The more vacations I take it seems, the more and more obsessive I get about planning every last detail.
I guess the habit first started out during our first trip to Europe - to Paris and Rome. We stayed in some flea-ridden hotel in Paris I picked out at the last minute and then something better in Rome (The Beehive - book the double room if you can. I loved this little place - clean, beautifully appointed, and its location right opposite the main train/bus station), but still, we shared a dorm with a couple other people, and generally did not enjoy the best the cities had to offer. Sure, I had read a ton of tips online before going - the best 3-day itinerary, how to save money by surviving on crepes and kebabs in Paris, which city pass we should get (just the metro ones IMHO, there are only so many museums one can stomach in 3 days), cautionary tales of child pickpockets when lining up to enter The Vatican...but I realised soon after that we somewhat missed some of the very essence of where we were going - Paris especially. Why oh why did I not go to Laduree??
There was our trip to Singapore and Universal Studios, where we regretted not getting the express pass and ended up having to queue for everything in the crazy heat.
And the last trip to India, out of fear of being stranded in the middle of nowhere helpless, the real planner/obsessive in me came unleashed. I booked our train tickets online waaayyyyy in advance (First Class, I might add. Doesn't cost much - and totally worth the money). I read and read BOTH Lonely Planet and Rough Guide books, mapped out our itineraries, even took down notes from TripAdvisor on where to seek out the best wood print fabrics (Anokhi hands down, by the way - for the workmanship, quality and styling) and good restaurants. I fretted about not being able to book my favoured hotel (also courtesy of TripAdvisor - and all the excellent reviers are true by the way), finally managing to confirm our reservations after changing a couple of dates. I booked, cancelled, rebooked, cancelled again and re-re-booked our train tickets from Delhi to Agra to Delhi again, to Jaipur. I printed out our hotel reservations, our train and plane tickets and filed them in a plastic binder to tote to India.
Now that I am fortunate enough to be able to pay Europe another visit, I am even more determined to make the most of all my time there. This time we are going to Seville, capital of Andalusia (Southern Spain I guess) and Venezia. Oh, and we're going to spend a night and half a day in London before taking off.
So here's what I came up with:
1) I've already placed my online order with Harvey Nichols for my hot chocolate, Mariage Freres tea and yellow tea submarine, having them delivered to AK's hotel. Tip for serial shoppers with friends who travel to places you can't - big department stores in the UK and the US most often have online purchasing and can deliver to your friend's hotel - just get your pal to tell the front desk to look out for it. Harvey Nicks sent me endless updates on the status of my orders - packed, despatched, delivered and signed for. I chose the 1-day delivery which cost slightly more than the normal 3 - 5 day one, and they were true to their promise.
2) Since we have so little time in London, I narrowed my itinerary down to only one must-visit, and a few options. Now of course I booked my hotel in London already, strategically situated near the Liverpool St. Station, the central London station where the Stansted Express train stops at. We will be departing from Stansted Airport to Seville, so it makes sense to live nearby the station so we can check out in the morning, leave our luggage at the hotel, go shopping and have lunch, then come back to the hotel to get our luggage and depart straight to the airport instead of dragging the bags through a couple of interchanges. The London Tube is infamous for its stations not being pedestrian/travel/disabled friendly, so I decided to take no chances.
Now if I had to choose one place in London I had to go to, it would be the Anthropologie store in Regent Street, so I mapped out our route there to and from Liverpool St.! Crucial to avoid wastage of my precious shopping time. Oh, what do want to buy? Six of these, two in green and four clear ones :).
3) The last time we were in Barcelona we both felt that we had a bit too much time to spend there. So this time in Seville I booked us a day trip to nearby Cordoba, where we'll visit the Mezquita Mosque and walk the old city. Turns out most of Seville's attractions (The Cathedral, the Alcazar) are closed on Mondays anyway so it would be a perfect time for a day trip to another Southern Spanish town. I booked our tickets via the Rail Europe website, which was easier to navigate than the Spanish national train service, Renfe's.
4) I also checked out happennings in Seville. With the Euro being at its all time low against our currency, I thought that this is as good a time as any to indulge in something that we wouldn't normally do - catch a football match, some kind of seasonal performance. Turns out the famed Cirque du Soleil is in Seville, and ending on our first day there! Guess it was meant to be. So I booked us tickets and printed out the map to the venue.
5) I also booked our seats for a flamenco performance. Would've booked us tickets to see a bullfight too but they're not fighting in Seville in October :( Oh well, moral dilemma resolved.
Update: Turns out advance booking (at least a day in advance) is a must for the top-rated shows! We tried to get into another performance nearer to our B & B and it was all fully booked two hours before the show, so thank goodness for the one I booked online.
6) Phew, am not done. I read that Venice can be really overcrowded with tourists and long lines to enter the attractions are more common than not. So I bought us Museum Passes from veniceconnected. This way I save 2 Euros per person, and won't have to line up for tickets nor for entry. Score. I was sorely tempted to get vaporetto and bus passes as well, but am not sure if we will really need them and at 40 Euros per pass, best to get there first and assess the situation first. (Update: Unless your hotel is really far away in Cannaregio, or you have issues climbing stairs/walking, or lugging a ton of stuff, I'd say you don't need it. The city is small enough. We stayed near the Accademia and had no trouble trekking every day to St. Mark's Square and Rialto areas to shop/see/eat. Plus the vaporetto's are really slow, up to the point of being annoying. I much prefer trekking on foot to my own pace.)
And of course, naturally I printed out all our Ryanair boarding passes, hotel bookings, etc. Now that's just being responsible.
No comments:
Post a Comment