year, two months at a time. We tend to spend more time in one area that we do flitting about. This has been our practice for some time.

So we will spend two weeks in Tuscany/Umbira and never go to Rome other than to catch a plane. Another time we may spend 5 or 6 days in Rome. Last time it was just under three weeks in Sicily and ten days in Malta.

So we are slow travellers and I think that we enjoy it more. We tend to want to spend a minimum of 3 nights in one place that interests us.

How do we prioritize. We each have a bucket list and try to triangulate on something the we both like. We also consider currency. Our Africa trip was put off for two years because the currencies were falling. Doing so saved us 15 percent. Last minute offers also impact our list.

We don't book/commit far in advance. This past winter we planned to spend 3-4 weeks in the Philippines. After a week we did not like it so we simply few back to southern Thailand. That is why we tend not to plan things to the nth degree. Usually on land trips our plans/hotels are no more than a week in advance, often less.

 

[OldShooter]

Our preferred method of travel is private trips with a driver and a guide or a guide/driver. We also try to avoid trips where we fly from city to city instead of driving. This creates lots of opportunities over meals and when driving to learn from the guide about the country, its history, and its people. For this reason, too, we request older guides. The kids are chock-full of dates for paintings, the heights of church steeples, and the volume of water going over a falls. What they do not have is the life experience that gives us a perspective view of the destination. (We once had a guide in Panama who had testified at Manuel Noriega's trial. Great stories!)

For itineraries, we work with the arranger (strongly preferring in-country arrangers) to decide where and how we want to spend our time. No shopping for example, limited art museums, etc. We actually have a sort of traveler's resume and preferences list that we send to the provider, covering the kind of accommodations we like, the type of interests we have, etc. This helps a lot in communication.

Even if you do not choose a full private trip, IMO the absolute best way to maximize what you get at a destination is to hire a local guide for your first day. He/she will teach you a lot and will help you plan your subsequent time to be most efficient for your specific interests. After the first day, we also like the hop-on, hop-off buses because they typically hit all the basic attractions but also allow a lot of people-watching. Even if we have a car, it is usually parked when we are visiting a city. Attempting to navigate tangled streets, especially if the signs are not in the Roman alphabet. is an unpleasant way to waste our limited visit time.

 

[athena53]

Our preferred method of travel is private trips with a driver and a guide or a guide/driver. We also try to avoid trips where we fly from city to city instead of driving. This creates lots of opportunities over meals and when driving to learn from the guide about the country, its history, and its people.

DH and I did this in St. Petersburg, Russia in 2003- priceless. We liked taking trains between cities where possible.

So we are slow travellers and I think that we enjoy it more. We tend to want to spend a minimum of 3 nights in one place that interests us.

DH and I eventually got to that point as he got older- it was just a lot of work to pack up and move regularly from city to city, although we occasionally "doubled up"- spent an overnight in Bruges, for example, without checking out of our hotel in Brussels, so we could travel VERY lightly. It's just me now and even though I'm a very active 65, I prefer to stay in one place for awhile. I just returned from a spectacular group tour of India and Nepal but it involved 13 different hotels over 3 weeks. (That includes overnights en route- London going there, DFW coming home- that were my choice). There were also 5 flights other than my round trip to/from Delhi. I'm glad I saw every single destination I did, but WAY too much moving around.

 

[PawPrint53]

Unless I really hate a place upon arrival, I usually always travel with the assumption that I will return. That tends to reduce pressure to just, what shall we do on this trip only.

-BB

I think this is what I need to remember. Now that DH is retired, we do have the time, and I'm just going to assume that we will have the physical stamina. Oh, yeah, and money.

 

[HI Bill]

I went to Juneau a few years ago, staying 6 days in the same hotel. We got to know the town, where the eagles hang out at night, drove nearly every mile of every highway, found salmon spawning, saw glaciers, went to museums, did the tram ride, went BACK to the best restaurants (ate at two restaurants twice). We got a really good feel for the town. I could definitely live there in the summer time. By the last day, I was ready to move on, but the area was relatively small. I enjoyed not having to pack/unpack every night.

 

[Lsbcal]

My DH and I are traveling to Ireland (west coast area), Edinburgh, walking in the Lake District, Oxford, Vienna, hiking in Hallstatt, and Dublin. A month in all. As I put together an itinerary for Edinburgh and Vienna, I realize how much there is to see and do. I'm having difficulty paring it down because I keep thinking I might never be in those places again. I feel like I'll miss out on something wonderful if I take it off my list, but then again, I don't want to be exhausted or feel like I'm rushing. I've only been overseas once, 9 years ago, doing a walking tour in England. I guess I need someone to talk me down so to speak. Any advice?

Just a word on Hallstatt. It is a beautiful lake area. However, we found it very crowded with tourists in September last year. Many Asian tourists seem to think of it as a wedding picture spot. So it's suffering from overexposure.


Why don't you post an itinerary with days in each spot to get some comments? BTW, we usually want to stay in one spot for at least 3 nights. However we only did 2 nights each in Salzburg and Hallstatt. But 7 nights in Vienna.

 

[Bamaman]

Hard to believe my first European trip was 48 years ago--for college. We used to rent cars and drive as fast and far as we could make in 2 weeks. We have seen the light and now travel better--slowly.

We just returned from Ireland--staying in Dublin and later down on the Ring of Kerry. Ireland was beautiful and the people are great. It is.just a little quiet for us. And Dublin is our least favorite of all large European cities--and very expensive.

When we travel, we research our itinerary carefully. Often we mix ocean cruises with land based travel before or after the cruise. Scandinavia is deadly expensive but affordable coming off an inexpensive cruise ship.

We prefer to visit cities reached easily from other cities. Like: London and Paris. Or Venice-Florence-Rome. Or Prague-Vienna-Budapest.

And we prefer to visit fewer cities--giving each place time to see the sights. "right." For example, most great European cities are worthy of 4 days minimum--London, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Rome, Prague, Budapest, Barcelona and Madrid.

And we like.to rest between big cities for a couple of days in places like Tuscany, Bratislava, Salzburg, Dresden. Numerous weeks' travel is just tiring.

With the advent of cheap European airlines,.travel options have opened. I like to travel extensively in one region, and fly to a completely different region on the way home. Like staying in Budapest--and returning home from Copenhagen or Lisbon.

 

[Souschef]

We took 2 minivan tours with Peter Pan tours in Windemere, Lake District.
One was a half day Beatrix Potter tour and the other was an all day lakes tour. We enjoyed both of them. I have attached the trip story of Ireland and the Lake District.

 

[brett]

We typically do open jaws or one ways in Europe. One ways with rental cars as well. Autoeurope is great for this. Thinking of renting in Europe for a few months and using it as a base to do shorter trips. Perhaps France or Southern Spain.

 

[GoodWishes]

Same as several others said, our rules of thumb are 3 nights at each city/town, cities/towns that are easily reached by train. Once a while we might stay more or less than 3 nights depending on the size of the city/town and things to do that interest us. Once a while we fly if train is not convenient. We prefer traveling by train instead of flying or driving.

We just came back a couple weeks ago from a 26 day trip in Spain (5 cities) and France (3 cities). We usually book transportation and lodging. What we see/do is more or less as we go unless we know there is something very popular then we will book in advance.

Sometimes places/things that we thought we might like were below expectation. Sometimes places/things were above expectation.

In Barcelona, we took a 1 1/2 hour paella cooking class that turned out to be 5 hour of great partying. One of the highlights of this trip. So be flexible and keep an open mind

 

[WestUniversity]

My DH and I are traveling to Ireland (west coast area), Edinburgh, walking in the Lake District, Oxford, Vienna, hiking in Hallstatt, and Dublin. A month in all. As I put together an itinerary for Edinburgh and Vienna, I realize how much there is to see and do. I'm having difficulty paring it down because I keep thinking I might never be in those places again. I feel like I'll miss out on something wonderful if I take it off my list, but then again, I don't want to be exhausted or feel like I'm rushing. I've only been overseas once, 9 years ago, doing a walking tour in England. I guess I need someone to talk me down so to speak. Any advice?

DW and I were in Edinburgh several years ago and loved it. Definitely take a walk down the royal mile from Edinburgh castle to Holyrood. If you decide to see Edinburgh castle, purchase your tickets on the web stateside before you leave. There will be a long line to get in the castle, but that line is to buy tix. If you already have them you simply walk right in. If you are at the castle in August be sure to take in Tattoo. You can find numerous videos on YouTube if you are unfamiliar. It’s a military pageant of regiments from all over Great Britain. There are tons of heraldry shops in the area if you have any Scottish heritage and want to get any items or information. St Andrew’s is nearby if you want to see where golf began...

 

[PawPrint53]

Thanks for the advice and information. I'm calmer now. If we don't get to see everything on our list, well, that's okay and hopefully we'll get back to those places again, but I'll be more than happy about what we do get to see. I'm particularly excited about our Lake District walk. I love the inn-to-inn walks. You can really explore the area that way. Someone mentioned how touristy Hallstatt is, but luckily we're staying about an hour walk from there because our main goal is to hike. So hopefully where we are won't be as congested.