This sort of essay used to be published on the back page of the Sunday Times. As with Seth Kugel's musings, readers would agree or diasagree, praise or reject, but the essays were interesting, personal--often intimate, funny, touching, irritating, but reflections on travel from the perspective of travelers of every ilk. I loved reading this piece. I miss the backpagers that made the Sunday Travel section one-of-a-kind. Please resurrect the connection readers enjoyed with fellow travelers. Travel isn't just about the 10 most likely or unlikely spots one might visit.
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Trigger warning: I'm a dinosaur. (Just bought my very first non-landline phone, an iPhone X. Absolutely do not know how to use it. Comes with a little fold-out booklet that, while it is a marvel of intuitive design and communication, is fairly useless to a person such as myself. And yes, as you may have guessed, I'm a Boomer, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to all of you non-Boomers out there for having totally screwed you all over collectively.)
My observation is this: Take TripAdvisor with a grain of salt. It is a mighty tool, one might say powerful, one might also say almost omniscient. But, as they first started saying a millennium or two ago, "caveat emptor." Which means, in colloquial English, "don't take any wooden nickels." Which should be interpreted for this comment as "use more than one source of information, even if said source is aggregated from several other sources." For who will guard the aggregator?
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In my opinion, the popular comments say *much* more about the personalities of the writers than anything about the thesis, right or wrong, of the author.
I happen to be on the opposite end of the scale from these commentators. The first time I went to Europe (I stayed for 11 weeks) I had two things on my must-see list: the cathedral at Chartres and Giotto's frescoes in Padua. I ended up seeing neither of them and, really, who cares?
By the way, a long time ago there was a movie called "if it's Tuesday then this must be Belgium." A few of the comments remind me of that attitude; IE, that some people would choose that checklist style of travel. ;)
2
Planning is critical for visas, access hours or days, and big ticket transit. Plan B Plan be is when no planning or Plan A fails. Trip Adviser and the like are very useful for Plan B and snafus. My best luck has been reserving local guides in advance: birding outside Athens, a day hike on Mt Olympus (surprisingly rugged and cold with late snow). What birds show up is like fishing, serendipity.
2
some good advice there.
you can find interesting things in the most unexpected ways.
often in museums or art galleries that might be famous, if you have the time to meander on your own.
going down streets you stumble upon, talking to locals, going in the off season--but not TOO off so the weather's against you.....and more.
I've travelled fairly extensively and lived in japan for a number of years.
I had the most romantic interlude of my life in 1981 during my first trip to Europe went to London and paris with a woman I didn't know existed when I woke up that morning.
I was standing in line at Versailles and made a comment to a couple of American women (i'm one of those national security risks from north of the american border).
cathy from the main line in philly, I hope you remember paris that evening and night as well as I do.
37 years later, not a day goes by that I don't remember every second of the next 24 hours and two days after.
it was the sort of thing you dream about during a trip to paris--especially the first one.
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There are numerous people for whom it is impractical or undesirable to "escape the narrow sliver of the planet" they inhabit. The reasons may be economic, family responsibilities, ecological concerns, or even the hellish experience air travel has now become extinguishing interest in travel to distant places. For them, the "staycation" is the only viable travel option.
Satisfying exploration of one's narrow sliver demands extensive planning. Preparation and information fosters the receptivity necessary to experience the sliver in fresh exciting ways, and to discover the hidden pleasures in what is otherwise mundane. Planning a series of local day trips as if it were a foreign journey also provides the extended joys of anticipating a vacation.
Devising a detailed itinerary is also essential to overcome the temptation of waking up and deciding to spend the day surfing the Web or watching television. That's a perfectly fine way to spend a vacation day if that's what you intended, but it invites disappointment if it's not. That temptation is much stronger if you live in a place where any trip beyond an errand involves a lengthy frustrating creep in clotted traffic. In that case, choosing podcasts and audio books, or making perfect playlists, is a crucial part of planning!
The sort of travel featured in the New York Times is a privilege inaccessible to many. And if Republican donors continue to plunder the middle class, it will become a rare privilege indeed.
5
Another lifetime ago I was a backpacker through Asia and among the many lessons I learned was this important one: Go to the place not mentioned or disparaged in the Lonely Planet Guide. It was in these places that one met local people eager to meet you, rather than yet another Swede, Dane or German happy to share with you that they had amazingly 12 week’s vacation and free health insurance and college.
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My friend and I went to France and Spain last fall. We knew what places we wanted to go and scoped out a timeline. That was it. We booked all our hotels same day using Hotels Tonight or other apps and most of them were wonderful, especially the ones in Bordeaux and San Sebastian. In Bordeaux we asked the hotel at 9pm for a guide of the wine country the next morning. Our guide was amazing and led us on a fantastic private tour to St Emilion. We booked tickets for the Lascaux caves the day before and discovered the market in Sarlat the next day. We did follow Rick Steves' suggestion to have lunch in St Jean de Luz and spent an amazing sunny Sunday morning having brunch in the square listening to the town band. Sadly we had to rush home early because of the fires in my city, but we had a wonderful time!
2
I don't know what TripAdvisor is, but I will say that as a wilderness traveler, for me not planning is a good way to die. Not having fire-starting material due to poor planning can really ruin a trip to the mountains.
Not having a canteen in the desert, well, we've all read the stories.
Good preparation it what makes it possible to safely enjoy interesting and unexpected moments. Even our primitive ancestors knew this.
There's more room for error in cityland I guess.
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TripAdvisor has taken a beating in my estimation after rejecting the first negative review I posted in months. Oh well, it's time to find another review site (until they reject my review).
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I'm writing this comment from Croatia, on a small boat with 26 other passengers from several European countries, all of us having a delightful time together, with lots of room for laughter and more serious conversations spanning a wide variety of subjects from the personal to the political. I planned the excursion, having read reviews of this small boat company online, but I couldn't have planned for a more fun group of travelers to share it with. There's nothing wrong with reading what other travelers have to say before embarking on an overseas journey; to the contrary, it provides a frame to the experience. For me, an adventurous senior, the best part is always the people I meet along the way. These are the stories that endure, and these are the experiences that can never be planned.
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Trip Advisor and others are good tools if you also plan to ask a local for an opinion and avoid chain hotels and restaurants.
Why travel to a new place if you’re just replicating your hometown or someone else’s experience?
The best experiences come when we push the envelope a bit
1
Tripadvisor's suggestions for best restaurants are a total joke - just check your own town.
It's a good idea to book hotels and trains, and know as much as you can about the place you're visiting. For meals, just follow your nose. It knows better than random strangers on tripadvisor.
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My first night in Heidelberg, I woke up late. I wandered down a small street and into a bar Der Roten Ochesen( The red ox- I speak some German). I wound up at a table with German faternity brothers- all freshman, who were required to sing beer songs every Monday night until closing. I don't remember the meal , the beer was cold and the company delightful. It turned out that the Red Oxen bar was in existence when "The Student Prince " was penned. All by wonderful accident.
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Some seriously uptight people commenting here.
I agree with the author of the article. Generally speaking, I go to somewhere I think will be interesting and then I just explore. This doesn't mean I do no planning - it would be odd to go to Florence and not go to the Duomo or the Uffizi or the Accademia - but it does mean leaving time to roam around, poke one's nose into places one just happened to walk past, not be afraid to get a bit lost and see what comes.
Some of my best trips have been bicycle tours. I have a rough idea of where I'm going, and I'll have a few "must sees" en route, but mostly I improvise and I'm frequently uncertain when I set out in the morning where I'll stop for the night. And this sort of mild experimentation isn't just for the young - I'm in my 60s.
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AAA and better yet, Michelin guides, with maps, hotel and restaurant reviews have been around for decades.
Although slower and perhaps less accessible due to cost than the current TripAdvisor/Yelp/Google/etc. landscape, travelers still could plan in great details their trips, particularly in N. America and Europe.
It comes down to a choice: each traveler should find the balance between planning and spontaneity that feels comfortable.
Planning a trip is a big part of the fun. But I just see it as a framework and leave room for last second discoveries.
It's always up to you what you make with all these recommendations.
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I love a plush bed, firm pillows, and an upscale hotel. Although there //are// plenty of boutique hotels, this is part of my travels where I plan.
Where I don’t plan — my day/to-day activities. My favorite thing is to visit a city and ride a local bus to the end of its route … generally this concerns the driver as the Bus Barn won’t be a place to get back ON a bus! This way, I see the life of a city. I see real people, doing their own daily tasks.
In a 3 day visit, I may spend 10 hours on buses, 2 or three walking aimlessly, and 12 hours sleeping late (on top of 24 hours of regular sleep in 3 days). It’s my VACATION.
Finally — TripAdvisor is rubbish. In many Asian countries, the most recent reviews will be 3-6 years old. In restaurant terms, that’s like dog years; 21-42 years out of date.
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There can be so many reasons that people like to plan (and, as has been pointed out, planning can be part of the fun). If you are traveling with children, getting lost or delayed can make a trip miserable. If you are the kind of person who cannot go without a rest room for too long (pretty common among older travelers), you need to know where you are going and can’t end up lost out in the wilds. There can be medical limitations, there can be food limitations (some people can’t eat whaateer is available just because some people in the world eat it). For some people, staying in a nice place is part of the relaxation, and you don’t want to be stuck without decent accommodations within your budged. Planning doesn’t mean not being flexible. It means being prepared. I’m not a Boy Scout, but it is good advice for some of us.
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Thanks for this take on TA! I find any online search for something travel related is swamped by responses from TA. I am a frugal traveler also and some of my best finds are serendipitous too. TA is for nice/mainstream “best 10 places to” lists - best places to try lobster, watch a ball game etc - but rarely goes off towards the lesser known, more adventurous...good for under the Tuscan sun tourists, largely..,
Great article! Travel is about being part of where you are not a list to complete or a schedule to keep. Americans love fast food because its predictable not because it tastes good. The same goes for Americans traveling in the US or in another country. I pity those who climb aboard the tour bus for a quick look at the sites and off to the company gift store. Yes, its safe but you are never are a traveler but just a passenger.
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There are many different reasons to travel and ways to travel.
For many, travel is anxiety inducing--after all, it is about getting quite literally out of one's comfort zone. There really is no one 'right' way to travel. And when so-called experts posit that there is, that only discourages those who are teetering on the edge of broadening their horizons.
As for me, I don't normally engage in group tours, but I don't begrudge those who prefer them. And I will forever be grateful to the expert on TripAdvisor who gave advice on booking train travel from Vienna to Bratislava (it was a bit more complicated than I had expected). I don't think my trip would've been as successful without her guidance.
Travel and vacation are a luxury for so many. 64% of Americans don't have passports. Plus, not everyone has the same appetite for risk and adventure. I don't think more condescending "you're doing it wrong" articles encourages anyone to get out there and learn about other people, places, and themselves.
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I loved this article. As a life-long rough traveller I learned a long time ago that the best source of travel information is 'word of mouth' in the places you are visiting. I like Lonely Planet and its cousins, but the places they recommend are always over-crowded and the same is true of Trip Advisor. It is good to know a lot about a place before you visit and have some ideas about what you plan to do, but it is best to be open to spontaneous opportunity. I loved the reference to Bobo Dioualasso because I ended up there back in 1972 while hitchhiking across west Africa and found a record store I convinced to play the Beatles White Album to give me a taste of home. Even if things go wrong, remember that the worst experiences make the best stories.
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I have traveled both ways, tours and spontaneously. Each has its pluses and minuses. On tours you are stuck to the point that you never want to see another church or museum. Driving yourself means white knuckles a few times. Taking trains by yourself can be a little frustrating. A lot of how you feel is whether you are traveling alone or with someone you have to watch out for besides yourself. And, for me, avoiding crowds is the pinnacle of pleasure.
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I remember searching for an eyeglass screw in Oaxaca. It got me out of my comfort zone, but I enjoyed the challenge. Recently, I stumbled across a tiny restaurant that served an incredible mushroom soup after I got lost in Chiang Mai's walled inner city. I do a lot of planning but I welcome serendipity as well.
1
With all due respect to the young Mr. Kugel, there are several places where us older more finicky travelers would prefer to avoid "adventure." These include medium-priced boutique hotel bathrooms and bedding, airline pricing, seating, meals and dependability, neighborhood safety, available senior discounts and mass transit details. And we also like maps! Bravo TripAdvisor. An available excess of knowledge is not often a bad thing. And I can skip the boiled peanuts and alligator trapping tips.
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Sometimes when things don't as planned it turns out horrible and with negative consequences. The trite ballyhoo about not planning is naive to say the least. TripAdvisor (and the like) is a fantastic resource but its up to the user to realize that they don't know who posted what so take the reviews a general overview.
I'd bet the Mr. Kugel uses a phone daily and doesn't just traipse around seeing where it takes him...
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I ate the best roast pork I ever tasted by chance in a local place while driving from Mexico City to Oaxaca where the wall behind the stove was black with grease, while an old dog slumbered in the sun and a grizzled old man sat nearby. The setting was right out of a old Western, except it was real.The cook and waitress were delightful and puzzled as to what brought these gringos to their establishment. Our visit brought them and us happiness. The smiles and joy in the meal were genuine. This occurred while getting lost trying to find the place recommended on Tripadvisor. Good to mix planning and spontaneity while travelling.
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Before going rogue on vacation, try small steps closer to home: eat a new restaurant without reading the reviews.
If you live in a small town and don't have many options, pop into a place the next time you're in a larger city just because it appeals to you. I can certainly see what the author was trying to do but most of what was said triggered a reaction in me long before hearing the gist of his point - which is a noble one. An overly planned trip doesn't offer room for adventure or exploring and for most crowded tourist sites are simply checklist items. At the same time vacations and travel are relatively stressful for the majority of people so throwing caution to the wind seems worse than illogical, it's downright panic inducing.
More than 10 years ago I visited San Francisco, CA, and without Yelp or local guides to help out I had a decidedly "meh" experience. My travel companion and I read newspaper articles for winery suggestions and had some decent food. Since that trip I've been back several times and finding good food and new wineries has made each of those trips seemingly more special. If anything, the point (of the article) seems to me to be find a balance between planning and exploring. Many of us do get lost in the reviews for tooth brushes online, how much more so are we willing to agonize over a few precious vacation days? I say split the difference and do what makes you happy.
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Good article to remember to keep an open mind - with anything in life. When I travel abroad I usually book the first night hotel only. It’s a bit fun to walk the local neighborhoods and look for restaurants and accommodations. I have found wonderful hotels just walking around and speaking to locals and not spending hours (and hours) on a computer (indoors!) trying to find the best “deal”. It’s a bit of work but it’s more fun. I actually ask the front desk if I can see the rooms and they are always accommodating. Walk off the well worn trails to add some fun and spontaneity to your travels.
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In 1978 I spent 4 weeks in Great Britain and Western Europe with two female friends. The ladies had done some planning but I had done none. I was using a book called “Europe on Ten Dollars a Day.” We bought wine, crusty bread and cheese. It was very very inexpensive and far more delicious than what I was used to.
I brought $1200 with me. We traveled on a Eurail Pass. We stayed in pensions (inexpensive but clean and homey accommodations). A married couple in Ireland vacated their own bedroom, at around 10 p.m., to accommodate us one night. (It was the day before Derby Day in England, which was like the Super Bowl to many of the folks in Ireland.)
I met a man in Denmark who ran a pension who told us he had betrayed his Jewish neighbors to the Nazis during WWII and, as an act of penance, he felt compelled to tell everyone he met what he had done. It was the strangest thing. He most definitely was ashamed of what he had done, and this was how he punished himself for the rest of his life.
While taking the ferry across the English Channel, I met an English millionaire industrialist who was living in Germany, who was traveling with his wife and daughter to their beautiful estate with Thoroughbred horses in Ireland. (He took us there for lunch.)
It was all unplanned. I was only 22. And with my girlfriend and her friend. It was an amazing journey.
But I’ve very much enjoyed our well planned vacations these past 15 years or so. The planning and anticipation are half the fun.
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I think the author really is unaware of the variegated ways people travel. I am very fond of the point of travel: arriving there. The task of getting there is pretty darn awful these days. I started traveling as a baby with my mum back to the uk. As a child I loved ocean crossings and long airplane trips. It is so different now. The actual task of moving me and my spouse to my vacation is the issue. Thus, the planning and the attempt to avoid problems. Once there, anything is possible. But one needs to have the plan in place to allow the unexpected to occur. TA, Yelp, etc are so useful. They help set the parameters of a great vacation. The author seems far too judgmental and seems to have a superior attitude. But I think, he just is unaware of how the vast majority of travelers think and experience.
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Thanks Seth. One of my fondest memoies is from an unplanned trip to Vienna with my wife. We stayed in a small hotel just outside the Inner Ring. We wandered out the first night for a bite to eat and found a small Italien restaurant. Everything was delicious. And it was not on Tripadvisor at all. It is a fond memory to be in Vienna , eating Italien food, prepared by a Persian family. It doesn’t get better than that.
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Methinks there is a bit of jealousy emanating from the professional travel writer. Long live the "voluntariat"!
Several years ago we traveled to France to taken in several stages of the Tour de France as part of an extended vacation. We planned carefully our 3 stops: a start in the small town of Castres, watching the ascent on Mt. Ventoux and the finale in Paris and weren't disappointed. We got some fun photos of the silent, pensive riders before the start in Castres but immediately put down our cameras on Mt. Ventoux in order to see and hear the riders swooshing and clicking by with their entourage. We did not plan for the night after Mt. Ventoux's climb as we were not sure where exactly we would be going after that. A "mistake" in that all hotels in the area seemed to be reserved because of the Tour and it being Bastille Day. We finally found a hotel/restaurant in the countryside with a last minute cancellation and serendipitously enjoyed a wonderful meal, with the hotel chef joining us at one point to make sure we felt welcomed. A singer performed Edith Piaf songs while the hotel owner accompanied on the piano. We laughed at the slightly inebriated karaoke singers later in the evening and have often said this was one of the best unplanned evenings we've had!
Since then we have never been afraid to have unplanned time or to take a road that looked interesting. The key is not to over plan in my opinion.
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This is an interesting article to read. It shows how planning your adventure or vacation might ruin it completely. I do not agree with that statement completely, but it is a fair argument. Planning a trip does not ruin the experience but if you follow the plan to the bone it could be a little boring. Branching off from your plan is also fun and adds more experience to your adventure. This article is important because it shows a different opinion that not many people have. However, it is okay to have a different opinion.
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I travel a lot around Europe and I never use trip advisor because it‘s just too subjective and too full of wanna-be tourist guides, aka tourists who think they need to post something funny/intellectual/interesting.
I simply wonder around. I look at places. I look at the food people have on their plates. I look at the waiters and the menus. I can see what is a good restaurant off the beaten track. The waiter and I look at each other. We understand each other. I eat great food.
Like we used to do in the old days. Beyore smartphones. Before tripadvisor.
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I love to travel. I love adventure. Why do I plan? Because I'm a woman and the world is a different place for us. Mr. Kugel devotes a line to this, but the reality is any of the spontaneous solo adventures he lists (which sound great) could have turned out very different and not nearly as great for a female traveler.
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And yet there are multitudes of solo women traveling the world, planning and not planning as the moment requires.
Sounds more like a personal preference to me.
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Seth, while your story about the unplanned visit to the old plantation was inspiring, it sort of sounded like the set-up to a B-rated horror movie (young couple, promised tour with friendly local who turns out to be a homicidal maniac, and you've got the storyboards for "Plantation of Peril."). While I agree with your premise that unplanned stops and spontaneous side street sojourns can offer the most delightful surprises and adventures of a trip, I for one am happier to travel with my well-researched, file-toting husband, and seek out at least one review before I wander into the great unknown. Maybe I am too repressed or old to be so unprepared, or maybe, as a 5-foot tall, 100-pound woman, it just makes me feel safer.
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A few years back I was in Brussels with no plan, other than I had to be back at the hotel by 5 PM. With only a rudimentary map,I started wandering towards what looked like an interesting building. Turns out it was the Ministry of Justice (I think). As I continued along a plaza with a wonderful view of the city, I found a group of teenagers crowded around a stand, only to discover the wonders of a true "Belgian Waffle". A few blocks later I came across a wonderful Gothic church (cathedral sized) and the grounds of the Royal Palace. In a couple short hours I got a quick view of a part of the city that I had no idea existed. With no destination, I just wandered and experienced.
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So many comments seem to miss the point of this article. The author does not tell us to avoid planning, instead he says that you should have a plan, but be willing to diverge from it when good opportunities arise.
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@JJ
I disagree. The author is quite clear about his distain for planning and those that do. Especially in the final few paragraphs. He thinks the planners are missing so much - why bother. I find it odd that this is how he approaches what could have been a piece on the various ways travelers judge a successful trip. He missed an opportunity, IMHO.
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When I plan a trip, I've learned that there should be a good mix of planning and serendipity. Certain things must be planned out in advance. If one were to visit NYC with the idea of seeing "Hamilton", one would be advised to plan ahead for getting tickets, rather than just showing up at the box office the day of, and hoping to get a pair. And there are trade offs to be made when you take the "path less traveled". You usually have limited time, so the detour really means that you won't get to see something else you 'd planned to see.
But, I've tried the "let's just get in the car and see where it takes us" approach. Usually, we arrive somewhere the day AFTER the huge, special, once in a lifetime festival we would have loved to see. Or, we eat in some cruddy restaurant with warmed over food, when only around the corner was a fantastic place with home cooked meals. So yeah, planning is a good thing, sorry, but it really is.
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you’re fanciful notion of travel reeks of non sequitur and broken logic. I hardly know where to begin other than to say that the plural of anecdote is not fact, and serendipity and caprice are fodder for poor axioms and black pearls. I may not have traveled quite as much as Seth, but as one extremely far removed from novice travel (including through the unchartered and unbeaten paths of the world), I would caution readers to steer clear of his fairytale. There is something far worse than a mediocre meal at stake when you travel like a rookie, Seth.
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And then again some people should just stay home, SD.
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Yea lets not plan when you travel to Europe in August. Great idea. You will not have anyplace to stay, no advanced tickets to some of the great places in the world and you will end up staying in a box down by the river. Have you actually been to Europe Seth.
Do you actually have kids Seth? You have to have a place to stay. In advance. We have always had a place to stay. And the last time were in Prague 2 years ago (after having advanced reservations at the Intercontinental) we walked into the old new synagogue (yea that is the name Seth, have you been there?) and heard the noon prayers by some orthodox Jews from Manchester. In all our trips, the most moving thing we have ever heard or seen.
1
Just yesterday, my wife wanted to visit Ohio's Amish country. Fine with me, but I didn't want to go our usual way. I slapdashed together a route on Cleveland's "Emerald Necklace" parkway followed by Ohio route 94. We saw a sign and went off-route to visit a Monastery of the Byzantine Nuns of St. Clair. The Monastery was unimpressive, but the road was steep and exciting. Route 94 was full of harmonious pastoral scenery, including one place where you drive over a rise and the world seems to open up in front of you.
All this unmentioned on TripAdvisor.
4
I appreciate the gist of Seth's point, and it well taken. But for me, half the fun of travel is planning the trip, doing the research, reading the reviews and making choices about the key elements. Sure, I appreciate the "in the moment" experiences, and those are what make a trip. But I also hate wandering around wasting time trying to navigate my way around in an unfamiliar place or being in a terrible hotel, or being taken by someone. TripAdvisor and other sites help you plan your valuable time and money in a good way, just as guidebooks did in the past. Have a plan, but allow the "in the moment" to happen.
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This "checklist travel" compulsion seems to be the modern descendant of the formerly unique American "Oh, it's Tuesday so this must be Belgium" approach of years gone bye. Both were and are ripe for some biting satire, being hyper-organized, military-like campaigns to cram in as much foreign "culture" as possible in the least amount of time. To each, his or her own, of course. The experiential delights that unexpectedly befall travelers wandering about with a much less organized itinerary however, are the true joys of traveling in the first place. Try it. You might like it!
2
Traveling with access to GPS maps and Google searches can enable you to be *more* spontaneous, not less. It's the safety net that lets you take more chances: you can head down that unmarked dirt road without worrying you'll get lost and miss the one bus back at the end of the day. Or if you do miss that one bus, it lets you quickly find a hotel online so you can keep exploring instead of frantically racing around town looking for lodging.
And that's not even getting into how Couchsurfing and AirBnB let people travel more like a local and meet new, interesting people. Just yesterday, a neighbor told me how he bonded with a Couchsurfung host over their shared love of motorcycles, which led to a side trip riding around the island of Santorini with newfound friends.
All this new technology is a tool, and people can use it as a crutch to be boring or as a power-up to have even more travel adventures.
4
The author obviously can afford to take vacations without planning. Not me. I don't need to repeat the mistakes of others or blindly hope i make good choices. It is simply ignorant to ignore the experience of others.
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« Changes in travel plans are dancing lessons from God »
-Kurt Vonnegut
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My trips are well-planned because my husband and I love the planning process. But the best plans can have hiccups which result in the type of serendipity Mr. Kugel exhorts us to value.
I--and my family--will long remember our trip to South Africa. We flew into Johannesburg where a driver was to meet us for a transfer to Sun City. At the exit from Customs we looked for the sign with our names, found one and went with the driver who was less formal with less adequate transportation than we expected. Our journey was more adventuresome than planned, but I will never forget the miles of rough roads with small fires (Our driver said "cooking fires") in a sky full of stars because there were no other lights as far as we could see. It was quite an introduction to South Africa.
We arrived at Sun City exhausted by our flight and drive and went immediately to sleep with a "Do Not Disturb" notice. Unknown to us, our driver was unauthorized and our travel agent was frantically trying to reach us at the behest of the authorized driver. Our breakfast was an occasion with many telephone calls to reassure our travel agent and our families.
At the time we visited, Sun City was an interesting destination where the open air balconies were patrolled by armed guards. The Balloon Trip was a highlight we shared with a crew from a local brewery who had won the trip. We shared the balloon, but were not allowed to eat with them. Capetown was quite a contrast.
For many years I was a serendipitous traveller. I'd go anywhere cold, and let the chips fall where they may. I've had many wonderful vacations and one of a kind experiences. I've also had my share of duds. Back in 2001, I had visited London many times before, and never had a nice hotel room. Then one day, I was on the internet, earlier in my trip, and I came across a hotel reservation web site. So many hotels, with locations, ratings and prices! I quickly found a nice hotel in a nice area for less than I had ever paid in 20 years of travel to London. I stayed there, and have been hooked on travel web sites ever since. I've had experiences both in Europe and the US where I'd go into a hotel without a reservation, but with an idea of how much the room should cost, only to have the desk clerk tell me "we can't match that price, you have to reserve it online. Use our courtesy computer here in the lobby" and then honor the reservation 30 seconds later. I've stayed at amazing places that I could never have found or afforded without internet web sites. Now, even If I travel way off the beaten track, it's comforting to know that I'll have a nice place to stay, at a reasonable price, even at the cost of some serendipity.
1
When you meet someone-- local or who has traveled in the area longer than you --once you've determined that they open minded, intelligent and adventuresome; ask them what they recommend. Then go there. Always. If like Connemara it just seemed like wind and rain and a tiny national park; you missed something and someday you'll just have to go back. Guide books can be shallow. Getting lost is usually wonderful, as is using a compass to figure your way around live volcanos and bears. I rent cars now... but on foot, trains and local buses are less efficient, but you always meet many more people. History books are usually the better guidebooks.
Learn how to sleep anywhere and then practice it. Wild camp. You don't need to eat three meals a day. Don't bother with dinner if you've had lunch. If there isn't a really good reason to go out at night, then don't; getting up at 4 am and heading out is better than any bar. Traveling alone usually results in 3x or 10x the experience. (Let the hardest member of your group lead. If she says, we're sleeping in the park tonight. Stop whining and do it.) Whatever makes you anxious, that isn't clearly dangerous, do that immediately. If you only have a week; sleep outside-- why spend what little time you have walking in and out of a hotel and waiting for an elevator? The toughest things I've been through I won't hesitate to go back and do more. Don't ride mopeds after dark, or at all. The most dangerous part of any journey will be a minibus.
1
My advice: hit the crucial spots, but take the road less travelled to get there. Small towns without major tourist attractions are one of the great joys in life. So lovely to meet locals who are happy and interested to see you, and inquisitive as to why:how you chose their nabe to visit.
3
I completely agree with the premise of the article and enjoyed the provocative tone. While guides and sites such as Trip Advisor can be helpful, taking adventure, risk and the inevitable epic fail out of travelling is a pretty sad trend. Reminds me of the phone camera craze in which people are now more focused in taking pictures at art museums or scenic drives instead of enjoying it thoroughly and creating lasting memories. That all being said, using "Oaxaca" and "overhyped" in the same sentence takes quite a bit of nerve.. Maybe South Beach, or Ibiza or even Vancouver, but Oaxaca?
2
I plan pretty extensively, but have been lucky to be diverted off my self-beaten path by chance discoveries. I was watching Portuguese TV in a Cape Verde hotel room a few years ago and it alerted me to the museum in Caramulo, Portugal. When I got back to Portugal I went there. It was memorable. (Don't everyone start going there, please!) Just last month I was finding the mountain biking in northeast Washington state unenjoyable, when another mountain biker urged me to divert to Rossland, B.C., which he described as the mountain biking capital of Canada. I went and sure enough, it was fantastic. (Don't everyone start going there, please!) I hadn't heard of it until I reached Republic, Wash.
I think Seth's larger point is that travel shouldn't be a commodity (cruise ships, Costco packages to Bora Bora, and the like). Seth, however, may not be encumbered by a full-time job, three kids (one with special needs, let's hypothesize), and aging in-laws. People who plan extensively and undertake standardized travel may have good reasons for doing so, even if the result wouldn't be Seth's cup of tea, or theirs either.
1
"Don’t Let TripAdvisor Kill Adventure"
This week in the Times, this article caught my attention because whenever my family goes on vacation, we turn to TripAdvisor to assist us and plan everything out. TripAdvisor lets us find a hotel that meets our requirements rather than taking a chance at a random one. TripAdvisor's review section lets us know what we will be experiencing (whether it be a good or a bad experience) before we actually go. The website makes life easier since my family and I could simply choose any location around the world and instantly find somewhere to stay with reviews from people who have been there themselves. Unplanned trips are often hectic and do not result in a good experience and could cost a lot of money. Overall TripAdvisor offers an organized trip that meets my requirements
5
One of my best vacations was 10 days in Scotland with two friends. We rented a care and had a vague route planned out - beyond that, we would look in our B&B book about 2 in the afternoon and start calling for a place where we could end up. We took back roads, and found places not on any tourist list. Yes, we stopped t some that were, but the back roads were the best. I don't we ate at anyplace listed in Trip Advisor-well, I don't know that it existed at the time. It appears that all the social medial and on-line info is causing many areas to be over run with tourists to the extent the real essence of these places has been lost. I would think actually asking the locals where they like to go is better than relying on Trip Advisor - besides, who is to say if these reviews are authentic? I sincerely doubt we would have found the charming B&B in Calendar (where I got stuck in my room briefly because the door handle wouldn't work), right off the square where they youth pipers were practicing.
Ironically. I’m reading this travel essay on my smartphone. Was that wrong?
2
Seth Kugel is right & ....unfair ! Delightful Surprises are at the heart of every exciting holiday ! And Nasty Surprises are the bane of every miserable forgettable holiday. TripAdvisor provides the vital promise of all carefree logistics. This carefree holiday mindset leaves tons of time to explore surprises galore with no fear of downsides !
5
must be the 'if it's tuesday this must be belguim' syndrome: people have so little time that they rely solely on review and other people's opinions. they don't think to look right or left, and only see what they are told.
many times there's nothing better than taking a wrong turn or speaking to a stranger about what's most interesting. !!!
"I’m a white man with a lot less to fear."
Enough said.
4
@K Barrett - spot on. The NY Times travel section is so infuriating about the percentage of its content geared to the ultraprivileged.
@K Barrett
My guess is that Mr. Kugel wrote this with the near certainty that if he didn't, someone would take him to task for not mentioning it.
But even having done so...
1
The trouble with reviews is that they aren't random samples. Most people don't review. So who does? A particular type of person who likes giving their opinion for whatever reason. Some love sharing, some are just cranks. Best advice I ever had: when looking for a restaurant follow your nose. If it smells good, go in dummy!
4
As the comments show, there are those who plan everything, to avoid big problems, and those who plan very little. I think the golden mean is the best -- use guides to plan the big picture, as in where to go and where to stay, but let a little serendipity creep in as the day goes by. Try walking down that random street where there don't seem to be tourists, or stopping into that little bistro that you came across. And don't fall into the museum/cathedral trap too much; unless it's a da Vinci you probably won't remember that Madonna painting or the depiction of Hell anyway (they all look the same after a while and your head just spins). Go outside and look around at how the locals live. Much better.
3
The real loss isn't just the spontaneity and adventure, but the human connection. When I backpacked around the world in the pre-iPhone, pre-TripAdvisor era, you found out about the hidden treasures by talking to locals and other travelers at the bus stops, on the beaches, at the bars, etc., and not only would people tell you where to go, they would go with you. These interactions were the greatest social experiences of my life. I now live as an expat in a country with a fair amount of tourists. Whenever I venture out to the tourist track (which I rarely do anymore), I see nothing but travelers glued to their phones, not daring to strike up conversations with strangers and putting off any strangers who might want to talk to them. Recently I was walking down a tourist beach by myself with time on my hands and I wanted to do what I used to do: sit down with random travelers and talk about their travelling experience. Everywhere I looked, however, people were buried in their phones and would react with alarm when I approached. The mindless march of civilization has destroyed the authenticity, adventure, and social rewards of international travel, reducing it to a series of carefully manicured, off-the-shelf, experiences. Mark Twain said it best: "Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities." TripAdvisor and smartphones are not only unnecessary when it comes to international travel, but they have irreparably harmed the whole experience.
7
@Dave
"Everywhere I looked, however, people were buried in their phones and would react with alarm when I approached."
Same occurs on subway and train platforms and bus stations wherever - abroad or at home - cell phones are abundant.
These days, if you wish to start a conversation with someone, your first hurdle is the computer in her/his hand, connecting them to a faraway two dimensional land and alienating them from the three dimensional one standing right beside her/him.
2
The best trip I ever took was 90 days in Mexico in 1978. I drove my little Honda from Portland Oregon down the coast, crossed the border in San Diego, on down to Cabo which was then one cliff hotel and a fishing trailer camp with a open air Tiki Bar. Then took the ferry over to mainland Mexico and on down through small cities to the southern border and then back up the east side meandering all the way. Not a single tour guide book or Trip Advisor consultation. Just a couple of maps.
You cannot do that now, double or triple the population, quadruple the tourists, quadruple the violence. The author is correct that serendipity is a wonderful way to travel, but the world is very complicated today and a little bit of planning ahead is a great reducer of stress. Especially when you are 72 and not 28.
7
Haven’t read all comments and maybe somebody else has already noted how Walker Percy explores some of this in his wonderful essay “The Loss of the Creature.”
http://boblyman.net/engwr302/handouts/Loss%20of%20the%20Creature.pdf
3
I miss the TripAdvisor of old, where you could go to “Things to Do” and get a list of suggestion rated by other people on possible things to see. Many of which were interesting and free. Now “Things to do” is full of tour packages which TripAdvisor presumably makes commissions on when you book.
Planning trips the old way, I’d have an intelligent itinerary with a few key things precooked (hotel, preordered Duo pass to skip the Versailles lines, etc) and then a list of suggestion which I could do if time permitted, or skip if something more interesting came up or we just wanted to slow down and explore longer or relax. That’s impossible with the new prebook everything and show up on time tour plan.
Guess I’m going to have to buy travel guides instead.
1
"... if the best travel experiences happen when things don’t go according to plan, why do we plan so much?"
Because that's a fallacy and then you back it up with anecdotal evidence in your story.
4
Americans are such neurotics, always at war with themselves over whether they could have done things differently or better, or whether technology is the end of fun as we know it.
It isn't Trip Advisor that takes the fun out of vacations, it's the users who feel compelled to plan the spontaneity out of life.
While social media's predatory conduct that monetizes users in exchange for "free" services is the worst thing about the consumer's Web in 2018, the plague of advisors is not far behind on my list of Internet horribles.
I have had enough of helpful people who use the Web as a platform from which to scold us or, worse yet, tell us what to do on the basis of abstracts from articles in specialist publications without being able to tell the difference between correlation and causation.
What's next? An essay on the spontaneous fun of getting lost in a strange city using a paper map out of a misguided desire to eschew Google's comprehensive electronic guidance system?
1
In 2016, we spent 6+ months circling the USA with our RV trailer. Without a doubt, the most memorable experiences were in places where we just ended up and had no expectations.
4
Tech can be used for adventure. Like using Google Maps to take backroads from Barolo to Sestri Levante in Italy and ending up on roads that could barely accommodate a donkey cart and having a car coming the other way while wedged between a rock face on one side and a sheer drop down the hill on the other. You just don’t get that kind of adventure on the autostrada!
4
Oh let me count the ways why this article is wrong, wrong, wrong about how best to travel.
1. Traveling can be dangerous. Usually you are more in danger of losing your hard earned cash then your life, but I need not remind people that the world, including our beloved hometown of NYC, is littered with tourist traps - this includes overpriced horrible restaurants, bad hotels, etc. Simply, walking around Manhattan or any place in the world and slipping into places with no research is a bad idea. A combination of research resources such as NYTimes, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and yes, even Michelin, can be very helpful. Whatever happened to Zagats by the way.
2. People travel for different reasons:Pilgrimages/Religious Reasons;Food Travel;Sex Travel;Beach/Relaxation Travel;Adventure;Discovery and Exploration;Self-Discovery;Bucket List; Cultural Exchange; To Reconnect with Old Friends; Educational Reasons, etc. People can, of course, combine these items as they see fit.
Here, the author assumes everyone travels for the same reasons he does.
3. Most Americans know very little about geography. How are they to know not to travel to Mumbai, India from July - Oct, which is their monsoon season, or Rome in July,when the temperature regularly hits 100 degrees F.
I could go on and on, but this article is not well thought out. The best travelers prepare and plan well and then if opportunity arises, after careful consideration, they deviate from their plans. That is the best advice.
6
On an upcoming "Dream" trip to Europe (Rome, Avignon, Munich) we intend to combine the wander-around and planned-out concepts. Both have their good points.
In the past, we've found TripAdvisor to be a valuable planning resource, especially for guiding us to wonderful restaurants. All too often, when we've stumbled on some unheralded eatery it's been an eating disaster. And the reviewers at TripAdvisor do cover offbeat little mom-and-pop cafes as well as the big touristy restaurants.
Yes, if you have the time to wander, you can find hidden gems. I agree, but I'd also like to be assured of some great meals and sights during the short three or four days at each of our destinations. We'll try some of each tactic.
Your headline does not address the issue of crowd sourced information.
There is something insidious abot the information on the Internet. Be it Google Searches, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Facebook e.t.c. The dispensing of information is designed to promote what everybody else likes. By en large this works - with unfortunately a lot of fraudulent posting and purchased "Likes".
Setting this issue aside you are well advised to use the crowd sourced information if you want to experience what most other people "Like". If on the other side you have different aspirations you best ignore the "Likes".
Either way is fine - one just has to understand one's primary motivation.
2
I can relate to the author’s point, I try to make a skeletal plan but not find out too much information about where we’re going. I like not knowing too much about where we’re going on a trip because oftentimes the unplanned for things are the best.
I think there are people who like to have everything planned out and known and don’t like surprises. Other people like myself don’t want to know too much or too planned out to allow for the unexpected which can be good or bad. It really boils down to individual preference.
Planning a trip is part of the fun of travel. Planning it down to the very last detail is a sure route to some disappointment.
Knowing in advance that the museum you really wanted to visit is closed for several days during your stay is good planning, just as suddenly happening upon one you never heard of before.
I've always planned my own trips but recently went on my first educational group tour. It was fabulous - saw interesting things I never would have chosen myself, was spared the time-killers of figuring out every logistical and meal detail, and got the "lay of the land" for future visits on my own.
3
@Deb - I had one day in Beijing in April. Researched and learned the Forbidden City is closed on Mondays, the day of my visit. Planning helped make a great day and the Temple of Heaven is a must, btw...
Spot on article and spot on replies: Unfortunately, many people are forced nose into guidebooks because they spend too much time - in many cases, not of their choosing - nose to the workplace grindstone.
Still, we might find common ground in the belief that ’Top Ten’ and ‘Award-Winning’ (soon there will be Award-Winning winners of Award-Giving) lists/descriptions invite visitation by hordes, whether or not any given individual in those hordes is trying to earn points or impress friends at home.
As a lover of travel, I can say that one of its most delightful (of many) rewards is the rare collision with a local for a second or third time. And one of the most depressing (probably the most depressing) is the same with another tourist.
Travel to France and not visit the Louvre? Travel to India and not see the Taj Mahal?
Sometimes, being there and not having done that is the way to go. Sometimes in travel, less is more. Rather, less requires more....Time.
1
As an inveterate traveler, or at least one with limited amounts of time and money to expend, I've found TripAdvisor to be a godsend in terms of avoiding hotels that look great on paper (or onscreen) but turn out to be nightmares in reality -- and that's about it. Everything else on it is essentially the same material you would've seen 20+ years ago in a Lonely Planet or Fodor's (print) travel guide.
As an alternative, I'd suggest the following ways of going off the beaten path:
1. Look for restaurants crowded with locals, not tourists. You'll rarely have a bad meal as a result. (Also, these days you can use translation apps on your mobile phone - ones that don't require data connections - for menu-deciphering purposes.)
2. Seek advice on places to visit from locals, too, even if the local in question is your hotel's front-desk clerk. While they might try to direct you to the standard tourist fare, explain that you'd like to experience the area as they would.
3. Plan on traveling by air, if possible. Most parts of the world now have discount regional airlines: they're a considerable plus if you're short on time and/or money. Research your flight options well before your trip and plan accordingly. (Google Flights is usually the best means of finding them, FYI.)
4. For history-rich locations, try to find small-group tour guides. They're generally inexpensive and, unlike large-group guides, can usually field detailed questions. Viator is a great phone app for this purpose.
2
@Jeff
"Plan on traveling by air, if possible. Most parts of the world now have discount regional airlines: they're a considerable plus if you're short on time and/or money."
They are a considerable plus in those circumstances. In other circumstances, take buses, trains and share-taxis (which go by different names in different countries) and apply the spirit of your Points 1 and 2.
Being an octogenarian and an inveterate Trip Advisor scribe, I agree with much of Mr Kugel's suggestions.
The best memories are almost all of the totally unexpected places and things found by chance - the restaurant at the bottom of the hill from the house we were renting in Umbra which took us in like old friends, the scary nighttime canoe trip to see the nocturnal creatures on the Amazon, the dinner, stopping at a different food stand for each course in Singapore and the local end of season wine festival in Chagny, France.
The trouble is that the more people who 'discover' these treasures, the less the thrill of discovering them yourself.
Fear seems to keep most tourists from straying off the beaten path and lack of language from asking a local where he or she would eat.
'Wasted' time soaking up the atmosphere, the look, the feel and the smell of a place is anything but 'wasted'.
2
My best recent travel memory was completely unplanned. My wife and I were in Dubrovnik doing the usual tourist stuff when a street “arranger” tried to sell us on a boat ride the next day to an island where we could drink. We said “no thanks” and walked on but he persisted by asking what we would like. My wife said we’d like to go on a sail does he know someone with a sailboat. He did. We then spent the next day sailing a manifestly unsound 22 foot boat with a wonderful elderly man who truth be told didn’t really know how to sail. When out of the harbor he asked what we wanted to do, so being a sailor I looked directly upwind and saw an island and said “Let’s go around that.” He said we’d never get there but we said no problem, could we sail his boat? He was thrilled to let us. We went out and around that island, which had some beautiful monastery on it, then he guided us to a cove on another island where we found a town with a pier and we hiked for a couple hours. The stories the man told about the war, and his joy of being out on the water getting sailing lessons from us we’ll never forget. Totally unplanned and totally the high point of the trip. Cost: 200 euros. When I think of Dubrovnik now I think of that man.
3
When you pick a random city for a week’s vacation as I did this summer, TripAdvisor and such are a great way to get a feel for the options, including recommended places to eat. After that, it’s up to the traveler to strike up conversations with locals to filter out what’s truly worth the time and money.
1
Why not have the best of both worlds? Do a lot of great planning, but be willing to diverge from the plan if presented with an unexpected treasure. However, I don't like dangerous surprises, so the unexpected treasures I partake of are usually pretty well vetted.
9
Meh. I am a trip planner. However, on a recent road trip across southern France, I agreed to accommodate my travel companions' desire to travel on the fly. The first night, we arrived in Pau after dark, to an urban outskirts of franchise restaurants. It was cold. We had to fumble with the phone to quickly find what hotels there might be. We got lost in the center of town. We bickered. We finally found a place, and got two overpriced shabby rooms. Never again will I travel without reservations!
3
It's a good idea to plan when traveling, just so you don't end up eating at the worst places in town. This summer I scoped out the best eating options near our destinations in London. As a result, we had great meals everywhere we went. I didn't do this for the Paris portion of our trip, since I assumed we could get fairly decent meals no matter where we were. This was a mistake. Few of our meals were memorable. Hard lesson learned.
3
Since I travel with my 77-year-old mother, I rely on TripAdvisor and travel blogs to gauge the difficulty and danger in visiting certain locales and doing various activities.
On a recent trip to Iceland, I was let down by my pre-trip research. We traveled to Seljalandsfoss, a beautiful waterfall that you can walk behind. The only potential danger I read about was slippery rocks. As you approach the waterfall, there are wooden steps, so it appears that these steps would lead to the dirt path level with the waterfall. Not so. Once the steps ended, you had to hike down a narrow, rocky and muddy dirt path to get behind the waterfall. Getting out proved to be a real challenge because my mother had difficulty finding the right place to step and essentially had to hug a big rock to get out. It was an amazing but potentially dangerous situation (one that is not readily apparent when standing at the base). It's good to know what you're getting into before potentially being stranded!
I logged into TripAdvisor once we got back and made sure to alert other potential visitors. Forewarned is forearmed.
The one part of TA i particularly like is the evaluation of Airlines. It's ALL there. This is one of the most important parts of your journey. Plan accordingly. And at all costs, avoid Azores (formally SATA) airlines.
2
There’s a big difference between smart planning and optimizing … but I’d let people use Trip Advisor all they want if they’d just put the phone (and its camera) away between points on their itinerary.
If you’re always taking photos or reading up on the next stop, you’re wasting your time and money. Sure, go to the Louvre and Deux Magots, but actually experience it. Be there in person.
If we had had our noses in our phones, we’d have missed meeting Jacques Chirac at a book signing. And let me tell you, speaking of travel stories, there’s nothing like meeting friends for dinner in Paris and saying, “Guess who we met today…”
1
Sorry Seth, but most of us aren't PAID to go out and find adventure. It's a romantic life to be a 'Frugal' travel writer and you have a great career, but don't rub it in our faces. Most of us have to pay our own way and having others who are willing to share their experience on TripAdvisor is very helpful in navigating foreign territory.
17
Thank you, Mr. Kugel, for reminding us that travel should include joy and spontaneity.
1
I take TripAdvisor reviews with a grain of salt. The reviewers often have exaggerated notions of their good taste and qualifications for criticism and reviews are often tinged with whiny entitlement.
Serendipity can be a good thing.
6
@Karen Agreed, and on the flip side, travelers who have what they feel is a bad experience at a given hotel or restaurant -- even if it's for unavoidable reasons -- are much more likely to post complaints about it versus folks who enjoy their stay. (This goes for Yelp as well.)
As a rule of thumb, I ignore "hit job" reviews: ones written by people who've written few, if any, other reviews for the site, and posted one solely for purposes of whinging.
1
Totally disagree. Like many other commenters here , I get very limited vacation time and I want every day to count. Trip Advisor helps me weed out the tourist trap destinations that may look good on the brochure but end up overpriced and underwhelming. In general most people are not too picky and post honest reviews. Why would you shun the advice of the greater community from their shared experiences! If you're the kind of person that would buy a car because you feel good about it and ignore the horrible reviews by rating agencies then by all means don't look at trip advisor. For the rest of us that have limited funds and time , we appreciate all the help we can get , to get the most out of our vacations.
10
@gradStudent The author didn't suggest ignoring TripAdvisor altogether. In fact, he explicitly said, "For most of us, at least some advance planning is a necessity," and that reasonably includes researching TripAdvisor for hotels and tourist traps. (Few rational people would advise ignoring an onslaught of negative TripAdvisor reviews for any given hotel or restaurant.)
Also like many other commenters here, you're missing what I think is the main point of the article: using TripAdvisor to dictate your *entire* trip leaves no room for the unexpected. And as people who've had the opportunity to travel an unusually large amount will invariably tell you, it's these unexpected joys that you'll remember decades from now, not spending all day rushing around the Louvre attempting to see all of its thousands of paintings in one fell swoop or visiting London and spending five minutes each at Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square just so you can "check them off your list."
Finally, I'll repeat a quote from the piece that you may have missed in your rush to complain about it: "I’m not suggesting you have to travel the way I do. Adventure is relative."
1
TripAdvisor assisted planning and spontaneity are not mutually exclusive! My wife and I just spent six days in Rome and we not only used TripAdvisor to find a fantastic hotel, but also used them to find the best tours for avoiding lines at popular attractions and for a chance to see Pope Francis from 5 feet away (which was never going to happen accidentally!)
However, that upfront planning didn't stop us from also exploring on own. After the morning tours we would walk for miles and miles, randomly wandering around streets and alleyways without a map, stopping at hole-in-the wall shops and off the beaten path bars and pizzerias. For dinners, instead of relying on reviews, we would slowly walk by outdoor cafes, eavesdropping on the diners, and stop at places where most people were speaking Italian, figuring the locals knew best where to eat.
One can be a lemming tourist following a flag in the morning and a more adventurous traveler at night. Not everything is black and white!
7
Americans as travelers are generally speaking a timid lot. Only about 30% have a passport, most of which get used to go cruising or go all-incusiving. I say, whatever gets them out of the country, great. Some of them will take your advice, finding that special place that will make a great story, but please don’t discourage getting out of the country. I am not the most adventurous guy but I do live about four months a year in the south of Spain. When people find out they first want to know what is wrong with Minnesota, then what’s wrong with the U. S., then they tell me all of their fears in form of questions. There is rarely a sparkle of excitement. Most Americans need both hands held and a push to try adventure.
7
Here is what the Internet has done to travel: it has made it so you must plan in advance. Want to camp in a National Park? Used to be you showed up. Now all but a handful of camping spots are booked months in advance online. Those no-reserve sites? Travelers line up for them hours in advance, often leaving "home" at 3 or 4 in the morning to cue up.
Sure, go off the beaten path in Europe! Meander. But if you want to try to book your rooms the evening you arrive in a new town, odds are you will be paying a king's ransom. It used to be one could tumble from the train (or airport) and find a cheap hotel with a room within a few blocks, often one suggested by Fodors or another guidebook since transatlantic booking was almost impossible.
When traveling with others, too often a lack of a plan leads to a hotel stupor where little exploring gets done. In major destinations with countless places to see, no plan can lead to no action.
But the main thing is to go out, get out, explore.
"It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive."
—Japanese Proverb quoted by Ian Fleming in You Only Live Twice
12
@JWC, There are a whole lot more people today here on planet then just even 20 years ago. More competition for everything, including hotel rooms and campsites. Where aren't things becoming more congested and crowded?
2
@jl There aren't *that* many more people! JWC is correct: while the web has made the world vastly more accessible in nearly every conceivable way, this accessibility in terms of travel has demonstrably affected *how* people travel -- sometimes in good ways, other times in not-so-good ways.
@JWC
Yes! It used to be you could buy tickets in advance. Now in many cases you absolutely have to and I don’t like that. I like to decide what to do each day based on the weather, my mood, what my travel partner is interested in, etc.
Consequently, the last time I was in Paris we couldn’t go up the Eiffel Tower because I hadn’t planned ahead and bought a ticket.
A friend was recently turned away from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam on her first trip there and told the next available ticket was in three days. So much for spontaneity and winging it.
Signed,
1
Why? Well, I don't know about the author's situation, but, for me, travel is expensive and there's not enough of it in my life, because, well, it's expensive. So, I am the first to tout the new world of online services that help me negotiate places I visit and maximize my valuable time. Tripadvisor is a favorite, and has helped me a lot finding hotels through reviews (very popular among Europeans). Rick Steves books have also been very useful in my travels. Last November I did a day trip out of Rome to Orvieto, and he helped literally make my day that otherwise would have found me lost and stumbling. Little things, like buy tickets here, take this bus, check out this market, do this walk, were invaluable. Sure, sometimes the best experiences aren't planned, and I've stumbled into that a lot, but, if you're only going to be in a place one or two days in maybe your whole life, you need these virtual tour guides. A lot.
63
Here’s what’s sad: In a comments section with contributions from tons of pretty smart - if contentious - people, you’re the first to mention Rick Steves! Kudos to you.
Steves’ guidebooks are the happy medium, combining smart planning with cultural awareness. He also stresses something nobody’s brought up so far: the need to understand the RECENT history of the place you’re visiting, not just its ancient past.
4
Nothing new here, just because there are now online reviews. For decades, Lonely Planeteers have mindlessly stomped their way along well-trod routes from Thailand to Ecuador to Nebraska and beyond. If anything, online reviews have greatly improved the quality available to travelers.
Planning doesn’t preclude serendipity. How you travel and how aware and present you are does.
62
@T. Rivers
“Aware and present”.....absolutely. Try not to “see” with a camera or a guidebook in the way. Experiences don’t register in the same way.
I've always been an anxious traveler: I don't sleep well in strange places, and I have a fear of making a "mistake"— mediocre food, wrong bus, noisy hotel room.
TripAdvisor seemed a godsend at first. Here were all these nice folks who could guide me toward the perfect experience and away from misery!
But it was exhausting wading through the reviews, and frankly, many people are, well, idiots. Or undemanding, or too picky, or lazy or incurious or whatever. They aren't me, and that was the real problem.
What finally got me to relax and enjoy travel was the realization that I wouldn't see everything on the must-see list, and that the real joy would be in the moment, wherever and whatever that was. Even if it wasn't a 4.8 meal/hotel/attraction/event. My own rating was the only one that mattered.
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Elizabeth A--Yes, I have been a person, who could not take a trip if I didn't know exactly where I was going, what I was going to do, and never, never get lost. Then, later in life, on a whim, I basically threw a toothbrush, change of underwear, and an atlas in the car, and just started out, with a vague plan. Best trip I ever took! It seemed to quiet my lifelong anxiety, and affirmed my self-esteem.
1
This is great to read! Congratulations!
We just returned from a 6000 + mile road trip to and from Nova Scotia, where we had previously been 5 times. I use TripAdvisor when I can't figure out where to stay -- to rule out noisy hotels, etc. I also use it to write about exceptional finds and find out about terrible spots. We stayed for 5 weeks at a spot on the Bay of Fundy, isolated and lovely. TripAdvisor told me about a beach five minutes from our spot, that had a magnificent waterfall (into the sea), that no one else told us about and I would have never found without it. Given the 50 foot tide changes at the Bay, this waterfall was an experience like none other we had ever seen. So I think there is a wonderfully valid use for TripAdvisor as a guide but not a bible. Its one of many resources. To plan a trip with it as a bible makes no sense, but as a guide -- wow, it, along with many other resources help make us more spontaneous!
180
The most exciting places are those you discover yourself and the best of them are kept secret, shared only with friends and never posted online.
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As a contributors to TA, we share our best and worst experiences and get an good sampling of what travelers like and dislike about restaurants, hotels, etc. We find the ratings graphs helpful because you see what the majority think, and what a few complainers may have a beef about. Mr. Kugel is offering his one opinion, that he is paid to write about!
9
@Siseman, I recommend paying some attention to those few complainers. Most TA reviews are highly over rated.
@Siseman As a fellow contributor to TA, I concur, but I'd also point out that Mr. Kugel's opinion is one based on vastly more expertise than that of nearly any TA reviewer.
To put it another way: which do you think is a more reliable source for NYC restaurant reviews, The Times or Yelp?
Bashing boiled peanuts leads to extremely diminished credibility among Southerners.
6
For me it is hunting, fly fishing, and very relaxed mountaineering-dare I say "hiking"...heck I'm 71, been there done that re "high level of difficulty". All the stuff in Seth's essay applies to little mountain stores, paths less traveled, no-name trout streams, and small inns in the southern Rockies. And there is This Thing of Ours: Fly fishing, a disorganized non-criminal enterprise. One meets fellow made-men in the mountains and taverns.
1
"[D]oesn’t a meal of giblets in West Africa make for a better story if you stumble upon it serendipitously rather than seek it out upon the advice of Chantal J. from Marseille?"
No.
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I've lived overseas and done - and continue to do - a good amount of international travel. My experience: anytime a travel advisor article, guidebook or website says, "Eat (or drink, listen to music, or do anything else) "like a local," chances are you'll be doing it with other tourists in an overcrowded setting, absent of any locals.
5
@Tony E Sure, if you don't actually *look* for where locals hang out! (and that's generally not something you'll find in a guidebook or online)
To much is spent on trying to see all the “so called great spots”
Like many travelers my wife and I journey to the small places.
Traveling with a dog even better. Nothing better walking along the the Little Missouri River in fall and hearing the coming of a thunderstorm.
The pounding surf along the Oregon coast near Cape Perpetua,
climbing to the top with a 50 mile view.
Travel is the experiences we get from the people we meet.
4
I completely disagree with the articles premise. Getting lost, while driving, at least for me, is an awful experience. I don't get six months vacation like some trust fund baby, so hiccups are nothing more then a self blaming waste of precious time. And, I like bus tours! It's a chauffeured, limousine to my destination. I get to meet other people, some of which I actually like.
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@Prant I'm curious what getting lost while driving has to do with the article's premise, which mentions nothing of the sort. The writer describes several instances of stopping *along* his proscribed route and coming across unexpected experiences solely by happenstance, and I think his point is that you're much less likely to do so if you adhere solely to a strictly defined schedule.
He also makes a point of noting your mileage may vary (pun intended), and that one's personal sense of adventure is relative -- and that's totally fine.
Confession: I live in Newton MA, hometown of TripAdvisor. My wife and I travel extensively and plan our own trips. Typically, we'll consult TripAdvisor to help get a general sense of a place but from there forward our travel arrangements are unique to us as a couple. My wife insists on a good bed every night and having a good dinner is more important to me. We both dislike organized tours and hire local tour guides. I love to drive in foreign countries and so scouting out interesting and picturesque roads is a fun part of our planning. My wife is a maven for accumulating airmiles, so generally we fly business class for free for night flights over 7 or 8 hours.
We just returned from Brazil where we visited Ouro Preto, a beautiful colonial town, in the state of Minas Gerais which we had read about some years ago. We were delighted to discover what seemed like an Escher drawing come to life since only 5 % of the streets were level and the rest were up and down cobble stoned hills. The place offered inadvertent cardio workouts everyday.
My point here is that traveling is a unique experience that is shaped by each couple/group/family based upon their personalities. For some, TripAdvisor is a godsend, for others it provides a scaffolding, while for others it's seen as antithetical to independent travel.
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"Why do we plan so much"? Because it's the planning that matters, and not the plan.
"Planning Is Everything. The Plan Is Nothing." Dwight Eisenhower / Helmuth von Moltke.
6
When my kids wake up, I'm going to make them read this article. Then they can stop repeating the story of me taking the wrong train which resulted in ten smoking and chicken feat eating Chinese people in the same cabin, and not the high speed train (It was only one character off). Or the time I negotiated a taxi ride that ended up having a moped take us (all three of us and the driver on the same bike) to the beginning of the trail head. Or when we got lost in Fez, which resulted in that rude man that introduced my kids to a bunch of swear words. I LOVE trip advisor because I am so sure of my own inability to execute their suggestions.
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What a great story!! Thanks - I smiled at the moped.
1
Thank goodness someone is objecting to the tyranny and blandness of the Top 10 lists. Try to find some authentic information about a destination and you almost can't escape these crowdsourced reviews. Often, the taste of the crowd just isn't very interesting.
2
Trip Advisor has helped us discover small companies running some of the most amazing tours we might never have found. When searching for wine and food tours in Italy, the number one company on TA was Culture Discovery Vacations, a family run business. We used them four times and would never have found them without TA. Yes, it's possible to over rely on TA, but like anything tool, you need to apply judgement on how to use it. You could make the same argument about most any aid. This column seems like a rant without appreciating what it can do.
When I went to Japan with my grandson I was able to identify useful activities quickly and avoid the poorer rated ones. How is that not a great help to save time and money?
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The best travel experiences happen when you volunteer with a service project like a church, Habitat for Humanity, WWOOF, etc. because you are embedded in the culture and people of the location you visit.
The least rewarding travel is being a tourist/visitor and going to the "popular" sites posted on the web. You don't get travel serendipity by visiting museums and points of interest with a tour group of white Americans.
Suggestion: plan a trip where you can help/assist with a humanitarian project then do some side trips.
6
Seth,
I always enjoyed reading your travel pieces for the NYT. Thank-you for writing them!
I continue to use the travel plan that has always worked for me: I check several guide books for the best hotel/B&B reviews, and the most important sites, and then I whittle the lodging recommendations based on location and price, and I chose the sites according to my interests.
I do leave time and appreciate the value of exploring sites that are not in travel books and guides. But since there is a time limit to most travel trips, and I won't be returning to most places I have visited (because there is a big world out there and not enough time to revisit, unless I truly loved the country, city, etc.), I want to visit the main sites.
I have found a few good pieces of advice on TripAdvisor but I check it last and casually. When I am reading a TripAdvisor review of a hotel and someone says the coffee isn't good, or the A/C was too loud -- I stop reading. I find this not useful at all.
2
The less we're driving, the more we plan.
It's really easy to head off the highway to that swimming holel the gas station guy told you about. But if you're meeting bus schedules or having to make that "skip the line!" entry time to get into the Uffizi, it's going to take some planning.
And remember, planning is fun! We've gone through full planning processes, and even booked (cancellable) rooms or even cruises, and then (for various reasons) not taken the trip. It gave us context to read about the area, watch some videos, maybe even find a novel placed in the location.
I like this article a lot. It's way down at the end that he really makes the point-- how much you plan and research your trip is completely up to YOU. Don't let the existence of all those TA reviews (mine included) drag you into basing your entire trip on them, afraid you Might Miss Something!
25
@Dave
Hola Dave...next time you're in Chicxulub Puerto
come for a margarita...best in Mexico.
saludos David
ancient Canadian
ps
very important...press the lime juice within 5 minutes of making the margarita
Excellent article, but it misses something: the role of the nature (aka brainwashing) of the traveler, specifically an average American traveler. Most of them do not know much about geography, other cultures nor foreign languages. For them a standard travel review gives some guidelines at the price of perpetuating their ignorance. After all, one of vice-presidential candidates not a long time ago bragged of her "knowledge" of foreign countries since one could see another country from her home state. I saw countless Americans on their first morning in Europe rushing out to find nearest McDonald or Dunkin Donuts and passing on the way wonderful coffee bars. How many of them do some preparatory reading before going abroad? How many have working knowledge of foreign language? How many are curious about foreign cultures? Take example from Chinese and Japanese students inundating our cities in the summer (I saw crowds yesterday in Boston).
4
@Stefan Agreed, but this tendency on the part of American travelers is by no means limited to foreign excursions. Most of the restaurants and retailers in Times Square can be found in virtually every mid-size city in America.
I've been fortunate to travel in both fashions, off-the-cuff and carefully planned, and I've come to a few conclusions:
1. You can't see and do everything, especially if you want to delve deeper or savor a spot. A museum that TripAdvisor or a tourbook says takes an hour always takes me three, which means I don't have time to do something else. But I would rather learn a bit more about something than just superficially seeing everything.
2. Not everyone has the same idea of a good vacation. Sitting on a beach or at the pool? Awesome. Hiking in the Alps to the point of exhaustion? Awesome. Seeing a castle with the masses? Awesome.
3. Planning the basics can still allow for moments of spontaneity.
4. It doesn't always go as planned. And sometimes it goes spectacularly wrong. Learn to roll with it.
7
I have had lots of wonderful serendipitous side trips over the years. The most recent was driving down Rt. 550 in New Mexico on the way to Albuquerque. Realizing we had a few hours to spare we sidled off on Rt. 4 to the Jemez Pueblo and on to Jemez Springs. We met some of the most delightful people you would ever want to meet and saw some of the most stunning country. We bought a couple of pieces of authentic Jemez pottery from a lovely weather beaten lady with eyes that lit up when describing the process she used from digging the clay out of a nearby river to firing in a backyard kiln. On the way down we detoured from our detour up Rt. 485 and found the Gilman Tunnels, made famous in the film "3:10 to Yuma". It was a wonderful afternoon that we would never have experienced had we not taken the road less travelled. "Blessed are the curious for they shall have the adventures".
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Hi Seth, Just wanted to let you know how much I miss your Frugal Traveler columns. Two years on, and the new guy just isn’t that interesting. Neither is the gal on the 52 city trip, bit that’s another story. I hope we get to see more frequent stories of your travels. You are a true adventurer.
8
@Debbie, The new Frugal Traveler guy is dreadful. The 52 places was a really bad idea.
2
He who does not travel does not know the value of men. (Moorish proverb)
A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. (Lao Tzu)
Tourists don't know where they've been; travelers don't know where they're going. (Paul Theroux)
The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see. (G.K. Chesterton)
12
After I got out of the Army in Germany in 1968, I spent nine months traveling all over Europe, from Norway to Greece, from England to Hungary, by car, train, bus, hitchhiking. I stayed with relatives, in cheap hotels, and even cheaper hostels. Of course, it was much cheaper then--I did it on $7-8 a day. I had some guidebooks, but I played it by ear most of the time. I repeated it with a girlfriend in 1972, driving from Paris to Bulgaria. Both times it was an ADVENTURE I'll never forget, which spoiled me for traveling ever after. So this article hits home. Outrageous prices, plane travel a nightmare, the 21st century sameness of most familiar destinations (there weren't any McDonalds then), nothing left to the imagination--it's all yours, younger generation.
6
Trip Advisor is a godsend! It's pretty easy for me to be able to locate useful reviews and to weed out the ones made by cranks. I am capable of reading between the lines. I weigh reviews based upon how similar the poster appears to match my personality and preferences. I try to figure out how much that person has traveled and where else they've been, which you can see on Trip Advisor, in order to put a review in context. For example, if you are used to staying in hostels, and then you stay in a three star hotel, that three star hotel may earn a high rating from you, because it's better than the class of hotel you are used to, whereas someone who always uses that class of hotel may have more critical things to say. Based upon reading reviews, I also generally rely more on those made by North Americans rather than those made by Europeans, who I generally find have lower standards than North Americans. This stems from a visit to an Inn in the Lake District of England, which was absolutely terrible (filthy, run down rooms with nasty stains everywhere and which inn literally served us food with mold on it) and yet had a guest book filled with comments like "brilliant" and "lovely" from all the Brits, Irish and other Europeans who stayed there. However, I find that this does not apply to 5 star properties, at which point many of the European reviews seem to become hyper-critical. The point is that you may have to tweak the system a little, but it works.
6
You gotta read between the lines, dude. Case in point. Before we went to Florence, I looked for the perfect hotel in guide books, travel sites, for weeks (no exaggeration) because we'd stay in one place for 8 days. No pig in a poke here. Studied the nuances. But I was baffled by the reports about the walk from town up to the Piazza Michelangelo which overlooks the entire city. Everyone said it was a daunting climb, but I'm guessing the review should fall into the young adventurers vs the oldsters. Halfway up the slow and steady course I was urged on by a fellow traveler who assured me, you're almost there!
Worth every sweaty second, but I think in addition to your hometown, they should display your age! I made sure to write a review that described it can be done slow and steady.
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@maryann
I so much agree with you. My call sign is The Chief from Cali on trip advisor. I let travelers know about a gem or two and try to give a fair view of my travel experiences.
My wife and I traveled with a dog and boy did that help me gain an insight to people.
Try the village of Yachats along the Oregon Coast. My dog and I would sit outside the Post office,there was no home delivery,reading the paper within two weeks we met every person in town. Great lifetime fun
5
The difference between travelers and tourists is the heart of the matter- a tourist is basically an inspector, checking off mentally (if not actually) a list of highlights from their research. Nothing wrong with this but it often goes hand-in-hand with playing it safe. A traveler, as the writer suggests, has a different agenda- more like the explorers of old, "What's over that hill?" In my youth, I was a traveler- wandering for years at a go across Asia or South America. Now, while still not an inspector, I find at 68 that I like to have at least comfortable accommodations prearranged for the first few nights- not schlepping my backpack from door-to-door, seeking a flop house that isn't cheek-to-jowl with folks following their Lonely Planet guides. TripAdvisor can be useful but it's no substitute for a decent towel and good pair of walking shoes.
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Planning is not setting things in stone. Planning is the first chance to discover those fun surprises—things you didn’t know existed in the place you are going. It’s the chance to imagine many possibilities and experience many trips, at least in your imagination—as if reading many books—instead of just the one you end up taking. Skipping planning? Never! Just as I wouldn’t skip the delightful detour that came up on the spur of the moment from meeting an interesting person. Both are all part of the fun.
I’m in Victoria BC right now, staying with my kids in a colorful and quirky airstream trailer and biking in and around the city every day. Our bikes have helped us find many fun surprises. But I had to do quite a bit of research to figure out an easy way to do all this with kids. Had I just showed up and stayed wherever and spent my time figuring out how to park the car and what to do to keep the kids happy, well that would have been a different adventure, but not this one. I imagine it to be much more ordinary honestly. And this one is so fun and different than other things we’ve done.
In my experience the best trips come from a degree of both spontaneity AND planning. Cutting out all of either is usually what leads to the biggest busts.
13
Tripadvisor can be helpful but like with all "democratized", lowest common denominator media, one needs a complex mental algorithm to eliminate the chaff which is around 98% of the content. But a benefit of such platforms is, as Kugel suggests, reading the reviews to identify places to avoid, not because they are necessarily bad, but because even if they are not, they are likely to become so as a result of their popularity. We use guides for input only and cross-reference all information with local knowledge on the fly.if the advice we need relates to restaurants, we ask wait staff where they go to eat. They also provide a "tourist trap" list for us to avoid.
2
After one use of Trip Advisor, followed by months of nagging, I blocked them, and will never use their service again.
3
A good guidebook can be indispensible, but my advice is to turn off the phone, and the computer. Avoid internet cafes. The chances of missing out on something back home are miniscule.
7
I've always said that a trip will either go smoothly or it will be memorable. Neither is a bad option (though the memorable ones may seem bad while they're happening!).
4
Sometimes the worst travel experiences can make the best or funniest stories later.
PS Try the buffet at Hog Heaven. The lettuce is iceberg and the veg is mushy but the pork barbecue is, well, heavenly. And it comes with a side of fried chicken!
2
It isn’t necessarily either/ or. I’ve done both- overplanned and travelled spontaneously. It depends on circumstances. How much time do you have? What is your comfort level? These considerations change everything. In my youth I could arrive in a strange city in the middle of the night no problem. I could stay in pensiones that had 1 Star. So thank you Trip Advisor for helping me make an advanced reservation. But I still like to wander off the beaten path.
5
When in Europe, buy a EuroPass. That's what they were called 40 years ago. When you had to go to a train station to buy it. With local currency.
1
Doing my hitchhiking-around-Europe experience in 1973 (now, THAT'S unplanned!) there were conversations in every hostel about the benefits of hitching (completely at the mercy of the road gods) and using the Eurail Pass (I went to Norway for the Midnight Sun! Yesterday!) I love the memories of that trip the way I did it. But the nights spent sleeping in a drainage ditch by the roadside are not something I'd want to do again.
6
I wish the NYT would become more ambitious with its travel pages.
Too often it appears that the goal of the trips is to visit restaurants and stay at hotels while royally ignoring the cultural aspects of the town. So superficial.
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@Paul, It's always about the micro-brews, wine bars, boutique hotels and farm to table thing. Stay home in Brooklyn instead.
4
So you don't plan your trips so you can be a raconteur?
4
“Whether Trip Advisor reviews are helpful or hogwash”...Hogwash,..definitely, for a wide variety of reasons. To begin with these “reviews” as is well known are widely manipulated and outfits like Trip Advisor have taken great care in avoiding any sort of responsibility for their service. If you book through this kind of outfit and the slightest thing goes awry, believe me pal, you’re on your own...Trip Advisor might wish you good luck though...
1
@Paul Eckert I think you are too judgemental without being judicious. Of course there is bias. Any book or review will have it. The quality of Trip Advisor is that you can see many reviews and look for what you would endear or hate most in a destination. You will certainly see exageration for good or bad. But after a few readings you will have a reasonable assumption. And believe me, there will be always something different in your experience from any kind of text you read for guidance.
4
I stopped reading this after the line about climbing around the ancient rice mill and 'bowing our heads into former slave quarters'. What fun!! Did you proceed on to the hotel to get cozy and watch Gone with the Wind?
5
TripAdvisor is a God send.
In the dark ages one could wander the Earth and not really see the world. You could visit a town but miss history, art, ecstasy. You would over cherish one good restaurant amidst a week of so so cuisine.
Blind wander is for the young. Many do not come back. Some are CIA hiking into Iran and spending a few years in jail. Most are only looking for sex after becoming discouraged at home.
2
So Seth, now that you have shared some of your best unplanned events, how about sharing some of your worst?
12
Having traveled over 120,000 miles a year (both work and leisure, often both combined) for the past 20 years or so, I can promise there is no way to avoid the unexpected. A little structure, such as having a dependable place to sleep at night, actually makes the spontaneous detours more fun and easier to enjoy. Checking out a few things in advance doesn't make us a bunch of bovine herd-followers, it just makes us smart. The advice we find through customer reviews is often both more accurate and less biased than that provided by professional travel writers. Oh, sorry, I forgot--that's you! Is it possible you just feel threatened by other people sharing their advice--for free? What a self-righteous, snotty little article.
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This article contains a factual error: Boiled Peanuts are delicious.
7
Mr. Kugel:
You are paid to travel.
I pay to travel.
Thus, I'll continue to use TripAdvisor.
Here endeth the lesson.
71
I could not read past the slam on boiled peanuts. You sir have been duped. Most likely you were sold the full grown peanut boiled down to mush and horribleness, over salted or "Cajunned" to hide the taste. The true boiled peanut aficionado knows that the word "green" must precede the word boiled. Tender tiny nuts akin to some delicate bean nestled in a shell so soft it too can be eaten. Buttery goodness that you and those who follow your advice will never know. You are no better than the Trip Advisor feature your article holds in such low esteem.
9
This is just a form of boasting by someone who feels his expertise is becoming redundant.
20
Yenta Syndrome has created several generations of timorous, neurotic people whose childhoods were curtailed by parental apprehensions. The same kind of parent that insists on monitoring the treats brought in for other kids' birthdays in elementary school. In a world that features horrible shooting affrays, a yenta is ready to let out an unbearable Geschrei over someone feeding her allergic daughter peanut cupcake and therewith perpetrating the Holocaust...
6
Thank you! At last a travel writer who suggests how I actually travel. My family and friends all know when I travel I have amazing trips. A key reason - I also use a skeleton travel plan. I plan a general trip, in particular hotels/B&Bs, but make sure there is so much time for the spontaneous. Want a great travel story for family and friends? Then you have have to be able to be spontaneous. And you have to be willing to take the risks of talking with “strangers” to learn about their lives.
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I haven't traveled nearly as much as Mr. Kugel, but I've been around, enough to know that travel *always* contains a few surprises -- car trouble, cancelled flights, general strikes, simply not liking the place you'd planned to be -- to not have to build spontaneity and adventure into a trip. On the other hand, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and resources like them are pretty awesome if you are visiting, say, Chicago for three days and want the best deal on a mid-priced hotel near the Art Institute and want to go back to that great old fashioned tavern under the El, the one with the deep booths and the open-faced prime rib sandwich, whose name you just can't remember.
9
I always travel unplanned. I book a 4 week round trip to Bangkok and then decide at the airport where to go next. Last time I took a cargo plane to Rangoon. But in this case, I had to first get an online tourist visa. When I’ve had enough of Burma, a long bus ride to Laos is next. After some days a flight to Phnom Penn. Rent a motorcycle and just take off, sometimes just following the weather. (Check first to see if your license in valid. Some countries like Vietnam don’t accept US international licenses)
Of course there can be long waits at some border crossings and exhausting bus rides, but I wouldn’t travel any other way. One tip I have is to always buy a cheap local SIM card for your phone on arrival in each country. Then one can look for logging accommodations while on the road to your next destination.
When I planned a 3-week trip to Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in 2015 I added a day to my each destination as a "Wander" day. I did that just, wandered. In Samarkand, after seeing the sights for three days, I spent a day just wandering the old city, greeting people, observing daily life, wandering into tea houses normally only attended by locals who were intrigued by my presence, and seeing the sights I'd seen earlier at a different time of day in a different light.
In Bukhara I planned my wander day for Navruz (Nowrooz), the Persian New Year. I'd planned to eat lunch that day at whatever place jumped out at me. Well, some people deep in the old city invited me into there house as I walked by, and I had lunch at a huge silk table cloth on the floor as I joined 15 family members in their family Navruz celebrations. Not the kind of thing you'd ever find on TripAdvisor, but it was the highlight of the trip, as was the wedding party in a suburb of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, I got invited to join while lost. I'd like to say that was my wander day, but that time I was just lost.
2
Whatever happened to just wandering around in an unfamiliar location and finding a great restaurant? Or finding a B&B in a little town and asking the owner where to go for dinner?
Trip Advisor and Yelp, are, for the most part, either outlets for whiners who think the world revolves around their needs or are like cruise ships: venues for people with no imagination.
This is the best travel advice I've read in the Times in years.
1
I came within an inch of my life following recommendations of where to eat given by enthusiastic locals.(I wondered later if they were given kickbacks!) I've been eaten by bed bugs following 5-star hotel reviews on Trip Advisor. I will not eat at any restaurant or stay at any hotel without vetting of the location. Not all reviewers have credibility, since they often come across as whiny or having an axe to grind. Nothing destroys a vacation more than a dodgy hotel or a rotten meal.
I never take the advice of recommendations on trip advisor or the trip advisor wannabes. I don't know the standards of quality of the recommender. A case in point was, for a while and may still be the highest recommendation for a restaurant in Key West has been a shack with a walk up window that serves coffee and accoutrements. I would not even call this takeout place a restaurant. When taking the recommendation you need to know that their standards are your standards. A woman I had just meant told me how good the food was on a river cruise she had taken and said it was exotic like another restaurant in the keys. I scoured my memory to find anything exotic by my standards on that menu. I thought that restaurant to be boringly white bread. Just by that comparison she made, I knew how to understand what drove her recommendations.
There are ways to put a review in context and make it useful to you. Is this a one off post, or has that person submitted numerous reviews for multiple destinations? Is every review they've submitted 5 star or 1 star? Does it appear that this person travels often? Do they tend to stay in the same class of accommodations / eat in same type of caliber restaurants you do? Do they appear to share your cultural background in that you may have similar expectations (for example, Americans would probably expect all but the lowest accommodations to include ensuite bathrooms, but in Europe, shared bathrooms are much more common). It's also very, very important to remember that just because an attraction got a 5 star review does not mean it is in the 5 star tier! That Key West place you mentioned probably has great food, but it's obviously not what your looking for if you want a romantic candlelit dinner. So while Trip Advisor is of little use if you follow it blindly, it can be an invaluable tool if used properly.
2
I'm am travelling to Vietnam this week. This will be the 45th country where I have been, lived and worked. I consider myself to be a freelance world wanderer. I always travel alone (I am a woman). If I can't communicate in the language of the host countries, I learn the basics by practicing the phrases on my smartphone--I'm laughing today imitating Vietnamese as I pack.
Everyone travels differently. A few weeks ago the NYT published an article about cruises. I cringed with the idea of following thousands on a ship with planned stops. To each his own. By this time next week I will be walking the streets of Hanoi, trying the street food and most of all getting to know the people. Tripadvisor cannot plan my discoveries.
That said, I absolutely count on tripadvsor to get me the best priced hotels in the area where I want to stay and connect me with them via whatsapp or email. Two days ago the management of my beautiful boutique hotel ($40/night) wrote to me about my requested room where they said I could enjoy "my 'loving' things like reading and magazines." With all due respect I could never get this kind of charming local recommendation from other travelers on tripadvisor.
In the words of Anthony Bourdain: "Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown."
7
Never used Trip Advisor but have found that a good GPS combined with good offline (no data) maps on a tablet along with some time on Google looking at what there is to see lets me make the most of 2-3 hr stops while on tour. Ditch the group; grab lunch 1-2 blocks off the tourist street; forget shopping and enjoy churches, museums, etc no one else in the group even knows about.
As for "boiled peanuts are disgusting, a mushy Southern tradition" clearly whomever is boiling your peanuts doesn't have a clue how to do it. Good boiled peanuts should have a slight crunch and no mush.
5
So true. I only read one paragraph of this article - then skipped straight to the reviews!
1
Use the tools like TA, etc., to get a handle on where you are going but be open, friendly, ask questions of local people and allow for surprises. My wife often goes into a shop less for the shopping but to ask where they like to eat or places to see. We have been on the metro in Beijing and complimented a young woman on the hat she was wearing and that led to discovering unknown shopping we would never have found without her advice. In S. Thailand I found a coin on the street and gave it to a small child whose Parents saw it happen. He was a fisherman and offered to take us out for the day at a better price than the longtail mafia. He took us to the most spectacular islands with no other people and we had the time of our lives with him. So many similar things have happened all over the world to us because we are always open to the unplanned and unexpected.
4
Develop some language skills to travel overseas so you don't stick out like most Americans. Also you won't be intimidated to get off the beaten track. We've had such wonderful times!
3
One of the big problems is peoples´ expectations combined with the US terrible situation of short limited vacations. Aussies have these incredible month long to 6 weeks leave times. As a TA browser & contributor I enjoy the interactions but lament how you do Seth peoples´ foolish tries to "do" a city/site per day/hour, I abhor the word and concept of bucket list or this "do" thing about places as much as I think its an obscene way to talk about sex with people. Eyerolls from me whenever I hear a "solo female traveller" safety question and Mexico safety question. Eyerolls because asking such general questions reveals impossible ignorance of the breadth of issues, rendering answers meaningless.
But its not a new thing, just a new version of packaging and selling quick shallow trips. TA sells hotels and trips, its forums are fluff to support that. That are sometimes fun. I have met some really great and funny people thru TA. Some stay online friends but more than a few have become visitors and visitees - so TA´s profits pay for this service to me.
Seth, as a clever and experienced budget traveller and also by life chances & choices resident of many parts of the world you know that shallow quick experiences are completely a different thing from cultural knowledge. But its the nature of humans to be different in very annoying ways. Thanks always for your work!!
@P Wilkinson, I think solo female travelling tips are good. What's your beef with that? That women should be vulnerable prey? One bad sexual assault can really ruin not only a person's travel but their entire life.
1
Oh great, another smug professional traveler who sneers at the unadventurous tourists who like to know something about where they are going, what they are going to be able to do once they get there, and where they will sleep.
I'm a TripAdvisor destination expert for Olympic National Park. Because of me and my fellow DE's, visitors have been able to wade out to the lovely sea stack off Second Beach, a feat that can only be accomplished at certain tides. Because of us, families with allergic kids know to bring epipens if they plan to hike the Hoh River Trail in the summer. Ground wasps nest along that trail. Because of us, people who have saved their vacation days for a once-in-a-lifetime trip to ONP can plan for trail closures, negative low tides, road construction, and that unfortunate motel where you don't want to take your kids because they put the sex offenders there.
33
Thank you for your help! Hope to visit there one day & to use your tips!
1
I never share my best experiences on Trip Advisor.
6
I began travelling (solo!)around age nine. My uncle lived in Hamburg and one summer my mother put me on a plane to Frankfurt, alone, to spend a month wandering Europe with him and his wife.
Since then I have been lucky to travel, both alone and with friends, to many fantastic places.
I take travel recommendations first, from those who have lived, been there. Ideally I know someone in the city already. They'll tell. Where to go -- or, go with you!
Second is "boots-on-the-ground": get there first and then figure it out as you go. Why lock yourself into schedules? If a place to eat smells good from down the block,EAT THERE. You can always switch hotels if you find a better one down the street.
Third, When in doubt, ask yourself...What Would Anthony Bourdain Do?
4
"Gap year"?? Have we all suddenly been transported to Great Britain?
5
@Peter Piper Sounds like a great adventure!
1
I agree 100%. Great Op-Ed.
Or, you could just not obsessively check tripadvisor.
3
I imagine these obsessive planners enjoy cruise ships and all inclusive hotels where you never leave the property. Might as well stay home and look at brochures.
I get a car and get lost on purpose, great way to explore a new place.
6
@Paulie And I bet you travel alone.
I don’t trust half the country’s judgement in presidents; why would I trust their judgement in Chinese restaurants?
26
There are two entirely different types of people on the road, either you LOVE cruise ship vacations or you HATE them. Very little in between. 75% of TA reviewers love cruise ships (& Las Vegas/bus tours).
4
TripAdvisor is a for profit enterprise that kowtows to its vendors who remove reviews they don't like. Anytime you're reading a TA review or forum you should always remember that and then you'll understand why so much about TA is plain vanilla.
1
I've seen plenty of negative reviews on Trip Advisor.
3
You lost me when denigrating boiled peanuts. When done correctly, they are divine.
5
TripAdvisor rates places to go, places to stay, places to eat, and things to do. It is by far the number one site in this industry. The Times runs trips that go places, stay places, eat at places, and do things. With a little effort those who use TripAdvisor can evaluate Times tours vis a vis competitors, like National Geographic, your alma mater, and countless private tour companies. When the Times evaluates TripAdvisor,consider whether they have a conflict of interest and whether they should, at the very least, disclose this conflict. "Everything that's fit to print."
4
I agree . Enjoy the people you meet. Not the hotels you booked.
1
Non-native Charlestonian here. I think you’ve given up too quickly on boiled peanuts. And you really should explore one of America’s great cities—even if we don’t feature alligator trapping.
3
I travel by flaneuring . . Usually a very vague plan and I see where I end up. I have no phone so I can't call uber and I ask locals for directions and recommendations.
2
Yay for spontaneity! Let's go back-packing in Afghanistan or Iran! We'll be fine Let's go to the most dangerous part of a city in search of "authenticity"! It's only a fun adventure if you survive. Did your girlfriend leave you for her new career of alligator wrangling?
This is a new (old) form of elitism.
7
I wonder if travel as we know it will die when everyplace is evaluated on TripAdvisor and Yelp; unlimited photos are available on Google; travelogues to every place are available on YouTube: anything can be translated; every meal can be previewed. Where will we go when there is nowhere to discover? What will we take pictures of when everything has been photographed and is available on the Internet?
Even the trend of food tourism is getting stale, although I expect Grindr and Tinder tourism has a ways to go.
The TImes offers high price tours to the public where you accompany a hooty-tooty expert who takes you on a pre-designated itinerary. Before you deviate you have to raise your hand.
1
Excuse me. Boiled peanuts are the edamame of the gods.
2
Regarding that 5 star rating: "The Slop Trough" is rated 5 stars by people who are willing to stop and eat at a place called "The Slop Trough."
1
Just because a review is 5 stars does NOT mean that the attraction is in a 5 star tier. An outstanding three star hotel may justly earn 5 star reviews, but that does not transform it into a 5 star property, as those properties offer amenities and services which are not offered at three star hotels. The food probably is good at the "Slop Trough" for a casual lunch, but I think the name itself tells you it ain't the place for you if what you are looking for is a fine dining experience. Common sense also goes a long way in reading trip advisor reviews.
1
The answer to your last question is yes. But it is much less expensive, and easier to change plans on a dime (with plenty of other options available) than traveling with an organized tour group.
I recommend Trip Advisor or combine advice found there combined with my own experiences frequently because the experience of just one reviewer cannot give an accurate portrait of a place in time for 365 days a year.
Travel professionals should too.
Yes, and thank you for encouraging folks to reintroduce some fun back into travel. I have the same issue with exclusive reliance on GPS for route finding. Don't be afraid to look at a map and consider the possibilities along the way. Sometimes the best part of getting from A to C is the unexpected detour to B along the way that Siri would never have pointed out.
We had a memorable day in the Basque region of France when the trains went on strike. We quickly checked bus routes and times, along with a group of other stranded travelers, and had an interesting day seeing small towns and talking with these strangers who became friends for a day. The problem solving was fun, and we had conversations we never would have had on the train. We also find restaurants with our noses and the number of locals versus tourists we see, not Trip Advisor ratings. But we do book hotels ahead of time.
What I enjoy the most about travel, is meeting the locals. One of my most memorable experiences was when my wife and I were in Amsterdam in the fall of 2012. We were enjoying a cup of soup on a bench beside one of the canals. One of the locals was starting up his boat and spewed black smoke in our direction. He apologized and I suggested that to make it up to us he can give us a tour of Amsterdam by boat. He immediately said "come on board." I bought him a cup of soup and our journey began. He was a local architect and he proceeded to give us a tour of Amsterdam by boat. We had considered taking one of the expensive tours suggested by trip advisor and I am glad we didn't. This was an experience we talk about to this day.
6
I look at TripAdvisor and Yelp, and occasionally submit reviews. I don't take the reviews super seriously, but the sites are useful to weed out the real stinkers from consideration. I mostly rely on the linked menus and web sites to decide where to book a room or eat.
There isn't much difference to me if a place is rated 4.1 stars or 4.5 stars. But if its rates in the mid threes or less, there are probably better options. And it is true that pictures (on the sites) are often worth a thousand words.
8
Years ago, before internet travel sites were common, my husband and I were driving along the southern Oregon Coast, when we needed to find a place to apend the night. As we pulled into the little town of Port Orford, we saw a B&B side on a liltle place on a place overlooking the ocean. If only we could stay there we thought, but how likely was it that the y’d have a room in August. It turns out that there was one of the two room seats was available. It was one of the best places we’ve ever stayed in. Not only was the location great, but the owner was terrific. When we asked if there’s was a laundromat in town, he offered to wash our clothes, took us to the drug store when my husband needed an emergency prescription and also showed us a wonderful hike along the cliffs, which only the locals knew about. Plus we heard all kinds of stories about the town. It is serendipitous experiences like that which make travel special.
These days however I’d be less likely to travel without at least having made arrangements for accommodations. Since almost everyone is using the internet to make travel plans, a tiny B&B like the place where we stayed in Oregon would most likely be booked in the summer months and we’d have to keep driving and end up ata less desirable roadside motel instead. We still find things by serendipity, however, by using paper maps, for instance, instead of a GPS, which allow us to finding less traveled back roads and to get lost, for better or worse.
2
My "before the internet" story is a lot less romantic. My then boyfriend and I wanted to go to Ocean City, Maryland for a summer weekend. I went to the library to find the Ocean City phone book, so I could find hotels to call (stop laughing, millennials). I wanted an ocean view room. I called a place who gave me a good price and when I asked if the room was ocean view, I was told yes. We show up in Ocean City to discover the place is a complete dump, frequented by college students acting like they were on spring break, and the "ocean view" was only available if you stood on the far corner of the bed and stuck your head out the small window. TripAdvisor would have protected me from that.
1
Because we had little money when the kids were young, our vacations involved hopping in the car for a destination and meandering our way there and back. Mackinac Island one summer, Washington D.C. another, Charleston, SC, check. Yes, we hit a few of the major sites via Mobil Travel Guide (Mt. Vernon, Gettysburg, etc.), but also "found" charming places all on our own (Sleeping Bear Dunes, secluded lakes in North Carolina, hidden waterfalls, scenic winding roads that came out on breathtaking vistas. And only a few "seedy" motel nights in between, experiences in themselves. This was before the prevalence of bedbugs! Usually wonderful food experiences, restaurants chosen based on the crowded parking lots in front of the establishment and once, an incredible fried chicken lunch consumed in the parking lot with all the locals because we stopped at a little grocery store (intending to buy the makings of picnic lunch) in rural Georgia on a Sunday. My mouth still waters for that fried chicken, the best I've ever had. I wish I had written down some of these places though I'm sure 30 years later, many no longer exist. Good memories.
6
Hilarious. A travel guide guy says don’t plan. Needless to say he spends his life doing it so FURTHER planning may not be needed for him. That’s not most of us. Plus he’s got money to do all this. Any way on this one I’m with Eisenhower: plans are useless, planning is essential.
8
Extraordinarily helpful. Vacations or travel do benefit from planning but, as a veteran travel and food writer, I've found these advisories to be more and more generic, lacking any imagination and on occasion inaccurate. What is the professional background of the contributors that enables them to rank a restaurant? That is very important. Who grades and oversees them?
Be skeptical. My area is the American South and if you want to plan a good trip, contact a local newspaper and chat with their staff. You'll get recommendations that are almost always reliable with the benefit of a good contact. It's worth the extra effort.
2
I mostly use Trip advisor for restaurants and hotels not for things to do. One only has to look at almost world city and see that a top thing to do in most cities is escape the room. I am going halfway across the world to do escape the room? No Thanks!
Thank you for articulating the essence of great travel - spontaneity.
4
We have used Trip Advisor, but I've also used my own senses and sight to sometimes follow a road without signage. In May, on the Shetland Islands, we followed a wee, bumpy road and found a very interesting old radar station from WWII when the Brits were protecting the UK from the Germans coming in from Norway. I even found what might be an artifact, although I haven't been able to identify what it is yet. But, I also asked questions on TA about the walk up to the cliffs on Unst and was reassured that I could probably do it, and I did!
5
I was a TripAdvisor junky and quit cold turkey. Such a good decision. First and foremost, I asked myself "why am I letting complete strangers influence my decisions?" Secondly, "why are they listening to me?' Finally, why am I giving away my time and talents for free so that they can be monetized by some corporation? Badges? Seriously that is my reward? In the early days of TripAdvisor, I found it more useful, the early adopters, the fanatics where far more discerning, far more descriptive, much more fair. Now, I just do my research the old fashioned way and like the author, play a bit of travel roulette and reap the rewards. Once you post an out-of-the way discovery on Trip Advisor, you have for all practical purposes destroyed the very reasons you cherished the find.
7
Decades ago I went on a school trip to the Dordogne with our high school French teacher. Our teacher was casual to the point of total irresponsibility. She dumped us with our French families and, rumor had it, took off for the coast to lounge in a bikini. We had to explore the Dordogne with no guidance. One day returning home on a routine bicycle trip, I noticed some kind of structure deep in the woods I was passing. I left the bike, hiked through dense underbrush and discovered a ruined tower covered in ivy. It was like something out of a medieval poem. I guess nowadays it's probably on Trip Advisor but for that day it was my own secret adventure.
8
Here’s a few unplanned surprises: one of the worsted ways to plan or unplan, is to remember someplace from thirty years ago and expect it to have remained the same. That beautiful hotel overlooking the harbor in St. Thomas now has palmetto bugs coming out of the television set. Those antennas are not for the TV. Or that beautiful resort in Maine now serves a bottle of wine without the label and your room has so many rust stains on the wallpaper that it looks as though they raised the Titanic.
We use Trip Advisor judiciously. Why would I go to a destination where Arby’s is number 2 on the list of restaurants.
12
@David J And the The Empress Hotel in Victoria BC is now a Fairmont and has lost much of its soul.
1
Like Amazon customer reviews, I always remember that a certain percentage will moan and groan about anything ( The beach was too sandy!). When I factor that in at Trip Advisor I can get a pretty good idea about the town, resort, eatery, hotel, shop, etc. It's a nice tool to have.
17
I'm with the author. In the past I have started a car vacation (in the US) with no destination, no hotel reservations. A short but great vacation followed. Rather than using guides for restaurants, I use locals. You get some wins a few losses. For instance for a business trip to London for a week, each night I asked a cab driver for the his best Indian restaurant. It was wonderful.
1
@Charleston Yank, we had a similar experience in the Knightsbridge section of London. We asked a cab driver for a good Indian restaurant. When we got there, the restaurant did advertise as Indian, but chatting with the owner we found out that it was Pakistani. “We’d have half the customers if they knew we were Pakistani,”the owner told us. It was a terrific meal.
1
I appreciate all the (somewhat indignant) rebuttals about the practicality and necessity of planning when travel time is limited and expensive. Noted.
But I agree with the author that oftentimes the most memorable and cherished moments of a trip are unplanned and happenstance.
I enjoyed the most fantastic fried chicken of my life, along with a honey-topped baking powder biscuit of at a gas station stop in the Florida panhandle. Will never forget it.
And I for one would love to experience a solid week or month of existence where I see no one, and I mean no one, with his or her face buried in the screen of a cellphone or using its camera to "capture the moment"--at a cafe table, at a concert, at the beach, eating lobster in the rough, playing mini-golf, birdwatching, or what have you.
Just use your brain to capture the moment. That's why God gave it to you.
5
If I planned I would not have the experience of walking across the Vitava River in Prague on railroad bridge walkway. Or of walking through woods that led me to an convent's overlook of Prague that almost no one ever sees and sharing the view with a single Czech nun.
Nor would I have spent an hour at a family picnic with an unknown extended family in Bangkok at a temple in a back waterway, reachable only because of an impromptu boat rental.
Of course, neither would I have found myself alone on a street in Amsterdam at 3 am with no local money, no car, and no idea of the name of my hotel. Nor held at gunpoint for two hours by East German border guards at Checkpoint Charlie being refused egress back into West Berlin.
There are some experiences an organized tour or TripAdvisor just cannot give you.
5
Very good article, although I’ve found that despite preparations there is still plenty of room for the unexpected, like when I booked a massage in Marrakech but didn’t realize there was a time difference with Spain so I unknowingly ended up getting half my skin scrubbed off in a bath in the hammam.
And even with preparation it’s good to be open to improvising. My wife bought tickets to the top of the Eiffel Tower but when we got to the mid deck the line for the top looked brutal. So we just tossed away the tickets and relaxed and enjoyed the view from the middle and everyone was much happier!
2
As a traveler who both looks up the best places to eat online and lets the world take her where it may, I can tell you that the ubiquity of travel advice and falling into spontaneity are not mutually-exclusive. You can, and most people do, often, experience both.
19
BTW, I post reviews to Trip Advisor; most for good experiences and a few for bad experiences, but mine are real and accurate. I usually offer some example of what was good to better help other travelers with their experience.
I also read other traveler’s Trip Advisor reviews and for the most part have found them to be very helpful and accurate.
15
Planning destination, transport (flights, train), hotel - yes. But otherwise the best tipps for food and sights have always come from local people. I like revisiting places and discovering how they changed, sometimes, unfortunately, due to TA at al, finding them overrun and overexploited by the hords of turists.
1
Personal recommendations from locals are the holy grail for the independent-minded traveller and seen as valued and authentic, whereas those from tourists on TripAdvisor, less so. It's a mindset thing. I personally don't like a lot of peer-reviewed sites as I don't want to be subjected to other people's subjectivity. It's exhausting!
1
In 1987, a buddy and I went to Europe for several weeks. On a lark we decided to head for Vienna by train. We were supposed to change trains but fell asleep. We eventually woke to three guards pointing rifles at us in the former Yugoslavia. In those days, you needed a visa to enter Yugoslavia and we certainly didn't have them. But we had US dollars, and once a crisp $20 bill was produced we were taken off the train and to an office in the station, where visas were provided to us. We wound up wandering around Zagreb for a day and, among other things, had a fantastic five course meal for about $3 each.
So it was a win all around--my first (accidental) foray behind the Iron Curtain; I learned about how business is done in Yugoslavia; and those guards probably enjoyed a night of wine, women and song, courtesy of that US currency.
8
There's certainly no harm in extensive planning. If it helps some people who might not otherwise get out there, then go for it.
But it's certainly not necessary for having a great time either.
At this stage in my life, I prefer re-visiting places I know well and exploring them ever more deeply. With the basics of planning having been done years ago and a good familiarity with the layout, I no longer plan the daily activities through online research. I talk with locals or just take a chance and wander off.
I found the Aareslucht in Switzerland from the landlady at the B&B that was recommended to me when I stepped off the train in a certain village, wandered over to the tourist info desk and told them I needed a room. She didn't speak English and I don't speak German. But we could both gesticulate and put together a French sentence between us. The next morning I went off in search of the Aareslucht, at her suggestion, and had one of the most enjoyable travel experiences of my life. One of these days I need to go back again, see it in a different light, a different season, a different time of day.
http://1oo1arabiannights.blogspot.com/2011/09/sculpted-by-glaciers-impre...
2
I am more of a regional traveler, and a sometime contributor to TripAdvisor. I like to discuss more safety issues that might arise at a given destination. For example at Antelope Canyon outside Page, AZ, always wear a hoodie ( as the sand seeps down from overhead) and it will go right down the back of your neck, never take your dog, and small children not advised. Usually, I have a loose plan in effect as I am a photographer. However, I have found that stopping in the most unlikely of places will lead to introductions to food, people and stories you never would have experienced otherwise. As long as there isn't a "No trespassing sign" around, there are roads and paths to travel that the guidebooks haven't a clue about. Those make the best trips ever.
4
In my 50+ years of traveling both abroad and stateside, I have been a fan of both camps. I believe generally speaking, the passage of time as in getting old, plus the availability of internet ratings have put me into the plan-ahead mode. However inherent is inevitability of screwups in the best-laid plans. Late planes, weather cancellations of tours, strikes, hotel mixups force most travelers into the deal-with-it camp which then results in fond “remember when” moments. The best advice I can give travelers is to get your nose out of the travel guide and from behind the camera/phone long enough to allow the view or meal or piece of art for it to register with your senses.
15
Planned vs unplanned....planned always wins for me. My husband likes unplanned vacations; so, I leave part of our vacation unplanned, but more often than not, these times are just wasted and unremarkable. For most things worth seeing, you must plan; otherwise, the planners take all the open slots.
22
After our last trip to Paris and Lisbon, we decided we would no longer use TripAdvisor for anything more than activity suggestions. In Paris, we unfortunately tried 3 highly recommended TripAdvisor restaurants, and they ranged from awful to subpar. The best restaurants we found weren't even listed on their app. Although our hotel in Lisbon had extremely high ratings on TripAdvisor, it was a super expensive dump. We were so upset. From now on, for hotels, we will stick with our favorite brands; for restaurants, we will pick those overflowing with locals. It is a shame, because it use to provide much more reliable information.
6
One more point, and that is the reliability of Trip Advisor's and Yelp's recommendations. Many of the reviewers have a limited basis for comparison and rave over the most unworthy things.
Case in point, in reference to Boston bakeries, recommenders will tell you that you simply MUST get cannoli from a certain North End bakery in Boston. The lines of tourists each day at this particular bakery reach the sidewalks.
As a person whose uncle was a master Italian pastry chef, I gag at the sight of pre-filled sugary cannoli with soggy shells and sprinkled with things like M&M's (!!!!).
I'm sure anyone who touts these abominations has never tasted authentic cannoli. As a proud Italian American, I want visitors to taste a genuine version of this wonderful pastry.
One way to wade through recommendations is to look for the overuse of the word "awesome." This is a dead giveaway that the recommender is probably around 18 years old and has a limited frame of reference.
Why are tourists such lemmings?
38
@TM. M&M’s on cannoli?!? I can hear my Italian ancestor spinning in their graves!
1
@TM Here in Portland (Oregon) there are long lines of tourists at donut and ice cream shops, but Portland is a great city for just wandering around and looking at houses and gardens or going on forest hikes or browsing the bookstore or just people watching (I do these things all the time.) People are wasting time when they could be really exploring the city and adding to the memorability of their vacation. I'm sure Boston is the same way ... Boston!
@TM
So where would you recommend for good cannolis in Boston? I have family coming in a few days.
My favorite quote from Yvon Chouinard: The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong – that’s when adventure starts” I tell my wife and children this when we get lost, when plans go astray, etc..
4
"Hey don't do it differently than the way I did it, the fact that I enjoyed my way leads me to devalue others."
11
That's why I don't like your series 36 Hours. I'm supposed to do what some one else did in Copenhagen. That's not travel. That's copying some one else. To me travel means walking the streets, looking at the architecture, meeting the people & interacting with them. Besides 36 Hours just tells you where to eat & where to shop, not actually what to see & where to go.
26
It's a worthy debate - to plan or not to plan. But I'm a veteran traveler and I know this is a false dichotomy. Some trips you plan, others not so much, others somewhere in between. There was a tone of derision toward making plans in this article, but that's romanticizing nonsense.
I've traveled around the world, sometimes with family, sometimes friends, sometimes alone. Each situation and destination deserves a different approach. A few years ago, for example, I traveled around Egypt, hopped a ferry to Jordan, crossed the border to Israel, and walked the winding streets of Istanbul with only a loose itinerary. I was either on my own or with a friend. But when I went to Russia, Poland and the Czech Rep. I went with family and did much more planning up front because my dad needs to walk at a slower pace and can't climb steps.
A lot depends on how much you want to see, and what your time frame is to see it. Two days in Berlin, you'd better make a plan. Six days in Beirut, you can be a little more relaxed. I ended up seeing most of Lebanon with people I met on the road.
A planned framework still allows chance to happen. It's not a case of doing one way or another. Reading reviews isn't a stupid thing to do, it's research and preparation. Wouldn't you read reviews before you bought something on Amazon?
35
An overdue piece, Seth! Thank you for reminding people of the magic of serendipity and spontaneity. Fascinating, however, to see how many commenters were threatened by your perspective. Sadly, travel is another experience that has been commodified by the narrow-mindedness of the crowd. The inevitable subjectivity of TripAdvisor and Yelp combined with the faux-expertise of most people posting their opinions on those sites sets an extremely low bar.
If you would allow me to paraphrase your brilliant observation, “The best travel experiences happen when when you don’t worry so much about needing or sticking to a plan.” (And based on the comments of your piece, people seem to want a plan but many seem to have bad experiences when they do. Go figure.)
1
Trip advisor may be the worst website on the planet for accurate information on small family owned or independent restaurants. I have seen any number of personal grudges against a local restaurant that were posted as "reviews" and turned out to be something other than the food quality by reviewers with a personal axe to grind. It carries over to outfitters, guides and a whole host of personal services in small town rural America. I lost faith in the accuracy of trip adviser in the US long ago and wonder how well it works overseas.
6
How is this worth the space it occupies? Different people, with different budgets and different amounts of time, will do different things. Not very complicated.
7
I'm glad the author realizes that being a white tourist in South Carolina and elsewhere gave advantages that non-white tourists would not have. And acknowledges that there are numerous reasons why people might not want a spontaneous vacation (family, few vacation days that have to suffice for the whole year).
I've been lucky to have the opportunity to go on off the cuff vacations as well as super planned, virtual-tour-guide vacations, as well as actual tour guide vacations, as well as lazy, barely-traveling-because-in-a-resort vacations. Each type of vacation has its own merits.
I find myself sympathizing with people who want to travel and explore the world, but don't have the language skills to manage on their own without the potential for getting dangerously lost or ripped off. Or people who have one or two vacations a year and just don't want to spend it obsessively planning every detail. In those cases, a tour group is not necessarily a bad idea. If you know English/native language and are not a dispised minority, and know how to avoid scams, I can see spontaneity providing an avenue for a unique, fun vacation. But sometimes, even if you are a savvy traveler, maybe you want to see the highlights, but just wanted to be able to see the sights at your own pace, wander into restaurants of your own choosing, and have the option to veer off schedule. In those cases, why would you not make use of previous travelers' experiences?
16
I see a lot of judgmental bias in your comment that confers "despised minority" status on people who are not. If you think black families cannot go into a boiled peanut shop in South Carolina you don't know much about SC.
1
I very much enjoyed the article but when I got to the part where he asked the bus driver just suggest and out-of-the-way town with few tourists, all I could imagine was, oh, a future hostage.
I’m glad you have survived to tell these tales. :-)
7
Paranoid much, Mr. Toledo? He was talking Oaxaca here, not Cartel Country. I haven't heard Sinaloa being bandied about as prime tourist territory lately.
While winging it can be fun, good research can lead you off the beaten path as well. Without the internet I would have missed the charms of Burano and a fabulous fish dinner at a small trattoria while on a recent trip to Venice.
7
My favorite travel adventure was in 1988 with the man I would later marry. We had to take a van full of furniture from his mother's cottage in Michigan to the house of a relative of her third husband in California, then pick up another van load to take back to Michigan. We had $500 and a gas card.
On that trip, we discovered Zion National Park (far off the path, but relatively undiscovered in '88), took pictures of a Bun Boy restaurant, and played cribbage in the van while waiting for our turn to drive through a 30 mile stretch of construction in western Colorado. We got lost, stayed in a XXX motel, and learned how well we meshed as we laughed our way through unforced errors in travel. Note: Mono Lake has fascinating roads, especially at 70 mph in a Chevy panel van.
I strongly encourage our now teenage son to find ways to do the same. Just go. Have a general plan, and let the experiences guide you. Last summer, we gave him his head for a day in Paris, and let him wander on his own. He took some amazing photos, climbed up to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, and navigated there and back without difficulty. It was his best day.
I hope he has many more such.
9
At 12 I got the idea to travel around the world when I graduated from high school and did it on my own dime a year before jet travel. It changed my life. I'm obviously an old guy who has spent his life traveling and living abroad.
My suggestion for new or experienced travelers alike is.... buy a tour book and map of your destination? Highlight on the map in yellow marker all the "must see" places the tour book suggests. THEN AVOID THEM AND THE SURROUNDING AREAS! Take off on your own and wander, explore, inquire and engage with the locals. Make new friends and acquaintances and above all relish and enjoy the unexpected discoveries and surprises, for just around the corner your life may change.
7
Look, the world is a harder place now. Thanks to neoliberalism and casino capitalism, there’s no leisure for the middle-class anymore, just constant worry about money.
Everyone is anxious about the future - will there be healthcare, can I ever retire? As a result, businesses gear up to squeeze tourists out of their dollars and vacationers in turn seek best value, particularly given they might only have 2 weeks of paid vacation for the whole year.
Is it any wonder that vacations are now stressfully overplanned? That no one can “afford” exploration or making a “mistake,” or what otherwise might be real recreation / “re-creation”?
14
@Papago, What's a paid vacation?
3
I seriously doubt that having tons of knowledge- maps, hotel and restaurant reviews, etc. is going to limit your travel adventure experience. You can always change plans, deviate from script, etc. But having access to almost unlimited information about where you're traveling actually leads you to places you otherwise wouldn't know about.
Personally, I don't invest lots of money and time in travel to eat boiled peanuts and hear about alligator wrestling. I'd rather find a terrific boutique hotel, opera tickets, a great off-the-grid museum and a nature walk- all findable through Trip Advisor and other online guides.
27
Plans are generally useless, but planning? Planning is indispensable.
4
That's what I've been waiting to read. Flexibility and curiosity are so rewarding when traveling. I do hope, though, that you can acquire a taste for boiled peanuts.
In 2006 or so I rented a car in Montevideo, Uruguay, and set off driving up river along the Rio de la Plate visiting small towns, farm land, cheese making farms, etc. In the attractive sleepy river side town of Fray Bentos the two of us came upon one of my more memorable experiences among the hundreds I've had traveling. Here was a virtual ghost factory - the one time famous Anglo and Fray Bentos corned beef factory. Even the old manual typewriters in the very large business office were still sitting on desks. The multi building and various stories production plant was amazing. It was a wonderful experience. The plant was just beginning to be fixed up for tourists. We were escorted all over the place by the director. She rarely had a visitor she said. I just looked online and note it is now a World Heritage Site. I posted my photos shortly after the visit, but never completed editing: http://dangog.com/museofraybentos/
2
One thing I like to do is take a bus tour of the area to get a feel of the local. The mot important part is to take notes of things you pass that you want to investigate later. I also love to ask the locals as well.
7
Your best column yet. You're finally getting 'it'. Serendipity, randomness, out of the ordinary, the wheel of life. The best things in life are mostly unplanned. If you haven't gotten lost, you're not travelling. And my personal favorite 'Not all who wander, are lost'- JRR Tolkien
12
Talk about a false problem. Reasonably literate people can figure out what to do when they travel. What is the issue here?
Surely it is desirable to educate oneself about one's travel destinations. Education is not incompatible with spontaneity.
I'm going to New York next week, and I have the entire week planned, not because I am not spontaneous, but because I have limited time and resources. I have been traveling alone in Europe and Asia since I was a kid. Also I am a woman traveling alone, and I have been physically attacked in Europe and almost lost my life. If you are a woman traveling alone, it is not stupid to make some plans. Such plans can be as innocuous as reading books and traveling with them.
31
@Sheila Teahan
Amen. I was pleased that the article's author at least noted that he has certain advantages as a white man in travel.
TripAdvisor is known to promote venues that abuse our
non-human brethren.
Folks unwittingly attend events where the abuses are hidden from sight.
TripAdvisor could use their platform to subtly educate travelers. Maybe they could recommend two choices for similar events. There need be no mention of the back stories of these notorious exhibitors.
Certainly, vacationers should not be subjected to the platitudes of animal rights advocates!
Thank you.
We've traveled throughout the US and Canada as well as in Europe and South America and wouldn't have done any of it without having a plan. We are not into iffy or bad hotels. A restaurant that disappoints isn't a crisis but a dirty, roach infested hotel room is and by planning ahead we avoid that. There are places and things we want to see and if along the way we decide to deviate from our plan -- that's OK too but taking a trip that follows the plan of "whatever" isn't our idea of a good time.
12
Yes. I agree wholeheartedly. I have a friend who when we arrive in a new town immediately calls the #1 ranked restaurant to get a reservation. Another travelling companion must hit all the "top 10 Things To See", never "wasting" a moment. To me, this is not "travel" in its truest sense.
I, must admit I ,too, am sometimes seduced by the rankings but have found my favorite moments and often my most memorable (though not always fun) travel experiences were often the result of the wonders of strolling and serendipity.
Just back from a family trip to Ireland where just such wandering off the beaten path brought us an evening of imbibing a local beer in the street with local Irish men and women of all ages at a non tourist pub. Totally unexpected, much enjoyed. Much more memorable than the Guinness brewery that morning even with its free beer and orchestrated tour.
The problem, of course, is when you get home your well traveled friends will ask you:" did you go to the Guinness Brewery ?" and if you didn't you may feel you "missed" something. So sometimes you need to let all that go, be in the moment, go with the flow and see your travel as your unique discovery. Through years of travel these are the memories I cherish.
4
that time I thought I was just going for a short walk to build up an appetite for Aoki's shave ice and then just started seeing honu (Hawaiian sea turtles) and kept walking!
https://flic.kr/s/aHsjrBCfWj
2
I'm sure we could apply some of the same criticisms Mr. Kugul aims at TripAdvisor towards travel writers themselves, who no doubt are annoyed by competition that is derivative of mass opinion.
Not to worry, there are enough travelers of all stripes. TripAdvisor like all such online tools is just that - to be used selectively. Comparing such usage to flag following tourists is a bit of sour grapes, seems to me.
11
I love to travel and my family loves how I plan trips. This article has some great points. There is a magical blend of planning and freedom on trips that brings the special moments. People need down time, alone time and some activities may require advanced planning...tricky but doable!
7
This is the best part of traveling. On the way to New Orleans we decided to detour off the interstate in Mississippi to see “The Crossroads”. But the delight was meeting the elementary school teacher in McDonalds and helping her load 150 lunches in her car as a reward to the rural school kids who had perfect attendance.
6
I started carrying a backpack through Europe in 1972, hitchhiking and sleeping rough. There was no internet, no information and basically no guidebooks. Europe on $5 a Day covered London, Paris and Rome, none of which interested me at all. Communication was by aerogramme if you knew your next general delivery address. Emergencies were theoretically handled by terrible phone or telegram, both expensive. Hippie travelers sat around at night drinking wine and swapping tips, but mostly it was picking somewhere that looked interesting and hoping for the best - which it often wound up being. I still backpack. It is easy to do everything and find everything. But the wonder, excitement and surprise is of another age. Along with a lot of the fun.
5
There's still plenty of adventure in a TripAdvisor world. After all, it is so often so so wrong.
10
Travelers with money are generally at an advantage. Playing it by ear is easy when the sky is the limit. When you’re on a tight budget you may not be able to afford a last minute detour from New York to Paris.
21
Like everything else, if used creatively it will help you plan a great trip with room for surprises. I have used Trip Advisor mostly to find interesting accommodations and activities that I could not find otherwise, without having to resort to a guide or group travel. But if you just want to do what everyone else is doing, then yah, Trip Advisor is also great. By the way, I find very few tourist get to the item 12 or 13, so if you don’t want to be bothered with mobs, seek activities further down the list. Finally, best advice, travel off season, not only are the prices better, and there is lots of availability, but locals are much nicer!
9
My favorite way to get to know foreign cities is to simply head out the front door and start walking in any random direction. It's amazing what treasures i have stumbled upon in this way. My favorite city to do this is Tokyo.
21
I confess to a TripAdvisor crutch/addiction when planning travel. But, like Seth, I create trips as a skeleton. No hard plans, no itineraries. reservations and bookings only when necessary. Just ideas and possibilities. I travel with a husb and 13 and 11 yos. What I love is that to them the whole thing feels fun and spontaneous. “Wow, mom, remember when we found that gelato place in that alley?” “Wow, honey, that Airbnb down all those alleys and up all those stairs. But that view .... sigh. How did you find it?” Me: “ohhh...you know....” I do crave an open/ended no planning vacation. In Ireland, actually, where we have been many times. But as Seth said, we only get so many opportunities per year. Here’s to finding the empty beach at the end of the path.
There are challenges that are manageable and challenges that are not. Travel to popular summer destinations means high prices and no vacancies. Eschew planning at your own risk. But when I finally decided to drive through Alabama and Mississippi playing it by ear was the way to go. A bar hosting a party for a wealthy crowd, a mixed race gathering of folks dressed as elves in order to break a Guinness book record, a guided tour of black Mobile given by a native who I helped out when his car broke down and an evening at an integrated skate rink/bowling alley in a town notorious for racial violence were just a few of the high points of a trip that was designed by the seat of the pants. I made mistakes, of course, but nothing my GPS couldn’t fix in a few minutes. BTW, restaurants are seldom a priority for me, but I found top seafood places in Mobile on a long run along the bay.
9
The best part of innovation is busting through stereotypes. Few outsiders who have a one dimensional view of the South have visited Mississippi. Knowledge is power.
I lived a very organized travel schedule because of work. I decided to take an unstructured vacation. I put my camping gear in my pack and flew to AZ for two weeks. After renting a car, I headed to the nearest campground. That night I wandered around asking people what I should do tomorrow and where I should eat and camp. People were happy to oblige and share their experiences. In the morning I made a one day plan and every night was a repeat. I had great time. Desert hikes were in the early morning and air-conditioned museums/local attractions were at noon, when the heat was most oppressive. Travel was during the afternoon and never more than 100 miles. Camp was set by 5 pm and I made the rounds of the campfires at 7 pm. I was never disappointed with people's recommendations since everyone was a seasoned traveler. I'd speak with 10 or 15 people a night and it was a good way to break the ice. Really, how many people have asked your opinion on anything, this week? I structured the questions, such as "I'd like to eat some food that I can't get back home (CT)". That would open the flood gates to little local hole-in-the-wall places.
33
As a native, I’d say you failed on the most basic level. Don’t travel to Arizona when the heat is oppressive.
2
Several years ago I walked the Camino de Santiago and had a few days before my scheduled flight home. Lingering in Santiago de Compostela is not a good idea. Waves of pilgrims arrive and reconnect with those they have met along the way. After a couple of days, there are no familiar faces and one feels like a stray dog.
It was at that moment that I decided to use those extra days to go to Portugal. I booked two lovely places in Lisbon and Porto using online resources.
In Lisbon I asked my host for a dinner recommendation within walking distance. He mentioned there was a small restaurant nearby, discovered by a previous guest. He wasn't quite sure of the location and did not know the name, but sent me in the right direction. I looked and looked, asked and asked but no luck.
There was an older lady sitting on a rickety chair just outside her kitchen. She spoke not a lick of English, but I said the word restaurant in as many languages I could muster. Finally I pantomimed eating and her eyes lit up. She grabs my hand, walks me through her kitchen (which smelled amazing) and led me to a dining room. This was the restaurant! A daughter appeared who spoke English and they served me a beautifully simple and delicious meal. We laughed, I met the rest of the family, we shared stories, and sat outside on those rickety chairs and drank port. They sent me off with a bag of home-grown dried tomatoes and fresh figs. My favorite meal ever!
86
Seth Kugel, I get what you're saying. People definitely have their travel "lists" with "goals" and have to feed their "Insta". My most memorable travel experiences have been with interacting with the locals which is something that can never be "reviewed" or "pinned" onto a map. Like the time the front desk clerk befriended me and we went to go visit one of his high school friends in rural southern China. Upon arrival, his kind wife prepared lunch for us and they told me I was the first Canadian they've ever met. They allowed me into their home which was far more interesting than any restaurant I could have sat in. Or the time I ended my bike trip somewhere in Guilin, and sat riverside with the limestone karsts jutting out directly in front of me. I ended up chatting with the server and discovered this young Chinese man speaking English to me with a Bristol accent. I asked him if he had a British English teacher. He said No. He told me he learned English by listening to cassette tapes! Interacting with the PEOPLE has always the best thing. These experiences are not repeatable; they were moments in time that I happened to collide into by virtue of luck and placement and time. No WIFI involved =)
8
This article is well meaning but really a bunch of nonsense. I have been traveling on my own and with family for more than 35 years, which is well before Trip Advisor, but not before Fodors, Frommers, Lonely Planet, etc. The only thing that’s changed about planning a trip is the methods and the ease of obtaining information, not the need to plan.
Planning a trip used to mean visits to the library or bookstore to load up on books that detailed transportation, hotels, restaurants, and attractions. But for most of us without unlimited time, language skills, money and nerve we wanted to know things like dangerous areas of a city to avoid; local customs, etc. And, even with that, the books (and now online sites) can only provide so much usable information. Once you are in a new place, adventures still present themselves as do spontaneous outings.
In addition, with the costs of travel nowadays, I prefer not to waste time and money on something that isn’t for me. Reviews help in that regard and don’t in any way create a “group tour” experience. I understand the writer’s perspective but for most of us, his experiences won’t be our’s and I’d prefer to have more information then less in planning my trips.
77
I have two comments about foreign travel. If one wants to see and experience a destination as a native would, do a house exchange. You get to live in a real neighborhood, meet the neighbors and join in the local activities. The sight of another tourist near where you are staying is rare......We also like taking cruises to Europe and the Pacific Ocean countries but there is a problem. Often there are two or more cruise ships in port at the same time and consequently all you see are other tourists and their multiple flag bearing guides.
4
I agree that sometimes the best experiences are arrived at without any prior planning. However, you have to plan some activities months in advance or you won’t be doing them in the first place. I love backcountry camping, but oftentimes I need to have plans solidified months before my actual trip to have a chance at getting a permit. To get tickets to some concerts and plays you have to be ready to make a reservation for a specific date as soon as they’re available. And this isn’t just true for the most popular attractions, either. The proliferation of travel knowledge on the internet has made it difficult to book activities that used to garner little, if any, demand. My favorite example of this is “the wave” in northern Arizona. Before being featured as a default desktop on Microsoft’s OS in 2007, permits were difficult, but not impossible, to obtain. But once it was featured, seemingly overnight it became near impossible to get a pass. Today, over 10 people apply for each available permit. And I’m contributing to the problem just by telling you all about it!
6
Wholeheartedly agree with the writer. But he's not going to change anybody's mind. If the vast majority of people go to PF Chang's or Olive Garden when they dine out in their hometowns, what do you expect when they travel?
18
As in almost everything, moderation is the key. I like to plan certain meals around destination restaurants or highly recommended places, leaving other meals to chance. The same goes for sightseeing: having tickets ahead of time to the Uffizi sure beats having to wait in line to buy tickets and then to waiting in line to be admitted; but I leave some days for just meandering, discovering and serendipity. I have wonderful memories from both planned and unplanned travel experiences.
8
Ugh! The old days weren't always better. I can remember countless vacations as a child and teenager eating terrible food, staying in rundown hotels and more than once, suffering from debilitating food (or water) poisoning that laid me up for days. I used to hate vacations!
I also think the author is seriously overestimating the ease with which you can "stumble" upon such activities as swimming with stingrays in the Cayman Islands, or ziplining through the Jamaican wilderness. Nor should you necessarily try in many places, since wandering around on your own without a plan or knowledge of an unfamiliar area can put yourself at personal risk.
Being able to easily find places that are clean, safe and fun - including places off the beaten path - is one of the greatest advancements we've ever had in traveling. All of my best trips have come in the cell phone era, and all were planned mostly in advance. Of course I still leave some empty time to schedule any last minute activities, go shopping or whatever. But the most stress-free, action-packed and fun vacations I've experienced were all planned in advance with the help of various apps (and plain old web sites). Winging it is at best a waste of time; at worst, it can get you in a lot of trouble.
30
Trip Advisor is not always simply a method for following the crowd. A few years ago I was highly tempted by a guided coach tour of Turkey's antiquities. I read a lot of generally enthusiastic TA reviews which were enough to suggest that we'd hate the whole coach tour format. Instead we did a similar trip using public transport and had a great (if sometimes logistically challenging) time.
I will usually check a couple of reviews for hostels/hotels before booking but always with an eye to what I care about (edible breakfast, showers/air con that work, windows that open) and ignoring what I don't (shabby decor, friendly staff, moderate noise, mould in the shower curtain, ugly views). I don't bother researching restaurants in an unfamiliar place since I don't think other people's opinion of food is that helpful but I might use Google to find something close if I'm too tired for wandering. And as for tourist attractions. I'm fond of physical guidebooks but I'll always get distracted by walking past something that simply looks interesting.
3
We indeed have every morsel of information at our fingertips inclusive of being there virtually with the help of online maps and the like. We can travel down a street before we actually do it in the physical realm. (although even though the feature is available to all, how many do it ? )
There are so many variables to travelling - actual time available, weather, finances, and of course how many are with you - that will dictate what kind of experience it will be.
However, (at least one time in one's life) everyone should travel to a far off place by themselves. They should do so, while at the same time really challenging themselves to get out of their comfort zone. Plan as little as possible, and explore all by yourself. (if you want to dictate every little thing online for social media, then that to me is a waste)
Soak up the experience and the ambiance. Feel the texture of how people are living their lives that is so different from your own. Slow down and interact with people. (even if there is a language barrier) Stare upon things and burn their images into your mind, so that you do not need photos to come back to.
Breathe and take it all in. Be selfish.
Our lives are but tiny blips in the sand glass of time, and our vacations are but tiny slivers of that. Good luck. Enjoy.
14
My partner and I just spent 2 weeks in Japan. We used a travel guide to create a "typical itinerary". Fearing the unknown, we stuck to the beaten path. We went to well reviewed restaurants, took a bus tour in Tokyo, etc, etc.
Relative to our exploring Europe and other places without much of a plan, Japan ended up being a touristy, tedious bore of a trip. Overall, it was interesting, but I feel like I missed out on something because we stuck so close to what the guidebooks said to do. We were constantly surrounded by other Westerners. None of the food was anything to write home about. I didn't feel as if I actually got to know the country in a meaningful way.
Honestly, the most interesting thing I did there was wander through the backstreets of Hiroshima looking for a laundromat. I got very lost, but stumbled on a mini amusement park, ramen bars, and other curiosities that actually made me feel as if I was experiencing the real Japan vs. the glossed over version I saw during the rest of the trip.
If I'm lucky enough to go again, I'm going to stay away from the big tourist sites and try to see what Japan is really about.
15
@NRichards Some of the best city experiences I had have been hunting down laundromats, because they're usually in residential neighborhoods. Central Bruges is a touristy mess, but walk just a few minutes away in search of a laundry and you'll find some quiet and gorgeous spots that you'd never see otherwise.
I also recommend looking for hardware/housewares stores, and art supply stores, for unusual souvenirs. Also, buy food gifts like candy and condiments in grocery stores.
16
Seriously good advice from Mr Kugel.
Those of us of a certain age actually traveled without TripAdvisor, or amazingly, cell phones and realtime google maps, and it was fine - sometimes even serendipitously great. You can still pick up old and/or used travel guide books by the way, as 90% of the information in them is still valid.
7
Having served in the Peace Corps in Tanzania for two years, I can confidently say that the best advice on the ground, especially in Africa, will be from a local PC volunteer. They know all the hidden places, the best routes, the cheapest places to stay. Instead of a wildly expensive Serengeti safari, for instance, many of us opted for a trusted local and his jeep into Ruaha. Unforgettable. You will run across a volunteer in the oddest places. They are always out exploring.
6
I don’t know - travel is plenty adventurous despite Trip Advisor - for one thing, reviews are totally subjective, so trying something for yourself is an adventure of sorts, and we've always found more surprises than expectations met. Even going from one highly touted spot to another can turn into an adventure - like getting lost, having to ask for directions when you don't speak the language, being derailed by a shop or a museum or a cafe or a person you meet on the way. To me, the one thing I want to be more or less sure of is where I’m staying - and even then, reading about the 5 flights of stairs to the exquisite Paris apartment doesn’t compare to actually climbing them, avec luggage (like having to haul ourselves by the railing up the final flight and rappel ourselves down), and actually being in the apartment across the river from Notre Dame and right down the street from a well-reviewed - accurately too! - sorbet shop. In our travels we are always surprised - in good and bad ways - just about everywhere we go. Consulting Trip Advisor is like asking an acquaintance, or Lonely Planet, for recommendations and warnings, but it doesn't mean you have to follow them - in most cases we've done that maybe 10 percent of the time, and the rest has been surprise after surprise.
6
I love boiled peanuts so I would have stopped at the South Carolina Country store. Anyway, even if you don't like spontaneous adventures, the author makes a good point. Too much information before you go to any new place takes away pleasant surprises during a trip. I am no young courageous traveler but I do avoid reading reviews and even Wikipedia before going. Just enough knowledge to plan a trip or find a tour guide is sufficient.
What you remember from most tours is personal experiences.
2
I agree with other travellers that it is not hard to balance planning with serendipity. We pick a few places we want to hit and then leave hours or days where we don't have plans. It's also about attitude: we don't stress out if things don't go exactly according to plan.
Also, the column makes planning out to be perhaps an onerous, even stressful activity but research on happiness shows that anticipation is as important in an activity as the actual doing of the activity. So planning a trip lengthens the enjoyment you get out of it.
4
My work takes me all over the world, but i usually am put up at moderately priced places, usually not in the center of the city/town where the job is. I work with both blue collar workers and real arty elites, and am lucky to always get recommendations (from both groups) for local places to go and to eat from people who are actually local and who know.
Whenever i use a guide's recommendations i can tell both that the taste of the reviewers and their local knowledge is limited. Italian pizza places in these books often have the feel and taste of US pizza chains (a place called Halloween pizza (an italian chain) has lots of reviews, but the best pizza in Rome is 5 blocks into the ghetto behind the main train station and has no reviews).
That is to say, that these reviews will not help you open your minds or pallettes. A guide book can give you a little insight into how to pay for the Paris metro, or places worth a visit in Portugal, but personal recommendations from strangers in a strange land really won't, on balance, introduce you to much.
I am very lucky to have co-workers as guides in the places I visit, and I know being a tourist is a whole other thing, and a little advice would be nice. But, you are better off asking a stranger walking down the street of their own home town where a good place for dinner might be, than seeking advice from yelp and their ilk. Of course, then you would have to learn a little of the language before you left home........
6
@rick
Your last line makes me wonder just how much you have traveled on your own. My late husband and I spent months touring most of western Europe on our own (in a Volkswagon bug) in the late nineteen-fifties and found that English was rapidly becoming the universal language even then. There always seemed to be someone about to whom we were able to communicate our needs or wishes in English, even in the most remote places. From more recent experience, in Asia, South America, Africa as well as Europe, I believe English has become the primary foreign language taught at schools around the world. Without a moment's hesitation, I would nowadays book a trip to anywhere in the world American tourists can safely travel, convinced that my English would see me through.
2
@Wagar I wouldn't say that English is a way to go in Turkey, for example. German would help you much more. However, in Izmir, where I stayed, people were so friendly, so eager to communicate, that even my extremely poor German was more than enough.
What I find particularly funny about any travel sites is when a commenter goes all the way to an exotic getaway and has a terrible experience with room service or some innocuous event that causes internal turmoil. Why can't people just be thankful, like me, that they have the opportunity to travel out of the country? "The food near the Eiffel Tower was bland!" I believe I read once.
Really folks?
22
Having young children, a good amount of planning is definitely necessary. However, I actually prefer to use old-fashioned guidebooks (you know, the kind with pages that turn) and really only for accommodations and potential sight-seeing. The thing I don't like about TripAdvisor (although I have definitely used it for some things) is everyone's opinions about, well, everything. I avoid it now because I don't want to not go to a place because some people didn't like it. I am a different person and, therefore, I may love something that others did not. It's like asking for people's opinions about the teachers your children will have. Everyone's experience is different. We are in Ireland right now and I find the best thing to do, especially when eating, is just to wander around, look at posted menus, and ask the locals.
7
I agree. One of the best trips we ever took was our honeymoon in Ireland. We were there 9 days and reserved only two nights in advance of our arrival. The rest of the trip was via a manual-shift Ford to a new destination each day, depending only on what moved us that morning. South? East? two hours or four? We loved it. I confess we used a (paper) Michelin guide at some points, but it was mostly an adventure, worthwhile busts, some notable, included. But later, with a family, reliability and convenience trumped uncertainty and adventure. Plus less vacation time, budget concerns, travel opportunities only during peak season - all of these factors make TripAdvisor et al a necessity. As we decomplicate our lives, I hope to return to the less-predictable form of vacationing. We will certainly try.
12
Trusting TA reviewers is sketchy at best. I've stayed in a few awful accommodations and eaten at some lousy restaurants and when I've read their reviews most are glowing with many stars. It made me wonder if we'd even stayed or ate at the same places.
The reviewer's travel experience is all relative. Some may think that the average, cookie cutter, chain place was the absolute nicest hotel ever! "The small pool by the exit ramp was perfect!" Or that a chain restaurant has the best food! "Best curly fries and chicken wings with ranch dip!"
Often a flailing establishment will have their friends and family or even themselves write flowery or positive reviews.
Caveat emptor.
7
I just came back from a big conference in Rio de Janeiro. We stayed about 13km from the conference venue, on the beach in Barra da Tijuca. Not a particularly exciting place, but better than the main conference hotels. Across the street were small bars that were half tent. They had beer and caipirinhas. They served sandwiches, but also a small number of meals, such as faijoada (a stew of beans and meat) and "fish with sauce" - which was delicious. We were initially hesitant to try them because they seemed filled with locals, and we’d been warned to stay on the building side of the street after dark. Fortunately, we ignored the warning and tried a couple of the tent bars at the end of the day. They were great. We spoke no Portuguese and they spoke essentially no English. Yet they made us feel extremely welcome. The food was delicious. The caipirinhas were freshly made, tasty, and strong. Sitting at night not far from the ocean, feeling the breeze, and listening to the surf was one of the true highlights of our stay.
11
why do I plan? Because I don't have an endless font of money and want to make sure I get the most out of my vacation dollars, especially if I might never get back to a place again. Winging it is a luxury.
83
@k. I disagree. Having spent more than 18 months traveling off the beaten path thru India and east Asia, I came to believe that truism.... it’s easier to travel with time and no money, than money and no time. If you have lots of time, like I did, you can get by on very little. I stayed for free in many places...so strange it was to see a young(at the time) White woman traveling alone.
2
Trip Advisor is invaluable for advising where: not to go... never to stay, to avoid eating. Whereas my favorite ideas of spontaneity involve making out with a restaurant owner, Luigi, in Florence who went from being a bored, gruff server to an attentive lover wanna be outside his Trattoria. Apparently I am wildly charming in Italian. Ditto for adventures with my seat mate(s) in both First, Business .. and Economy class. Over Salt Lake with a married Mormon, twice over the Atlantic with a macho gorgeous Aussie and, most unexpectedly with an adoring Italian older (!) gentleman. I am a middle aged widow with boundaries for my shenanigans.... inside a plane. . . hitchhiking in the driveway of my resort in Catania, most recently, getting hit on by a German couple on their belated honeymoon in our 4 Star resort in Taormina. (I speak German too.) I still have a mother in-law, but one day will put pen to paper about my kissing pursuits, mostly international. I always say no to anything beyond kissing, aside from the Australian....
12
I will buy THAT book. Seriously.
1
@Linda I wish to subscribe to your newsletter (once your MIL passes, of course).
@Linda This is absolutely the craziest comment I've ever read on NYT. Congratulations, Linda. I never realized my life was so tame.
I am a huge planner and take great joy in researching travel destinations, but my travel partner usually just wants to go with the flow. I enjoy the serendipitous experiences too, but it would kill me to overpay for a flight, needlessly spend the night in a bad hotel, overlook specialties of a regional cuisine, or miss out on an architectural wonder that I might not have the opportunity to see again. My solution is to include hours or days in each itinerary where our only objective is to allow far more time than necessary to get from Point A to Point B, meandering across a city by foot or along country roads in a rental car. I learn all I can ahead of time about the history and geography of the place so I know what sort of thing I might want to look for, while my partner delights in whatever we find. I call this approach Planned Spontaneity. It is relaxing for each of us and so far it has worked out just fine.
10
Why do we spend so much time planning for trips? Simple: because people enjoy planning for trips, and a large fraction of the total enjoyment one derives from travel actually comes from the extended run-up to that trip, planning what you can do, what you want to do, what you'll do when you get there, etc. Relying on serendipity not only is disorganized thinking, it's mostly counterproductive.
See, e.g., https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/18/how-vacations-affect-your-happ...
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Why do I plan? Because I'm an old lady with a disability who can't walk too far or navigate steps or difficult terrain. Given all the places that are not accessible, I do a great deal of research ahead of time and make sure that I can actually enjoy where I'm headed.
Certainly, I've sometimes spontaneously stopped somewhere along the way that appeals to me and turns out to be navigable. But figuring out how to move about in an unfamiliar place when mobility is limited, frequent restroom stops are needed (like with little kids), or one has dietary restrictions, requires advance planning.
The pleasure is in finding interesting places that - surprise! - are workable. It sure beats arriving somewhere only to find you can't do it.
So speak for your ableist self.
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"In other words, if the best travel experiences happen when things don’t go according to plan, why do we plan so much?"
How presumptive. Personally, I plan my vacations so that I DON'T experience the stress of what you deem "the best travel experiences". You can feel this way all you like - have a party. I object that you assume it as axiomatic for all travelers.
19
Like many here, I did a lot of traveling in the pre-internet days. Back then, I used guidebooks and tourist information centers for advice on some travel decisions, but not all. As a result, I had my share of unpleasant surprises (e.g., clogged toilets in shared bathrooms, bedbugs, food poisoning, etc) as well as good surprises.
Now in my mid 60s, I am content to leave bad surprises to those like Kugel, who, at least on paper, don't mind them so much. I don't think that scanning reviews for crummy restaurants and hotels has substantially cut down on my positive travel experiences.
Good luck to you Mr. Kugel in your future travel, but no thanks, I'll still be using TripAdvisor and Yelp for travel advice.
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Have you seen the constant parade of tourist buses clogging traffic in Manhattan? For most tourists, the primary concern is avoiding adventure, not seeking it out. Major tourist cities are busy remaking themselves to provide the familiarity, predictability, and selfie-opportunities that mass tourism demands. If you want surprises, go to Bamako, go to Greenland, or, for that matter, go to Newark.
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@Martin
tour détroit!
or roam the corbiere!
My dream vacation involves a bicycle and a credit card. The rest is what happens on the road,my best times are wandering.
13
I biked across New Zealand, Australia and France with just a bike and a credit card. Best trips I’ve ever had
7
@John My travel tastes have always been a motorbike and an open Australian road or a yacht and a rolling sea. On shorter trips, Pacific Islands. Credit cards? In the 1990s I tried using Amex to pay the bar tab at a remote Australian hotel. Really remote, not just what people call remote. Not good. Serendipity played a big part 40 years ago trying to get back to Luganville from Champagne Beach when a logging truck loomed out of the liana vines and we discovered the killing grounds of the tropical hardwoods. And during a dinosaur hunt in Outback Queensland, on a long, low trike with my eight year old grandson on the back, when a visit to the museum resulted in an invitation to a very secret dig. But I digress. Recently, at age 80, with my rather ill 83 year old husband, I spent two weeks in Noumea. New Caledonia is the most exotic place one can reach from Auckland in less than three hours. He managed several hours out of bed each day and we made the most of our rental car and the colonial French restaurants. Trip Advisor was a lifeline. First it advised us that the low key beachfront hotel we visited 30 years ago, was still there and still acceptable. Then it helped us with the restaurants. With the eye of an octogenarian, restaurant reviews are easily decoded. Our moment of serendipity was discovering Bubblenjoy and sitting on a window ledge in the street drinking fruit juice with the locals while bursting bubbles with our tongues. Thank you, Trip Advisor.
Once, I happened on a walled castle turned into a small hotel in Germany. Pressing the intercom button, I told the receptionist that I was from Cali. and was hoping to see the castle. She told me to look up the castle and its accommodations on the internet. Instead of seeing the real thing, I should do a virtual tour. Unbelievable how the internet so often replaces real life experiences!
Then again, I stumbled into a birthday party taking place in another castle, this on a bend in the Rhine river. Surrounded only by Germans, I had the time of my life!
2
When you are navigating a foreigh country on your own it is essential to have a clue. I don’t consider getting hopelessly lost two blocks from Montparnasse, after an exhausting international flight and sparse language skills, a fun time.
Do a little planning. Adventure still awaits.
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I usually go on long "adventure travel" tours ... like hiking all the war around the Torres del Paine. I admit to using the companies I already know and like.
When I try using Trip Advosor for prospective places it usually does just what Kugel dislikes.
But then it has the Forums ... which for most places are equally "more of the same". One forum, however, proved to be golden, before and after my two visits. That was the one for cruises to Antarctica and South Georgia. It gives absolutely the exact correct advice.
There are probably others I have not found.
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Actually what was once the purvey of a handful of travel writers is now done pretty well by millions of FB members; and terribly by tens of millions of others of us.
The world is filling up with people. pushed out into the wilds, both urban and rural. phone cameras catching the adventure. Maybe that same rattlesnake is photographed by ten of us as it wanders over the mountain looking for a bite to eat, a flaring rattle or two along the trail caught on a Samsung. MOTO G. Apple.And passed around on FB.
Travel writers tell tales for those who can't travel themselves; those snared by financial or family obligations, or limited by age or physical disabilities. The late Anthony Bourdain certainly was one of the best of these.
About 50 years ago I took a dangerous winter hitching trip from Belgrade, through Kosovo and along the Albanian border to Greece and then down to sunny Athens, coming close to freezing to death, and also being shot. I used parts of it in a novel but 90% just set aside. I imagine now that that trip is not reproducible; changes in the politics, ease of travel and even the fact that I would be better equipped by EMS or Eddie Bauer and in touch through my smart phone. Then I remember that the blood you spill in Pamplona (from a scraped knee of course) is the same color as that spilled back in Hemingway's day. There will just be more photos of it.
For those stops between the adventures, Trip Advisor is very helpful. LOL. Very helpful indeed.
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I loved your reminder to stay open and be spontaneous. We've always said that if nothing goes "wrong" you've got not stories. We are all polite listeners as travelers recite their itineraries upon returning home from an "adventure". But, there is rarely a real story about anything that happened or an unusual person or a great conversation.
Your article offers a good perspective on where we go in our heads when we go anywhere!
Thank you.
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I had a two month road trip across the country and to nova Scotia and beyond planned to the minute last summer. When we couldn't get into canada due to long ago indiscretions, we were left with no plans! From there on out we just headed where we felt like it and ended up having a great time! Based on that experience, I now am hard pressed to do too much planning for trips!
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My general term is 'love and logistics': not enough of either leads to failure. Trips are exemplifying episodes of life: we need plans and projects in order to let accidents also occur, and to make the most of them.
7
Most of my delightful travel memories involve the unexpected--or getting lost. Like being surrounded and stopped dead as a flock of sheep surrounded my car on a narrow road in (on?) Crete. I have been lost in Mexico, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France. All experiences provided surprises--and pleasant interactions with kind people who tried to break the language barrier to be helpful. I even got lost in the Louvre--way before selfies dominated museum experiences. I blundered into the friezes of Persepolis and was surrounded by a grandeur I would never have sought out.
Planning is good. Over-planning is not--and may make you miss the best of being in unfamiliar territory.
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@Nancy Freeman To say nothing of tasting a delicious durian custard on Bali. Had anyone recommended it, I would have shunned it. But there it was on the menu so I tried. I came home, bought a durian and tried to reproduce it.
My husband and I use Trip Advisor to avoid unpleasant travel experiences. We want cleanliness and to escape bed bugs. I don't know about resturants, but we wouldn't spend a night in a BnB, hotel, etc unless there are recent reviews about the cleanliness of the place. I'll never forget the spur of the moment vacation we took over 20 years ago. At that time, we had a bag filled with necessities in our car so that we could always just take off on a moment's notice. One time, went into a common hotel brand it south Texas. Went to the room, put my purse down on the bathroom counter and hundreds of roaches swarmed it. Luckily, other hotels around, so we demanded our money back and went to another. This one was okay, but now we would know ahead of time where decent hotels were. Unexpected usually means unwanted and unpleasant.
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"If the best travel experiences happen when things don’t go according to plan, why do we plan so much?"
(a) We plan so that time and money is spent for the best anticipated experience.
(b) Things often enough don't go according to plan. Hard to say how many become the "best" travel experiences. I had one that surely wasn't.
(c) What you're trying to say, I think, is to expect the unexpected and be open to serendipity.
That lead sentence is illogical.
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@Red Wood Exactly. Plenty of unplanned experiences aren't great, but those that are are often best remembered. I make planned and unplanned time.
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We did all our traveling before retiring based on the credo of do it while your still young.
Our most important lesson learned from distant travels is the value of your permanent home and the wisdom you used in selecting it's location.
Upon retiring eighteen years ago, we moved to the south of France and created a perfect warm cozy nest in Provence.
It was the extensive traveling that made it possible to find just the right spot for our final retirement location!
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@michael kittle Lucky you! I was in Provence every summer for many years. Egaliere, near St Remy. Paradise! Check out Netflix: Au Service de la France. Fun and funnier.
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I traveled to Europe before the internet was around. I had a great time. It wasn't America. It didn't look like or sound like America. I had some great food and some terrible food. I ate some chocolate balls filled with orange liqueur in Switzerland and got buzzed because they were filled with the real thing. I had wonderful baklava in Greece when I stopped at a local bakery on one of the islands. No selfies needed. Even better was the fact that no one had a cell phone and I wasn't ignored when I asked for directions or asked a question.
When I traveled through Spain we had lunch in small villages. Each one was excellent and different. I had several versions of paella. In Scandinavia I had the freshest seafood I've ever had and some of the best desserts. The scenery was perfect. And again, the best part was seeing and hearing people who didn't sound like Americans. One day in Sweden we spent some time looking for a nice small restaurant to eat lunch. It was one of the best lunches we had. Over 30 years later I still remember the name: Krypen Tim. That's how memories are made.
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"And again, the best part was seeing and hearing people who didn't sound like Americans."
@hen3ry
Then maybe you should move there. Or re-phrase your sentence so that it's not so offensive. I hope you didn't mean it like it sounds.
Trip advisor is ok. Adventure may happen with or without it, but it surely helps you plan your trip. Besides, books about traveling are even older than Marco Polo. Nowadays you can just have more readings and find descriptions of any place in the world, not only those that literature once presented. But the fun and the magic are still there, in the places where you will find your perfect meal, the perfect attendance, the perfect scenery and the perfect companion. None of them are in books or in internet comments. You have to go there and live them.
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Plans are never set in stone anyway. No matter how much you plan, traveling presents plenty of opportunities for your plans to go awry. Transportation issues, street closures, extreme weather, any number of unexpected situations are probably going to happen. It usually isn't necessary to deliberately look for unplanned chaos (or serendipity, depending on circumstances) -- it will find you!
TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc are tools ... it's up to you how much you want to use them. There's a lot of ground between a trip composed entirely of pre-planned guided tours to popular locations, and totally avoiding all advance planning and just hopping on a plane with zero expectations. One of the other commenters lamented the use of Google street view. Google street view has saved me from a number of potentially unpleasant and difficult travel situations. If I'm planning to catch a bus at midnight in winter in a cold climate (for example) it's good to know ahead of time whether the bus station is an actual building, or is some desolate parking lot with a sign saying "bus stop."
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Forget TA planning; perhaps one should ponder one's desire to document far-flung travel experiences to be regurgitated ad infinitum at dinner parties and/or Facebook? Is it the experience we're after or elite status signaling associated with the "authentic?" As a sometimes tour guide I note curiosity is the endangered species; travelers instead prefer to savor the broadcasting of their "unique" adventures. In my own circle, the moment I hear "...the time i was hiking on the Tibetan plateau and a yak herder came up..." I gird for nauseous pomposity and am rarely disappointed. I would offer that the travel stories which should be told are the ones never mentioned, and the ones crowed about are the ones that should remain personal. Take a page from Guy Debord, the greatest travel stories are probably less than three blocks away.
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@Greg - Sorry to read that it's such an unpleasant experience for you to hear about your friends' travel adventures.
For me the trip experience definitely comes first. But recounting the best bits to friends does afford me with a pleasant chance to relive the happy memories.
I'll probably never do an African photo safari. But some wealthy friends of mine did, in high style, higher than I expect ever to aspire to. It was a real pleasure to listen to their stories, not the least because it's probably the closest I'll get to it myself.
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"Take a page from Guy Debord, the greatest travel stories are probably less than three blocks away."
@Greg - or from Thoreau, who traveled "a good deal" in Concord.
I'm a planner but I still agree with the writer. Many years ago I was travelling on my own through Ireland. I had finished my planned stay at one b&b and could not extend because a wedding party was arriving. The hostess told me there was a place on the other side of the island that was a little strange but might be available. She was right on both counts. It was really odd, very creepy but the host was nice and this side of the island was very wild. A great experience all around and if trip advisor existed back then, I never would have purposefully gone there.
9
Twenty years ago, there was a private sculpture garden in Torcello, and island near Venice. My partner and I stumbled onto it by chance. The owner graciously let us keep looking, even after telling us it was private. That's the sort of non-guidebook experience you have to stumble into.
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My wife and I have traveled extensively all over the world (OK, mostly Europe!) since we met in 1980. Eurail passes, cheap hotels, and only the occasional pre-booking by fax. As we've gotten older, we find that we have increased our pre-planning - often to avoid unpleasant accommodations that would have seemed quaint to us in our earlier years. Example: the lovely B&B above the village pub in Ireland that seemed to have a Trip Advisor consensus having to do with the smell of beer and old smoke in the rooms. In our 20's, no problem. In our 60's, not so much.
No great point here, other than sites such as TA and Yelp offer a useful service to travelers for whom a good night's sleep is important to the overall enjoyment of the trip. We have yet to find lodging (or restaurant) with many reviews and an overall rating of 4/5 to be disappointing. Just go out of your way to engage with locals and fellow travelers, and the good memories will abound!
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I travel quite a bit, & love TA for not just the info- but you can speak directly w/locals and intrepid travelers who are happy to answer question & offer suggestions. As someone else noted, TA (along w/ other sites NYT as well!) enable those of us who do plan to make a healthy outline of where we might go, places to stay, etc....From there we can all adjust w/ the moment. I don't believe for a second that the food suggestions are just copied from Yelp - but actual experiences that others have had and shared.
Once my basic routes & places to stay are arranged, then we wake up each day w/ options & many include new ideas and spontaneous suggestions from folks we meet along the way.....nothing static about that.
10
We go to europe off season for a month every year. My husband has medical problems and has trouble with stairs and grades...that said, we book hotels ONLY for our first night, a place in the city center so we can stroll after a very long flight and next to the airport on our last night. Otherwise the only other planning is hotels in big cities, looking for location and price as our priorities. The rest of the time is us, in a car, exploring. Getting lost becomes an adventure as you try to ask directions when there is no common language, They call their friends in and soon there is a scrum around our car as everyone is talking at once. A map, some colored markers....point out where you want to go and let them do the rest. In Rome 4 Caribinarrie tried to explain how to direct us around Termini station, after they argued for a while 1 officer stopped everything, went over and removed a traffic barrier and waved us through with a bow. Laughs were on everyone's faces...we are certain they would deny it to any superior who asked. Our best meals were eating with the locals , often the cook would come out from the kitchen with a specialty made "so the Americans could taste"". Shop in the local stores, go to the markets. If you travel to check things off on your list...plan. If you go to experience another culture, people, food, scenery, local crafts... wander and explore. Don't worry about language, you'll manage quite well with a smile and pointing.
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@Mountainweaver, makes me think that the next stranger to ask me for directions I’ll point in the opposite direction just to heighten their experience. It’s the least I could do.
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@John Doe
LOL. Your a bad man John Doe
J
Too many travel advisors do indeed spoil the trip. I remember in the early days of "virtual tourist;" it was a quirky source of local recommendations, really personal, whichwere genuinely helpful. But I've fallen into overplanning - FOMO? What's the other one - Fear of not getting the best? FOBO?
On one trip that worked -about a third of the trip was a road trip thru a section of France, where the only real parameter was making it to to Basel by a date certain.
In another journey, I was torn between the desire not to "miss important sites" and wanting to tear Rick Steves' guide book out of the hands of my very organized friend. On the other hand, we only had a week - - a very compressed trip.
Some help is valuable - especially in getting oriented, or very special interests, or if someone has physical limitations requiring you to scope out accommodations and sites ahead of time.
But a trip with no surprises is - too much like daily life.
8
The author never traveled with my wife. But I agree re: trip advisor/zagat/yelp reviews. Some are OK but the majority seem to come from people who just want to get their say in with anything out of the ordinary being "unacceptable"
But I will plan my vacation, carefully. It is when things go awry that "the fun" can begin -- and yes that has happened.
We share with trip advisor only when a meal or experience is great, and we feel that if we don’t share it the establishment will go out of business for lack of customers. We do it for the proprietor, not the tourist too lazy or unadventurous to try something new.
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I also try to take possible bias of the reviewer when deciding where to go; while for years Lonely Planet provided the balance between planning (if at all) and serendipity, I found that whenever it advised not to bother with a particular place because there was nothing to do there, it was, in fact, just the place to visit.
We alit in a tiny town on Borneo, surrounded by jungle, during Ramadan and despaired of finding a place for a meal; we hesitatingly accepted an invitation from a young man’s home as we were walking by. (Normally this would not be the sort of thing we would do)
Inside we were met with a family in holiday attire, beckoning us to partake of a pile of cakes and other sweets. We laughed at ourselves in our dingy tops and shorts as they oohed and aahed about us coming from fashionable France.
We learned much about enjoying life’s simple pleasures as the father, a teacher, told us that, although he knew there was much out in the world one could acquire, they were very happy living as they were.
We also wandered into a small temple, and were met by the monk, who told us stories about the symbolism of chopsticks as they relate to yin and yang.
While it is also true that I’ve had many ‘adventures’ that were nightmarish at the time, only to become highlight reels after the trip, there are many wonderful, exhilirating experiences to be had by not following anyone’s advice, except your own sense of exploration and openness.
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Your point is well taken: allow for serendipity.
But NO! Boiled peanuts are sublime when prepared properly and eaten in season! Perhaps you had better consult a guide to find out when that is? And PS Tripadvisor has been a virtual revolution in hotel quality in France, among others. All the old "palaces" living on their past have been completely renovated. Suddenly, formerly impudent staff are stopping to consider how their remarks are going to look in black and white. Sunshine is a wonderful disinfectant!
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@Geezer
Thank you for sticking up for the humble boiled peanut! My grandmother, a likelong resident of South Carolina, instilled in me an appreciation for the properly prepared boiled fresh green peanut (the dried peanut as a base was anathema to her). Your choice of the word "sublime" is spot-on.
5
Terrific column today. Thanks Seth. I have now cancelled all the guided tours I had booked. I can explore the British Isles by myself as a solo traveler and not have to observe groups on their mobile devices and cameras and listening to what they had for breakfast and...
4
I have made many trips to exotic and more common destinations in the US and abroad, all of which were preceded by careful planning yet managed to provide many enjoyable moments of serendipity.
Invest thousands of dollars on a time-limited vacation without careful planning? I don't think most travelers will buy such a silly idea.
Recent travel columns in the NYT have shown writers going to one country during its most crowded and hottest season when shoulder seasons would provide a much more pleasant experience; missing many of a city's major attractions because they were closed for an extended local holiday; visiting a winter resort in the summer; spending five days in an undistinguished wine region; and staying a long commute from a happening city center to save a few dollars on an AirBnB. These are rookie mistakes, all of which could have been avoided with careful planning.
All travel reviews and guides, even those in the NYT, need to be taken with several grains of salt. However, the wise traveler consults--and evaluates--a variety of human and written resources to get the lay of the land before setting sail or taking flight.
And, by the way, remember that serendipity and planning are not mutually exclusive--lots of room for both for those who have open minds.
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@Mon Ray Just a note about going in the hottest season. Most people with children really don't have a choice of when to go on vacation. Sure, a place may be nicer in October, but the kids will be in school. That's not a "rookie mistake" - it's just the way things are.
1
I concur. My favorite travel stories are all spontaneous, like the midnight violin solo by a musician in St. Mark's Square (Venice) after rain closed the cafe. Or finding the best ragu in a tiny restaurant near our B&B in Amsterdam. But Trip Advisor does make planning the basic bones of a trip waaayy easier than it was in the pre-internet era.
5
I am not telling TripAdvisor about any of my favorite destinations, nor restaurants. And know I am not alone in this.
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@Cat Why not? Do you think they will be the same forever? Don't you think that sharing is ok? Yes, some places must be preserved, I understand. However, I have recently highly recommended a restaurant where I ate a wonderful salmon in Portugal with a very nice service. Why? Because they were empty - I would never figure why - and I want them to survive until my next trip to there.
6
I'm happy to help small restaurants improve their rating and find new customers. It's a tough business. So I always rate my fave places and finds.
1
Seth, so enjoyed your travel experiences. When my husband and I travel, we do a combo of spontaneous meandering and Trip Advisor/Rick Steves recommendations. My husband has diabetes and I have a knee issue, so it's always comforting to know we will have a snug hotel room with a healthy breakfast waiting for us. We are taking off again for Europe in a couple of weeks. We'll avoid tourist traps like the Blarney Stone, but definitely will see Anne Frank's (big tourist destination) in Amsterdam because it's meaningful to us. And, yes.....we'll come back with plenty of travel tales to share with family.
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@Kathy Berger
The Ann Frank "museum" is a new building facade on top of an old fire trap of a building. It's claustrophobic, narrow, steep staircases are crowded with tourists and I think, difficult to maneuver for someone with a bad knee.
I found it interesting but I also have to tell you, I couldn't wait to get out of there.
3
Why do I plan? Because it's fun.
And for every good spontaneous experience, there's at least one bad one. For someone who travels as much as the author that's probably ok, but for those of us with limited vacation time not so much.
Also the rise of review sites has compelled the travel industry to up its game.
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@Phil - my sister plans. I don't. I've never had a bad travel experience that was the result of the lack of a plan.
1
My wife and I took my mother and our 15 year old son to Italy one summer. We flew to Rome, rented a car and headed up to Florence. It was the middle of the afternoon, we were hungry and so we stopped in Orvieto to grab a bite. The road-side restaurant was closed, but the owners assured us they could put something together. It was perfectly done fried zucchini and pasta and remains the most memorable meal of the entire vacation.
13
TripAdvisor is an excellent source for identifying places you do not want to go. That specially museum that contains two rooms and all the pictures are on trip advisor. Or learning that there are thousands steep steps to get to the thing you want to see. Having said that the authors point is well taken. My best experiences have often been the unexpected as well.
7
" if the best travel experiences happen when things don’t go according to plan"
For the most part this is false.
1) Most unexpected travel experiences are nightmares
2) People like to romanticize vacation nightmares in retrospect, but the fact is they are nightmares for a reason
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@Marion Grace Merriweather I disagree. Although we plan our trips months in advance, many memorable experiences happend unexpectedly. That hidden nice restaurant in the middle of nowhwere. That nice little town near the little airport where we regretted staying only one night in that warm welcoming B&B. The awful trip to Niagara Falls by bus, when the traffic jam made us talk and befriend our fellow traveler for life. And many more...
2
We spend a fair amount of time in Sicily and some of favorite memories are from meals we had at little restaurants in tiny hamlets that didn't appear on Trip Advisor and had almost no other customers while we were there. The proprietors are usually friendly, the pace is quiet, the views are often quaint and charming, and you get a real flavor for the people that you don't usually find in a crowded urban restaurant. While what you get isn't necessarily competing with the great chefs of the world, home-style Sicilian cooking with local wine and a chat with someone that lives in a rural town of 100 people can be a great way to spend time on your trip.
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"if the best travel experiences happen when things don’t go according to plan, why do we plan so much?".....Because the worst travel experiences also happen when you don't plan.
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@W.A. Spitzer We plan so much because we’re scared.
@W.A. Spitzer - Can't say I've ever had a "bad" travel experience except crossing paths a few times with petty crime on the Paris Metro.
As a frequent user & contributor of Trip Advisor (I travel for work, and use it mostly for lodging recommendations) I see where you’re coming from here. So many people can just use online recommendations as de facto decision making, yet I am a big fan of not planning vacations except for some “anchor” spots for either sleeping or eating, and relying more on discovering places by happenstance as you’ve noted here. My wife and I take vacations a few times each year, and truly enjoy discovering new venues in unfamiliar places, and when truly unsure we will refer to TA or Yelp for a suggestion, but we don’t take the rankings or stars as sacred. What’s the fun in that, right? Thanks for helping to reinforce that practice Seth, and safe travels!
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@Mark Lindzy
"we don’t take the rankings or stars as sacred. "
That's excellent advice. I'll look beyond the star rating to see why people gave it that rating. We once stayed at a hotel in a small French city that had a mediocre overall score, but as I went through the comments, I saw that a lot of the negatives were because the rooms had no hair dryers, and other things I didn't care about. It turned out to be a fantastic stay. On the other hand, if a place had mostly 1 or 2 stars on TA, I probably wouldn't even bother to look further at it. And it probably would already be out of business.
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Years ago, my husband and I asked a local where we could find a beach near the town of Corfu. He barely spoke English and I had maybe ten words of Greek, but we decided to take our chances. We walked half an hour to the landmark he had provided. It led us down a steep path toward the beach. On our way down, we passed a fig tree ripe with fruit and a small waterfall where we filled our bottles. Eating figs, along with our rolls and yogurt and drinking our (clean,, good-tasting ) water, we lolled on the beach the whole day. After our 30 minute walk back to town, we slept the sleep of the exhausted. I've never forgotten that glorious day, precipitated by a chance conversation in sign language and a little bit of elementary English.
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Well played, Ruby !
You did real good.
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GREAT article! I, like you, have always loved travel and spontaneity. I did go to Ulaanbaatar, with only a hotel planned and no idea of what to see. Wandering, getting lost, NOT using a cell phone was part of my generation, but some of us have more wandering spirits among us than others.
I related to and applauded your ideas.
Thanks for trying to keep this spirit of wanderlust alive!
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Last year in March I spent a week in Saumur, France. I had a modest hotel picked out, across the street from the train station. The next morning I found a bike shop in town where I could rent a bike. I kept it for the week, heading off in various directions each day, with no particular plan except a vague idea of a turn-around destination, and a good, paper map. I prefer those over phone maps because I like to see the big picture.
One day my turn-around point was overly ambitious and I really didn't have the energy to return back to the hotel. So I found a gite in the village at my turn-around point and had one of the loveliest evenings of my trip.
On another day I planned my trip to pass by one of the dozens of nameless, privately owned chateaux that dot the countryside. I'd passed by a few, with gates closed, obviously not welcoming visitors but a pleasure to see even from the road. This one had its gates open though, and a gite sign. So I knew it was okay to go in. I wandered around the grounds a bit. Then a burly old Scottish gentleman invited me in and showed me around. The wife fixed me a "cuppa tay" and we chatted for over an hour. The ran it as a B&B, as their retirement occupation.
Nice thing about having only a vague plan (the turn-around destination) is that you find the things you didn't know were there.
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Years ago when I was spending part of the winter studying in Italy we had gone to Sicily for a "field trip" and had several hours to kill in Messina before we got our boat train back to Rome. My husband was with me and we were looking for a nice bistro or trattoria for a meal before our scheduled departure. My husband's rule of thumb for picking a good restaurant was whether or not they had white table cloths. So we found one and entered, not worrying that there seemed to be no other customers since it was early evening. We sat and finally a man came out and we explained that we wanted a meal. He seemed reluctant and grumpy but finally produced a menu of sorts and we ordered. It took forever and what food was eventually brought was inedible. We gave up, paid and left, finally convinced that what we had stumbled into was a Mafia money laundering facility and not a restaurant at all! So my advice is that when traveling in iffy parts of the world, check Travel Adviser!
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No, the lesson from this is to avoid empty restaurants with owners who don't want you there. And I have a hard time seeing Sicily (a wonderful destination) as generally "iffy", although I suppose parts of Messina might be.
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@Julie Carter - Julie, if the implication is that Sicily is iffy for food, I strongly disagree. I've found it to be among the most consistently good anywhere. Sorry your experience was bad. The fact that you once had bad food doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of really good places that aren't on TA or aren't properly appreciated there. And good reviews don't necessarily make it less risky. I have seen plenty of reviews from out of towners on restaurants I know well where I live that I think are totally off base, good and bad. When I see reviews giving Domino's a 5* and an artisan wood-fired pizzeria a 2* primarily based on cheese quantity and portion sizes, you realize that not everyone appreciates the same thing in a restaurant. Some adventure is good, even if less than 100% of them pan out. It makes life memorable.
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@Julie Carter
But you ended up with a quirky story to tell! Isn't that half the fun?
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So true. Weird to watch tourists in NYC spending more time staring at their phones than looking around. And don't get me started on Google Street View! Really, why go anywhere?
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@Loon
I find Google Street View to be great for figuring out things like where parking is near where you're staying or locating something that won't appear on a map, like a winery in the countryside.
I wonder how many people really tightly plan their trips. I, and many people I know, have a skeletal plan with a few places we definitely want to see, and that's about it. Tripadvisor is helpful in getting real user experience, which tone down the guidebooks' and websites' glorious descriptions.
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