I love traveling because, for me, it means meeting
a new culture, a new atmosphere. I love the sensation of thinking for two or five
days –depending how long is my trip- how would I feel living in the place I’m
visiting. When I was living in Barcelona I used to travel at least twice a
year. Now that I live in Toronto I continue travelling but mostly to go back
home.
Spring and fall are my favorite seasons
for traveling because it’s a way of avoiding extreme weather conditions. The
truth is, though, that choosing these seasons often brings you rain so, the
perfect weather for traveling doesn’t exist!
As my friends say, I have developed a trip preparation
routine, and I love it. The first thing
I do after deciding my destination is Google it
for doing some primary research: reading the history of the place, learning
some basic words in the new language, etc.
After having a general idea of where I’m
going I use go to a bookstore to read some guides. I do a quick research but usually
just buy one. I confess that depending on the destination I will choose one or
another. I don’t have a favourite one.
The preparation continues underlining the guide
and starting a list of My Musts of the
city. But that list needs other recommendations too. I need to know places that
don’t appear in the books – and I don’t mean finding secret treasures, I mean
normal places someone went and liked-. That’s why I usually try to find friends,
or friends of friends, for asking personal tips.
The next step is marking on the map all the
places I want to visit. And I do it creating zone groups. I just prepare the
zone groups because I don’t like to know exactly what I’m going to do every
day. So I get different itineraries and once I’m there I will decide how to
spend my time.
Another step that I consider vey important
during my preparation is having a list of restaurants or local markets. Every
time I’m traveling I try to visit three different types of gastronomic places:
The first ones are restaurants -full of locals- offering lunch menus. The
second types are the food markets –I love buying some fruit, wine or local
ingredients and preparing delicious sandwiches or meals-. Finally, in every
trip I do, I try to choose a special restaurant for having a special dinner -I
have to admit that the criteria I use for choosing depends on the place I’m
visiting-.
The last step -but not least- of my trip preparation
is to find a place to stay. The first option is always finding someone’s friend
with an apartment for renting. If there is no success, I try airbnb. I personally prefer apartments than
hotels. I love spending time in my new home imagining how would it be my life
there. For me, spending some time cooking local dishes, having a glass of wine or
reading a book after all day walking it’s also part of traveling.
Having recently come back from spending two years in London England, your post makes me miss the constant traveling I was able to experience on the weekends. With so many beautiful countries to explore with reasonable airfare and short flight durations, in my experience life in Europe encourages travel a lot more then North America. It's great to read about someone else's travel planning routine - very interesting to note differences and similarities.
ReplyDeleteIf you've never tried it, I recommend also researching free walking tours - to my delight they are offered in almost every European city and a fantastic way to meet other travellers, learn about the cultures and see main sights. What I really appreciate about these tours is that they are often done by locals and you get a wealth of knowledge and see some sights that you may not experience on the formal, tourist tours run by large companies. A great website is www.freewalkingtours.com