Every once in a while I find a blogger who is a kindred spirit. I find someone like the Invisible Tourist whom I think I would be friends with, whom I want to hang out with, and whom I trust implicitly. But, as much as I love her posts — and as much as she provides incredibly helpful detailed itineraries, I will still put in the work to build my own amazing trip. Why?

Well, because my travel priorities are different than hers. As much as I love her travel style, my goals are a little different. No two families are the same. No two travelers are the same (heck, in my three-person family, we are totally different — and I have to plan a trip that makes all three of us happy!). And, perhaps more importantly, I love the joy of planning a trip almost as much as the trip itself!

As much as I hope that my posts will provide folks some information as they build their own trips, I can’t imagine that any of my trips will be a perfect match for what anyone else is looking for. So, for anyone who wants a primer on the joy of planning a trip, the meticulous detail-oriented euphoria of how to build an amazing trip for your family, here it is.

Step 1: Where are you going and why are you going there?

Don’t forget this crucial step. Why did you choose your travel destination? If you are traveling to spend time with family, you have to prioritize that, or no one will be happy. My question would be: can you make that time even more special by enjoying your new environs in a way that brings everyone closer together (and appreciates what everyone else in the group will enjoy?).

Sometimes the point isn’t the sight seeing

The entire goal of my Park City Trip was to celebrate my oldest friend’s 50th birthday. That was the point. All of her friends were coming out and we were going to celebrate her. Of course I researched all the places I could go and see near Park City. Top of my list was Antelope Island, and island in the Great Salt Lake which is supposed to be gorgeous and teeming with wildlife (Buffalo! Antelope!). But, how to not build an amazing trip? Have lots of expectations when you don’t have control over achieving those goals.

I wasn’t sure what kinds of people my friend’s friends would be. Would they be into Antelope Island? I read that lots of nasty biting bugs inhabit Antelope Island in June, so I bought six face nets — one for everyone in case we made the trip

But we didn’t. It just was not that kind of crew. They were not driving to Salt Lake and they certainly were not venturing out somewhere where face nets would be useful. I figured that out on day one and I felt fine about it. I had planned a National Park Speed Run for my way home and told myself I would roll with whatever my friend and her friends wanted to do in Park City. By rolling with whatever came up, we all had a fabulous time (and on the last day several of us did rally to get to Olympic Park, which was amazing!).

Although, I did sneak out early one morning for a Park City hike.

Sometimes you have a very specific goal

The trip to Japan I’m planning right now got off the ground because my 13-year-old has been watching a lot of You Tube Shorts on food and Osaka is the place to be. So Japan it is and a huge portion of my trip planning has included searches like “foods not to miss in Hiroshima” (okonomiyaki) and “famous foods in Beppu” (jigokumushi cooking) and “best sushi in Osaka” (near the Municipal Fish Market, probably Endo Sushi, but maybe one of the less famous places near it).

Sometimes you’re starting from scratch

We traveled to Mauritius in 2021 because I was so tired and an advertisement (because of a hotel we stayed at in Bangkok) for Mauritius came up in my inbox. I forwarded it to my husband, mostly in jest, “Let’s go here.” He emailed me back with dates. It was one of the few places that had reopened after COVID and knowing nothing except that it was gorgeous, we set a trip. That was an adventure.

My kid and I have spent vacations in Belgrade and Bucharest, locations I adore, but would never have conjured up as vacation spots, because my husband was working there. In cases like these, you start with no preconceived priorities, you just research, take notes, and see what strikes your fancy. In this cases, you build an amazing trip just by being open to new experiences and having a sense of wonder about everything.

Learning Everything about a Place: the Real Joy of Planning a Trip

Let the googling begin. Let’s been honest, this is so much of how I build an amazing trip. Even if I know precisely why I’m going somewhere (and that that might limit me), I usually start out with the general “Things to do in Osaka” or “Best places to visit in Japan” types of searches, just to get the lay of the land. My kid wants to eat in Japan, but I’m not going to a prefecture that has the best bowl of ramen in the world if it’s not near anything else of interest. We’ll have to settle for the second best bowl of ramen near a cool temple or a castle or boat ride or something!

At this point I’m mostly reading. But it’s a bummer to lose stuff the pages that references things that you find especially interesting (trust me!), so you have two options here.

Option 1: Open a new tab every time find something interesting

My kid, my husband, everyone, thinks this is absolutely the wrong way to go. I currently have 194 tabs open in my iPhone browser. My iPhone hates me. But… it’s a simple way not to lose things, especially if you are doing research while lying in bed at night and want to keep in casual.

This is the learning phase. Close out the tabs that just have general info, but leave open the ones you might want to get back to. One of the secrets to building an amazing trip is knowing that you’ll have to loop through your vacation possibilities multiple times. It’s annoying to have to find everything again.

Option 2: Open a Google Doc or a Goodnotes or Evernote notebook and paste in the links that you like with a quick note of what’s in it

You should do this anyway, even if you are ok with keeping lots of tabs open. Tabs close on you sometimes, and it’s always the one with that very specific information, that you clicked 6 other links to get to, and you can’t find again. So, I keep a messy doc or notebook that I can open on multiple platforms (I really like Goodnotes, because I can open it on my iPad and on my phone when I’m actually traveling, and I care write with my finger which is sometimes just easier than typing).

But Google docs is clean, simple, free, and will open anywhere. Honestly, I have a doc and a Goodnotes notebook going right now. This doesn’t need to be neat. This is just to hold onto those links that you really like and think you might lose.

How to build an Amazing Trip: Figuring Out the Big Picture

If you’re just going to visit one city or small region, then this part is easy. You know where you’re going and where you’re staying So, you can sort of skip ahead to figure out what you want to do, which will help you figure out where you want to stay. But if you’re going to move around, you need to figure out your bases of operation.

There are several factors to consider here: how long are you staying? What transportation options do you have? How disruptive will it be for you/your group to pack up and resettle in a new place?

Figure out how often you want to change your home base

If you’re traveling nimbly, you can keep moving and stay in lots of places. But, you want to keep your experience:travel time ratio relatively high. Even on a road trip, you don’t want to spend more time driving than doing fun things. Although I do love looking out the window — of a car or train — as I move, building an amazing trip has to maximize experience over movement.

However, no one wants to choose their vacation spots based on travel distances. So, I bear these considerations in mind, remember not get wedded to anything in particular until I look at the logistics, and do a lot of research. What are my dream spots? My working list will always include spots that get eliminated due to logistics. But if I cut out something cool, I know that the spots I keep are even cooler.

Start by shooting the moon: there’s a lot of joy in planning a dream vacation, even if you have to save some pieces for another trip

For any part of a trip, you want to start with question 1: why are we going there? Especially with specific destinations, this should help guide your hand.

Personalize the trip

Remember, some of your stops may be highly personal. You can make a special trip to a tea shop to buy a particular blend for your grandma and that could end up being a highlight or a lowlight, but it’s fine to build in that kind of stop (in fact, sometimes those stops are the best — clear destination but so much possibility on the way!). The trick of how to build an amazing trip is making a trip that is amazing for you.

See if you can expand your hobbies

For instance, my 13-year-old plays tenor saxophone and really wants to exchange the rental instrument for one of his own. In Los Angeles, where we live, we have a Guitar Center up the street, but cannot find a store with non-Rock Band instruments to browse, hold, try. Everything seems to be sold online. The little store we rent the sax from is a great music store, but they have 3 tenors and all are rented out.

Turns out, Japan has LOTS of music stores. A Reddit thread of saxophone stores in Tokyo turned up half a dozen in one neighborhood (and folks, Reddit is your friend with researching the idiosyncratic travel stops!). One can see, hold, try new, used, vintage instruments. Very, very cool. So, we will spend part of our day in Tokyo going saxophone shopping. This would not be on everyone’s list but shopping for a saxophone (and find a stop that fit our kid’s obsession) was key to building our amazing family trip.

Seek out real life places or activities you’ve only read about, seen in movies, or viewed on TikTok

Even when you don’t have a very specific thing you want to do, we mostly choose vacation spots where we have a notion of things we’d like to do. So, start with those.

When we planned our trip to London, I had several things in London I wanted to do (mudlarking! oh my gosh, I wanted to go mudlarking!). I also had things that I wanted to show my kid and husband who had not been to London as tourists (my kid had only passed through Heathrow and my husband had been working there in the months prior but barely had time to do more than go to Nando’s for supper). My kid had been studying world history and wanted to see the Rosetta Stone, so we knew that we’d hit the National Gallery. But the rest was pretty loose.

So, what about day trips? I have a dear friend in Bristol whose family I had never met. I wanted to go out and see them.

My kid and I had been reading Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books and I desperately wanted to go to Oxford, walk the tow-path and see the Pitt Rivers Museum.

Think about those Bucket List items

How do you build an amazing trip? Make sure you hit your main attractions. A bucket list item is almost always a must-do. I wanted to see Stonehenge. I’ve always wanted to see Stonehenge. And it’s near Bath. As a Jane Austen fan, I’d love to see Bath.

And what about Scotland? How long would a train to Edinburgh take?

Oh, and I can’t forget The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. We have heard only rave reviews (one can have mixed feelings about JK Rowling, but Harry Potter was a huge part of my kids’ childhood so we try to live in the fantasy and enjoy the story for what it is).

So, there was my dream list. I was ready to start researching those specific spots. Do they really warrant a visit? Are they even possible? What do the friendly people on the Internet have to say? For me, so much of building an amazing trip is figuring out how to allocate precious time.

Figure out the specifics: Are those places worth going to? Is it possible to get there? Are there restrictions (closures, etc.) that you have to plan around?

To continue with the London trip (we went for a week during Thanksgiving Break, so needed to be efficient). We had a list of important experiences that I had to figure out:

National Gallery

The National Gallery turned out to be easy. It was open everyday, but not open either late or early, so we’d have to plan around that (turned out to be the perfect stop when it started to pour down rain!).

Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Harry Potter tickets had to be purchased in advance, so we needed to nail down that day, but we chose an afternoon trip out so that we’d have the morning in London for some other sights. (Note: Harry Potter tickets always seem to be sold out because the tour operators buy them. Because you’ll probably needed transportation anyway, just go with a tour. They just drive you out and back and provide the tickets.)

Mudlarking

Mudlarking seemed to be a bust. I had thought we would plan the trip around that, but the government had cracked down, and you couldn’t get a permit anymore. You had to go through a group. The groups operate only on certain days and at certain sizes and everything was totally booked. No mudlarking for me (or was there?).

Bristol

Bristiol was easy. We found a day that my friend could meet us. We took the train out. I found a cool little water taxi we could take to the city center. He showed us around town. We saw some Banksy murals. That was all about seeing Jon and his family: mission accomplished with a little sightseeing thrown in. That was a day trip.

Stonehenge

For a moment I thought we could see Stonehenge on the way to Bristol. It is literally on the way. Someone driving to Bristol from London could definitely hit Stonehenge, but the train goes to Bath. From Bath you need a tour bus to Stonehenge and that takes a while. I read and read and looped and looped, trying to find a solution. I even thought for a moment about having my friend drive us from Bristol to Stonehenge. But the truth is, you can’t walk among the stones anymore, you can just stand behind a fence. As my kid said, why don’t I just look at a picture of it? The kid had a point. So, reluctantly, I let Stonehenge go (for this trip).

Oxford

You can’t research Oxford without hitting the question: do we go to Oxford or Cambridge? People have very strong opinions about this! We ended up going to Oxford because it had specific sites that I wanted (that’s why you set out your priorities first!), but I felt sorely tempted by Cambridge!

It turns out, you can actually walk the tow bridge to the Trout Inn which inspired the Trout Inn in Pullman’s books. I could live the books. But I knew that a day trip would not give us enough time. I held on to a bit of a fantasy but figured we would see the colleges, go to high tea (I wanted high tea in Britain and Oxford seemed more affordable and less complicated than London!) and go to the Pitt-Rivers. Perfect day trip. For me, adding a personal connection, even if its a fictional one, is a great way to build an amazing trip.

Edinburgh

This one stumped us. But I felt motivated to try to make it happen: I’d been to London but not to Scotland. I wanted to add something new for me to this trip! Edinburgh is little more than a 4 hour train ride from London. Is that a day trip? I did research. Was it an overnight trip? Overnight would be tricky on this trip: do we leave the London hotel, schlep everything up to Edinburgh for the night and then come back. Or, do we eat the London hotel fee for the night?

Overall, my research suggested that we could hit the highlights of Edinburgh in a day trip if we set out really early and came home late. It would be a superficial visit but it would give us a taste. And honestly, it felt like, you either wanted to spend a week traveling around Scotland and really “getting it” or you want a day trip to a great city like Edinburgh. (By the way, the train through Northern England and Southern Scotland is gorgeous — a highlight of that trip!)

For that trip Edinburgh seemed to work logically and seemed worth it: none of us had been, all of us felt curious. There were plenty of sights. We had just watched Braveheart and the kid had a tiny crush on Robert the Bruce. We wanted to try haggis and deep fried candy bars and it just felt a like a cool way to spend the day.

How to Build an Amazing Trip: Prioritize (and be realistic)

Sometimes, like this trip I’m planning to Japan right now, a key location has been cut. And sometimes the key to building an amazing trip is letting something go. I really wanted to go to Takechiho Gorge. Everything I read made it sound so gorgeous and iconic. And ever since I missed them on our last trip to Japan, I’ve wanted to try those noodles that come down a slide. Turned out, those noodles are a specialty of the shops by Takechiho Gorge! Perfect! And I thought a good angle for my foodie teen.

But, it’s hard to get to Takechiho. We’d need to rent a car, which my husband didn’t want to do (driving on the left side makes us Americans nervous). I couldn’t find a good organized day trip from Beppu. The child thought the noodles looked bland and unsanitary. And then a few people on Internet forums suggested that the gorge might be more of a Instagram phenomenon than a “must see” location. I let it go. (Although I hold out hope to get to southern Kyushu on a future trip.)

That meant also letting go of Monkey Beach, where the monkeys dig sweet potatoes right out of the ground. I could not find much info on the Internet about Monkey Beach. But, I was hoping to just add it as a side trip in our rental car. I crossed that off the list too. I had also had Nagasaki on an early wish list. But it’s really out of the way and I felt like it duplicated Hiroshima too much in terms of type of experience (although the capybara park there really nearly swayed me to kill Beppu and go to Nagasaki instead). Travel is all about choices.

Divvy up your time

For London, we had 7 full days (not counting a late arrive on one day, but counting a late departure day). We decided to spend all of our nights in London, but day trips to Bristol, Edinburgh, and Oxford and a half day trip to Harry Potter, which left us with 3.5 days in London.

We’ll be in Japan 8 full days and two partial days. But we know we want to head south from Tokyo this time (last time we spent most of our time in Tokyo with a day trip to Hakone and an overnight to Kyoto). So, I need to figure out the details to see exactly how many stops we can fit into the trip and how to allocate the days. And, because we started planning late and I am seeing hotel rooms get scarce, I need to speed up my planning.

How to Build an Amazing Trip: Figuring out the Details

This is the moment when you sometimes have to book hotels. Depending on how far out you plan (we never plan very far out!), you may be planning details until the last minute. Sometimes, small details will change where or how long you stop in a city, so if you can figure out details before booking hotels, so much the better. But if you’re running low on time, once you have your locations mapped out, you can start booking hotels.

Keep a map handy so you can travel efficiently

Do map things out and figure out the correct order! In the Japan trip we’re currently planning, I narrowed my list to Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima, and Beppu. I planned Tokyo to Osaka, to Hiroshima to Beppu and then a long train ride back to Tokyo. My husband helpfully pointed out that Tokyo to Hiroshima to Beppu, to Osaka then back to Tokyo broke things up in a much more doable fashion. And if we travelled at night would not eat up a full day of our trip. Note: good to have multiple heads working on these trips!

The Real, Real Joy of Planning a Trip

I love this part the most: the nitty gritty details of what to do on a trip. This is when you need the google doc or the Goodnotes notebook. This is where you need to write things down. Because every link you read is going to lead to several others. Sometimes you go down a whole rabbit hole before you realize you forgot the instructions for how to find the secret entrance to a cave or temple or alley. So, when you find something you like, grab the link. Don’t worry about putting things in order, just gather all the info you can. And, if you paste a link, you don’t have to worry about getting off track. Getting off track is half the fun here!

Many of my very favorite stops on trips have been things I have stumbled upon while diving down a rabbit hole.

Start with the famous stuff: what should everyone see and do?

I’ll use a the trip I’m currently planning as an example. I went through my usual process with my Osaka planning. First I try “must do in Osaka” and “things to do in Osaka.” Then I get more specific: “Things to do in Osaka in July” and “things to do in Osaka with a teen.”

Those types of searches will provide you with lists. The top ranked lists tend to be by Get Your Guide or Trip Advisor. I tend to skip these on my first pass. They tend to be heavily weighted with tours and day trips and can give you the impression that every experience requires a guided tour. I sometimes go back to these listings: what do those guided tours stop at? Should I hit those same spots? But for my first few passes, I look for blogs, people who have been there before, and local tourist agencies. A smart city puts their best foot forward and tells you what to do in its area.

At this point, I read and jot. My online note books contains handwritten notes and pasted links that I can get back to. Sometimes I go off in a tangent.

Follow trails to interesting information

For instance, there are several temples and shrines in Osaka that deserve a visit. Everyone mentions Hozenji Temple (which has a jizo statue that survived the atomic bomb and is now covered in moss because people give him tributes of water instead of coins). This is right near Dotonburi — the famous food street — so I list it near that site because it will be easy to visit before, after, or in between food stops.

There is also Shitennoji which is the oldest (ones of the oldest? — accounts vary) Buddhist Temples in Japan. There you can climb the five story pagoda (mentioned in very few postings about this place) and there’s a flea market every 21st and 22nd of the month (also not always mentioned, but definitely interesting to me!). We will arrive too late on the 21st but could definitely go by on the 22nd). Link saved. With a star.

Then there is Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine. This sounds lovely but maybe a secondary shrine. Maybe one that I will visit by myself when I get up before my family. But then I read something about its cat shrine. Cat shrine? And something about clay figurines of cats that you can purchase and exchange for different cats on subsequent visits. As I read more, I learn that there are power stones that one can pick up for good luck. Then I read that there is a spiritual procession called the Hattatsu Mairi. Then I find a map of the shrine grounds. It’s huge and packed full of unique auxiliary shrines. The more I learn, the more this looks like a must-see for me (though I may leave the fam abed).

That trail may lead to more than a sight-seeing stop. It may lead to history or cultural exploration. Embrace it.

I need to learn more. It’s lovely to visit a shrine. They are peaceful and beautiful. But it’s easy to just walk through them, like a museum exhibit, and forget that the shrine is an active place of spirituality. To really understand the shrine is to participate (as much as you can do so respectfully). The shrines and temples are open to the public and there is no ban (or even notion of disrespect) on participating in the rituals, as long as you are decent (shoulders covered, nothing obscene) and respectful (don’t talk loudly, don’t disrupt other people’s worship or contemplation). So it’s worth learning the ritual of cleaning your hands before entering, when to bow and to clap, how to get a fortune and what kinds of charms you can purchase.

On our first visit to Japan, both times we went to a major shrine, we did so with Japanese friends. They showed us (and more importantly, their kids showed our kid) how to behave: how to wash hands, how to perform whatever ceremony is performed in that location. For this trip I had to learn more. But the more I read, the more I felt like I knew what I was going to see which meant I would enjoy and value the experience even more. And, that’s the point!

Just keep gathering info. Eventually, you’ll have a list of what you want to do.

Bottom line: click those links (I always open in a new tab because I often veer off one site while I check out something else!). Paste the links in a doc so that you can get back to them. As you paste the links, add notes (cat shrine) so that you can find what you’re looking for when you go back (trust me — you’ll have a lot of links).

For me, this process takes several weeks. I do a little every night before I go to sleep, just learning the lay of the land and collecting info and creating a list of the things that I’d like to see and do in each of my stops.

Looking for Specifics

Once you have a sense of what the main highlights are for the general traveler, you may want to look for things that are specifically interfering to you. I always search for animals: “Osaka experiences with animals” or “things with animals in Osaka.” Especially when my kid was little, my saving grace was finding an animal experience almost every day.

Sometimes I lucked out and stumbled upon them (almost every market we hit in Thailand — night markets, floating markets — had some kind of petting zoo situation. The one that had petting ponds full of koi we could feed was our favorite). We also visited a monkey park in Kyoto where the humans were in a cage to feed the monkeys who roamed freely outside. Most places have cool animal experiences if you look hard enough.

You can search for sports events or movie related events or events related to collectibles you are interested. Look for arcades in Osaka or music shops in Tokyo. Or, as I did for this trip, google endlessly about “where to eat in Osaka” and “what are the signature foods of Beppu” and “What should I be sure to eat in Hiroshima.” Although Google search has improved dramatically since the old days when you had to find just the right search, I find that, especially when it comes to pulling up Reddit threads, phrasing something just a little bit differently does sometimes yield different results.

How to Build an Amazing Trip: Getting to the Really Small Details

Once I have my basic list, I start to look for the small things that, to me, make lists really special.

Atlas Obscura

Atlas Obscura has a website and an app. It’s a collection of crowd-sourced (you can add things in!) strange things that people have found around the world. If you look up a city on Atlas Obscura, it will probably mention some items already on your list. Then it will have some random things: a statue that everyone ties a ribbon on, a viewpoint from a certain building that allows you to see the entire city, an abandoned building that it’s illegal to go into is super fascinating if you go in anyway.

From Atlas Obscura I learned that there’s a Zara (clothing store) in Athens, with ruins underneath it that you can view for free. This went on my list. We never ended up on that street, but if we did, I was definitely stopping in that Zara!

Most of the items on Atlas Obscura are “quick stops” — things you should make sure to turn the corner and check out in you are in the neighborhood. They enrich the trip.

Food (and places for food)

I always want to know what to eat and, if possible, the best places to eat it in a city. I will rarely go across town to eat a dish from a particular place, but if our path will take us past a renounced gyro stand, we should stop!

Souvenirs

I love souvenirs that are truly unique to a location. So, I like to google “what should I buy in Miyajima” or “authentic souvenirs to bring back from Istanbul.” Turns out, for instance, that Miyajima is famous for the rice paddle. They have a giant rice paddle on display in their main shopping arcade and sell a variety of them. As someone who adores her rice paddle, this is something I will check out.

I also like to know if there’s a place to get handmade or artisanal items in a city. Or, I like to buy items that are iconic to a place. When we were in Turkey, I felt dead set on getting Turkish Towels. I had wanted them for a few years because my towels just wouldn’t dry. Rather then buying them on Amazon, I wanted to get them from the source!

When we were traveling in Arizona, I definitely wanted to buy handmade Navajo goods in places where my purchases would support Navajo people. The print I purchased at the Hubbell Trading Post was made by the partner of the young woman who checked me out. It was great to be able to send my compliments almost directly to the artist.

Early morning or late night locations

Another secret to building an amazing trip is taking advantage of all pockets of time. I do specific searches for things to do early and late in a city. (You can also try searching for sunrise/sunset locations which can be very specific in certain places. Just remember while sunrise locations often give you a good notion of where to go if you’re up early, sunset locations are sometimes places to avoid as they can be places that are not typically crowded but are definitely crowded at sunset!).

I like to get up early and see everything. My family tends to like to sleep in. So I look for things I can do early in the morning (that they don’t mind missing) while they sleep. In Belgrade, I “jogged” every morning, trying to take a different route to and through the fortress, and then stopped in a different pastry shop to bring home breakfast every morning. In London, I knew we wouldn’t have time to walk the canals. I did it at sunrise, which was peaceful, quiet and beautiful. And, looking for something to do early in the morning? Google: places to see the sunrise [insert city name]. It will send you somewhere.

Mapping Things Out

And, once I have a general idea of what I want to do, I can look at a map and see which places are near to each other and should be grouped together. From there see if “quick stop” items are near my proposed path.

I don’t try to plan out every single day, but I group places and activities together so that we don’t criss-cross town unnecessarily. Part of the joy of planning is figuring out how to explore efficiently!

My final list is usually a bullet list for each location, with items grouped generally by location. I make special marks for sites that are just for me (on my early morning walks).

You can also mark the sites you are interested in on a Google or Apple Map. That really helps you see when you are really close to something you wanted to see. There are definitely moments when you sit down to eat lunch or have a coffee when you realize, wow, we are just a block from that store/ shrine/ museum/ monument I wanted to check out. Opportunity grabbed!

Trading the Joy of Planning for the Joy of Traveling

Bullet points in hand, we set out. I like using an app that shares between my phone and my iPad and computer, so if I need my notes while I’m traveling (usually in transit or if something disrupts our plans and I need to recalibrate), I can easily figure out what I want to do. And, I do cross things off as we do them, but mostly for planning purposes. Some trips get more highlighter than others.

Let the lists help, but don’t let them dominate

I almost never add the cool things that replace the items on the list when we decide to change course. For all the planning that goes into the trip (and all the times I do reference the list at night when I’m trying to figure out the logistics for the next day), it’s not a working document once we set out. The list is just a guide in case we find ourselves at a loss of what to do.

But what sticks with me, what I love the most about planning, are the stories I learn. Because I read so much, I know to touch the jizo in Hiroshima. I know to feel the smooth part that was sheltered from the A-Bomb and his head where his finish was burned off. Because I dug deep on the Internet, I knew that stray cats there are basically communal property in Istanbul— that everyone looks out for them and we didn’t have to worry about them being hungry (though we did help move some kittens out of a busy pathway). Having read so much, I could really appreciate that climb up to the Acropolis. When I looked down, I knew that, that thousands of years ago, folks got those pillars — each piece customized for its precise location — up that hill by hand.

These stories are what drive me to plan these amazing trips. And, when they are in a good mood, my family members even let me share those stories with them, which is even better.