Holiday Planning

Some people book holidays well over a year in advance, and have every little detail of the holiday and every minute of their itinerary accounted for long before they set off. Those guys are no fun. Here's how I do it:

1. Find a destination
Contrary to what bad American movies tell you, turning up to an airport and trying to board the next available flight is not a good idea. Quite apart from the cost and the fact that most of the flights going anywhere nice are full, there's the sheer danger of turning up at an airport full of edgy, armed police with no plausible explanation as to what you're doing.

My particular preference at this point is to find a hotel/hostel/b&b booking site - I like Lateroom - and abuse its search engine. Lateroom, for example, insists you search for a destination, but happily throws back nearly all of its database if you plug 'hotel' into its search engine. Other sites even allow wildcards, so a simple search for '*' gets the lot.

From here, set a comfort/adventure threshold. I find randomly taking 10 places, and forcing myself to pick the best of these 10 and go there, works best for me. You may wish for the thrill of taking whatever's at the top of page 6 regardless, or the cowardly safety of giving yourself an entire three pages to pick from. One important rule here, no more than a few minutes' research on any given place is allowed.

2. Buy a phrasebook. Study it.
You'll thank me for this as we progress down the list..

3. Turn up and make friends
Seriously, you may be tempted to get guidebooks, or to search around the Internet trying to find out where the biggest museums and most tourist-friendly sights are before you leave. This is boring. If you want to know what's exciting in a new place, go and find some local people and ask them. If they don't speak English, good, you can try out your new vocab. If they do speak English, try their language first anyway; if they start responding in English then speak Welsh at them until they believe you don't know any English.

4. Explore
Walk down alleyways. Stop and see what's happening whenever large groups of people are heading in one direction; or standing around waiting; or gathered around some attraction. When on public transport, don't be afraid to get off before your stop, or continue past it, if things look like being interesting. When driving, allow yourself to get lost and see what happens.

5. Act blindly
In a restaurant? Pick something you can't pronounce or translate. See a door with no sign on it? Go through it and find out what's on the other side. A lack of understanding regarding the local culture or language is something to be treasured, there are so many things this will allow you to do that you might otherwise have avoided or been too scared to try.

Enjoy. Let me know about your adventures.
Xx