This post will remain a work-in-progress for a while, and will look a bit crazy and disorganized until it's in its final form. My goal is to create a list of important matters - and some little ones, too - that my cousin and I had to consider and discuss over in the months and weeks before our meet-up in Europe. I had not seen him in seven years, and he was going to join me on trip to Southern Spain and Portugal. And this was going to be a trip we created together - not a group tour. I will also share some of the online resources and tools that we used and how we collaborated to make key decisions. Decisions have to be made at some point.
Here are some possible things you might have to talk through: What if one person enjoys going out at night while the other likes to sleeps in? How do you work out paying for things together? What if one of you is a vegan or wants to eat just street food? What if three hours in a museum is heavenly to you, but boring to your travel partner? How do you decide on who gets what room if you share an Airbnb? What if one of you has way more experience traveling? What's the plan for looking out for each other and your things while you are in transit? How much and in what way do you want to use your smartphones? What if you want to travel by bus from destination to destination, but your friend wants to splurge a bit or save time by flying?
Traveling is an education. And traveling with another person is a real test. It could be very rewarding, could be a nightmare or something sort of in-between. Going by yourself or with your significant other is much easier (most of the time) simply due to familiarity with yourself and your partner. But with somebody new, you have to really consider that person's interests, mode of living, pressures and responsibilities back home, expectations, idiosyncrasies, etc., to a much greater degree. How you manage this together could make or break a trip. I hope that this informal guide will motivate and help you to plan your own journey with someone.
If you want to see all the photos and videos from our trip, and in the order in which we did things, click Europe Trip 2019 in the right sidebar, then scroll down each page. To follow through to the end of the trip, click Older Posts at the bottom of each page.
Lil Prince didn't go on the trip, but I did joke that he had never played Ronda's bullfighting arena and was going back out on tour.
No comments:
Post a Comment