THE PLANNING
Planning our first ever overseas experience was an experience in itself. In fact, I have to say it was actually quite enjoyable. However, despite many hours of looking at maps, watching youtube videos and many more hours put in by my lovely wife Di looking into the finer details of places of interest and their locations, I’m not convinced we really nailed it. On one hand I wonder if we should have put even more time into detailing where we were to visit, the days and times and exact costs – and maybe this would have led to even greater experiences than what we had, or on the other hand I wonder if it is better not to plan with so much detail. In other words, would it be better to just book the first three or four places of accommodation, then see where the wondrous adventure of travel would take you? It is fair to say the jury is out on this, but if we do decide to follow the second option on our next lot of travels it would definitely be best to do that in non-peak and definitely non-school holiday times of the year so the accommodation options you will need to book at shorter notice will actually be available. Also take note the closer the date you book to the dates you are staying, the more expensive they usually are!
The mistakes? As the saying goes, we learn more from our mistakes than our successes, or at least I think that’s the saying, or am I mistaken? Either way, for me I think the mistakes did teach us a lot about what to and not to do on our future travels. In no particular order, here are a few of them.
- Not putting enough thought into stopovers. In our case, the stopovers were between long haul flights, firstly Auckland to Los Angeles, then Los Angeles to London. On the way back it was London to Hong Kong, then Hong Kong to Auckland. On the Los Angeles stopover we gave ourselves just over four hours there arriving from about a twelve hour flight to then boarding the next twelve hour flight. Return the stopover was even shorter at Hong Kong with just a couple of hours between the two long flights. So what will we do differently next time? My thinking is we stay at least two nights at each stopover, that way we can rest up from the first long flight, and also have a full day or two to have a quick look around that city.
- Not looking into when school holidays are on in the destination countries. Ironically the first dates we looked at doing our travels in were mostly outside of the school holidays, but then after getting some advice that the following month was way better to travel in around the UK and Europe, we jumped straight into changing our dates as advised, and only after we had been in the UK for a couple of days did we realise we had landed straight into the peek school holiday period. Next time – we will carefully look at the dates of school and public holidays and do our best to avoid them!
- Low to mid price accommodation options are mostly fine – but it’s nice to have a little luxury along the way. The majority of our accommodation that we booked, while not the very low end budget options that can be found such as in hostels and backpackers, were predominantly the lower to middle priced options. To be fair the majority of them were more than comfortable for just the two of u, and some could even be described as actually pretty nice. But, after about week three we began to get a little anxious as we would approach our next accommodation destination knowing it was likely to be another quite small room, with few if any of the features that many of the middle to high end options would have. The learning here is, if you have enough in the budget and you are travelling for a period of time where you will be staying at twelve or more different accommodations, make every fourth stay a nicer one, with maybe the last one being a little longer and a little more comfortable. A side learning here is by the time you reach that final destination you will be pretty tired and want to wind down and rest a little before embarking on the journey home, so do it with some real comfort in mind.
- Not planning for all the goodies to be brought home. I am sure we aren’t alone in wanting to grab a souvenir or two from each place you visit when on an overseas holiday, after all they help evoke memories and you get to take home a little piece of the holiday with you. However, if you were not smart enough to book an additional suitcase on the return flights, it becomes an expensive exercise. In our case we paid over $350 in excess baggage fees for just one medium size suitcase. Ouch! Lesson learnt – when you book your flights, unless you don’t plan on bringing home much more than a handful of magnets and a couple of sticks of rock candy, book an additional suitcase for your trip home – and towards the end of your holiday purchase a cheap extra case to cram everything into.
- Underestimating the amount of time needed to really explore a favourite destination. Though we weren’t too upset about the amount of time we allocated to each destination to look around, we could have done a little better. For example, two nights in a small town with maybe only 3 or 4 particular sights to see is usually ok, but any more than that and also wanting to explore more in depth around the local area, then 3 nights should be the minimum you set aside. We only spent a day and a half in Paris, and though it was just barely enough time to have a quick look around the Louvre museum (actually a look around about 10% of it – it is gigantic!), the Eiffel tower and the Arc de Triomphe, we really should have spent an additional 3 to 4 days to have a look around all of the city of Paris, and see a little of the outskirts. Better still would have been 6 to 8 days to also have a look at some of the small rural towns.
Our Kiwi ratings
To help give a general idea of the quality of some of the places we visited, and services we used, we have come up with our own rating system we are calling “Kiwis” These ratings fall between 1 and 10 kiwis. 10 = Excellent! 8 and 9 = Great. 7 – Fairly good. 5 and 6 – Ok, but not the best. 3 and 4 – Below average. 2 and 3. Very poor. 1 = Don’t even think about going there! Another way of interpreting our ratings is – if we gave the location or business 8 kiwis for example, this would suggest 8 out of 10 kiwis would enjoy it, 2 out of 10 would suggest only 2 kiwis in 10 would like it.