In the past, I’ve had a tendency to go overboard with my itineraries. For our honeymoon – and no exaggeration here – I created an hour by hour itinerary for our 21-day trip to 6 cities across Europe. The trip was amazing and I think a big part of that was all the planning I did, but I’m not going to lie… it was exhausting. That said, on our recent trip to Whistler I went a different route.
The Travel Menu
While I usually use spreadsheets for my planning, this time I decided to take it easy. The trip was a surprise for Garrett’s birthday; I wanted it to be relaxing and exactly what he wanted. However, since it was a surprise, I couldn’t ask him exactly what he wanted! Enter: the menu itinerary. It looks something like this:
Essentially, it’s a list of several different types of activities with variations for each type. It covers enough options for 1-2 main activities, low energy options and more adventurous options. And of course, if Garrett had wanted to go off menu, that’s always an option too! I included the one planned activity I had scheduled (Vallea Lumina) on the menu too.
When we arrived at the hotel on Friday night, I put the menu on the bed when Garrett wasn’t looking so he could select his choices for the following day. We sat down and looked through it and picked what we wanted to do.
How did it go?
On Saturday, we got up and went on our morning hike. Afterwards, we returned to the menu to see what we wanted to do in the moment. This allowed us to see how we were feeling and choose what we really wanted to do in the moment; not something I had written down a month ago because I thought it seemed cool. Our trip was totally effortless, relaxing, and exactly what we wanted it to be in the moment.
Menu vs Itinerary
Even though our menu was awesome and led to a great trip, I’m not exactly ready to throw away my spreadsheets. Since Whistler is only a few hours from home, there wasn’t a lot of pressure to “Do Everything.” We know we could go back any weekend, and therefore the laid-back style of the menu worked well. On our upcoming trip to Japan… we’ll definitely be using a detailed itinerary!
What do you think? Do you tend to go with the menu when you travel, or an itinerary? I would love to hear what has worked best for you in the past and if you would ever do a menu on longer trips to abroad!
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