If you’re like us, you probably don’t have the luxury of heading out on a road trip with no end in sight. You most likely have a limited amount of vacation days available or can only take so many at a time. You may have kids that attend school, an elderly relative that needs your help, or even a beloved pet that you can’t bring yourself to leave for weeks on end. Whatever the reason might be, you will want to get the most out of your destination in the short time you have: Enter Power Travel.
Power Travel and Maximize your Travel Time
Pre-planning, prioritizing, and pacing yourself are all important things to do. You don’t want to get lost, miss an important item that you’ll regret, or spend time hunting for restaurants or pharmacies.
Over the years, we’ve become experts at maximizing our travel time. Much of this can be accomplished by preparing for a trip ahead of time through web-based research and travel books. Make a list of things to do, places to visit, specialty food to try, things to buy, etc. Put these in a prioritized order and group them by location. This is all part of our planning and it really helps us ensure we make the most of our precious vacation time.
1) Set priorities and make a plan
For priorities, we usually organize items into 3 categories: “must do or see”, “would be nice” and “if time permits”. We also include important information such as opening hours and opening days as well as whether or not you have to reserve in advance, and whether you can buy tickets in advance. For example, the Last Supper in Milan can only be seen if you buy tickets weeks in advance…there’s always a long list of sad-faced individuals that have traveled across the world to see it but get turned away at the door. Don’t let it happen to you, be an experienced Power Traveler!
So, you may be thinking that this is taking all the spontaneity out of your plans and basically makes vacationing a chore. We don’t see it that way at all. You have to find your way to the museum from the hotel, whether you figure it out when on site or check ahead of time. Doing the latter just saves you some time while on holiday.
When you add it all up, plane tickets, hotel fees, entrance fees, meals etc. you may be unnecessarily paying many hundreds of dollars a day or more, in addition to losing precious vacation time. Don’t waste time and money searching the Web on a bad roaming connection or trying to find maps in English.
Being prepared is the best way to maximize your time and turn as many hours as possible into quality vacation time. Again, if you have the luxury of having 3 weeks in a place, no worries, we would also enjoy the experience of getting lost in the back streets of Venice, for example. When you have 2 days, that’s the last thing you want, because you’ll be trading in a visit to St. Marks Basilica or the Doge’s Palace perhaps. Having a plan enables us to head out right away to explore instead of sitting in our hotel room trying to figure it out.
2) Stay in the area you want to visit
Choosing a good tourist map is essential in order to make our plan and it’s also helpful when it comes time to select our accommodations. We prefer—even if we have to spend a bit more—to stay in the area where we want to visit the most things. Being within walking distance of the attractions we identify as must-sees is fantastic. It also gives you the opportunity to see the spots more than once, perhaps after dark, in the morning, or even lets you try again if lines are too long on your first attempt. This is something we learned through trial and error.
For example:
The first time we went to Paris, we decided to stay at a fancy hotel near the Château Versailles on the outskirts of Paris. The place was fantastic, and we were overlooking the grounds of the castle and would see (and hear) the lambs on the grounds from our window. Despite this, we think of this as a mistake because our priority was to visit Paris and we ended up wasting 2 hours every day traveling back and forth on the train. There were also limited schedules for the train, so we were not able to stay past 9:30 or risk missing the last train back to our hotel’s location!
For our second visit to Paris, we stayed in a small charming hotel in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. From here, we could walk almost everywhere; it was great! This summer we are going back to Paris and this time we selected a hotel near the Champs-Élysées in order to discover another area. Once again, we will be within walking distance of most of the sites we are planning to visit.
3) Prepare daily itineraries by area
Preparing full or half-day itineraries taking into consideration location and opening hours is helpful when making plans. This means visiting sites—including food venues—located in the same area during the same outing. This is ideal to avoid wasting time traveling between sites. Imagine running around the supermarket from one end to the other for each item instead of picking up the items in the same aisle as you go past!
Plan your itinerary like this and be sure to start with the places that close the earliest. We often think we’ll be done faster than we usually are. When you factor in the crowds, lines, or simply discovering more things to see that keep you at a place of interest longer than planned. If possible, saving a day or two of extra free time is always helpful in case you need to shuffle things around.
Getting a good travel book is also very helpful to plan daily itineraries. Our preferred brand is the Eyewitness Top 10 Travel Guides (We are not getting any perks for mentioning them, we just like the layout of these books, the maps and the easy-to-carry pocket sizes).
We don’t always make it a point to visit all of the top 10 attractions, but again prioritize and select the ones we are most interested in. In our case, we may not visit all the art museums (one or two per vacation is plenty for us), but we do typically want to see all the major monuments as well as many parks.
A practical way to see the main attractions is to take the Hop On Hop Off bus if it exists. They are available in most major city centers and these tour buses stop at popular attractions in the city and give you a narrated tour with some history. We have used them to get around many cities (Athens, Barcelona, Copenhagen, London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Lisbon and Porto). We like to take the full tour first just to get an overview of the city, especially when we’re groggy from lack of sleep from an overnight flight.
A note of caution: Make sure to choose the company with frequent buses—there are often two or more similar companies in town. Also, check the hours of operation and the frequency of buses. We always check reviews on TripAdvisor before leaving for our trip.
4) Pace yourself and experience the local culture
Pacing yourself, and ensuring you drink and eat are also important parts of Power Traveling. If you are like most folks, after being on your feet for 10 hours with no water and no food, even the Mona Lisa looks like “whatever”. Staying hydrated especially when out in the sun (don’t forget your hat and sunscreen—see my packing list) is important.
We sometimes get so excited about the sites, trying to fit them all in, that we are on the run and forget to eat! We now make a point of having breakfast before heading out in order to have more energy for a busy day of exploring. Stopping for lunch and trying some local delicacies is also an experience in itself. After all, traveling isn’t just visiting attractions, it’s also experiencing the local culture, is it not?
5) Carry a well-stocked daypack
Bring what you might need in your daypack to avoid having to go back to your hotel or having to search for pharmacies or stores with unfamiliar products and aisles. We usually bring with us: water, sunscreen, hats, disinfecting wipes, tissues, guidebooks, maps, a small emergency kit, umbrella or raincoats, light sweaters or jackets. Sounds like a lot but choose light and small items and if you need them, you’ll appreciate having them!
Travel Better and Power Travel
Being able to see a lot in a limited amount of time comes down to being prepared and organized. Research is also essential and with all the information available on the Web today there’s no good excuse not to do some of this before you leave. Not only will you make the most of your vacation time, you may also find this a helpful way to avoid bad neighborhoods and tourist scams.
Happy and safe Power Traveling!
I would love to get your feedback to this article as well as input for future post ideas.
Related post:
Bleisure Travel: Getting Personal Pleasure out of Business Travel
See our Travel Planning Guide:
4 replies on “Make the Most of Your Vacation…Power Travel!”
Great tips! Now for some vacation time to use the tips!
Always ready for more vacation! 🙂
I love the idea of Power Traveling! ?
Wow! Glad you like the idea.
That’s how we travel! 🙂