Although many people would love to take months off from work, this may not be a feasible option for everyone at the moment. But with only one or two weeks of vacation time, you can still have an amazing travel experience! We know it’s January and I’m sure some people didn’t get a break during the busiest time of the year – December. So if you are planning a break now, here is how to plan a short vacation.
For a short vacation (or any vacation really), make sure that you are doing what you want to do. Just because a sight is famous doesn’t mean that you have to see it. And just because someone says that a place is not worth visiting doesn’t mean that you have to skip out on it.
Plan your time according to what you want to do. If you don’t want to listen to any of this advice, don’t!
FOR ONE WEEK
Generally when traveling, my rule is the less amount of time you have, the more you have to research in advance. If you only have one week, I would suggest that you have a pretty strong itinerary that lists what you’ll be doing each day.
However, I like to keep the first day pretty flexible. This is a good time to get a feel for the place and see if there’s anything that you missed putting on your itinerary. Usually I like to spend this day just walking around, biking around, or taking a morning tour while leaving the afternoon free. Many big cities have companies that offer free walking tours. But if you’re planning on hitting up more than one main location in a week, it might be smart to forgo this flexible day.
Travel is your time and you should make it worth your while
FOR TWO WEEKS
If you’re staying somewhere for two weeks, you have a little more flexibility. Do some research, but you don’t have a set schedule. Leaving this a little bit more open will allow you to explore more and see things that you didn’t know were there.
This plan will also allow you to have more time to relax. Of course you want to see as much as you possibly can during your trip, but there’s no point in going to a famous place if you’re too tired to enjoy it. After all, with this plan you may not know exactly what you’ll be doing. For instance, if you end up going out one night and want to sleep in the next morning, you can. And then for that day go see something that’s open in the afternoon.
If you’re planning on going to more than one location though, make sure to do a lot of research on how long it takes to get from place to place. This can change your plans a lot, depending on the travel time. You might even want to change your mindset and treat it as two separate trips, making an itinerary for each place.
Written by Connie Lee
