On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 01:18:03 +0000, VainGlorious wrote
(in article ):
> On Wed, 12 Mar 2008 19:48:28 GMT, Mike Lane wrote:
>
>
>> Firstly we have to drive into the town, find a place to park, and find the
>> Tourist Office. This can take an hour at least. Then by the time we get to
...
[snip, snip, snip]
>
> In all candor, this is why I book in advance.
>
> Since you admit you can foresee where you'll be on any particular day
> within 20-30 miles,
No that's not actually what I said. What I did say was:
"What we like to be able to do on our travels is at around 3 pm wherever we
find ourselves, to be able to look up 2 or 3 hotels within 20 or 30 miles
that we can try."
> why not just research online and "book yer own
> life"?
>
[snip]
>
> Try it! Book yer own life!
>
I can understand this way and the peace of mind it gives, but it just
wouldn't suit our normal type of trip. We do in fact do some booking in
advance particularly for the first day or two. We know the date we are
leaving and roughly what we'll do on the first day, so we have in fact booked
the first night at a place in eastern France.
Thereafter though, things get progressively less certain. Our final
destination is an area of Greece we haven't been to before - the
north-eastern corner including the islands of Samothraki and Thassos. This is
a complete unknown to us; we have no idea what we will find when (if) we get
there. If it isn't as good as we hope, we might want to return earlier and
spend more time in places on the way back. If it is idyllic we might extend
our stay for a day or two. The trip will involve several ferry journeys which
we have experienced enough to know can be unpredictable.
The upshot is that on our return particularly we have no idea which country
we will be in on a particular day, let alone where we'll be at 3 o'clock.
Experiencing the unexpected and coping with any problems that arise is all
part of the enjoyment; it's like mountaineering or any other mildly
adventurous activity where overcoming some difficulty makes the whole
experience more fun.
If everything always goes according to some plan then it all becomes quite
bland and boring like one of those package tours:
Day 1 Belgium
Day 2 France
Day 3 Sight- seeing
etc. etc.
The idea of having a rigid schedule like this that one must stick to whatever
happens, simply appals me. In fact if we tried it I can say with certainty
that things would start to unravel before many days and we would find
ourselves with a string of bookings that we couldn't keep. To me the
advantages of not planning far outweigh the occasional problems.
Much as we enjoy the uncertainty of our normal trips, up to now I have always
been a little disappointed by our experiences in Italy compared to other
countries and I feel we could arrange this better. Perhaps we need a separate
trip there by train and bus which we could organize more thoroughly. For the
moment though Italy is a country we need to drive across. We'll manage this
as we always do. That part could be better, that's all.
--
Mike Lane (UK North Yorkshire)
To contact me replace invalid with mike underscore lane
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