Your travel style...

As I set the itinerary for our vacation to Italy / Sicily I keep reminding myself that we did NOT do a guided tour bc we wanted to do the trip at our leisure.

I have traveled a lot and to me it is more important that I enjoy myself, get a sense of the city, stroll, discover, wander then I see every site that a book says you MUST see.

I am trying to strike a balance here though bc I have been to all the cities and seen manyof the sites, whereas this is DH's first time. So I want him to see the important things but I also want him to feel like he had a vacation and did not run himself down going from museum to museum.

So tell me what is YOUR travel style?

Re: Your travel style...

DH and I traveled quite a bit before starting a family.

We did a mix of both. We did alot of sightseeing on our own with the help of travel books prior to leaving on our trips.

We also would do a day or two of a guided tour as well, depending on where we were going.

When we did Costa Rica - We did many things on our own, but knew that we'd be better off with a guided tour for certain things.

Same for when we did parts of Europe as well.

Re: Your travel style...

My husband and I are what I all "wanderers" we quite like to see all the touristy thingsin one go (often doing a hop on hop off type thing for one day) and then just wandering around certain areas, and we also are big fans of sidewalk cafes and anywhere we can people watch. We aren't really interested in sightseeing too much.

Re: Your travel style...

We wander and like to find things and explore on our own - I am not interested on going on 'vacation' to have to be out of bed at x time, at breakfast at y time and on a bus w/ 50 other people at z time .........I even hate to make dinner reservations in advance b/c then you 'have to be there' at a certain time
I spend every day rushing - alarm daycare, train, city, work, meetings, phones, train, daycare, dinner, bath, laundry, shopping - do this now, fit this in here, make sure you get this done -

HELL NO - when I'm on vacation I want to R E L A X ........Even if I'm walking 10 miles a day all over Rome, as long as I don't HAVE TO be anywhere, I'm relaxing !!

Re: Your travel style...

I liked to plan ahead for our vacations and know what we're going to be doing. But I think for the most part we keep things at our leisure.

Last big vacay we did was to London & Paris - and while I knew generally what I wanted to do on certain days, there was no set schedule. Tried to make sure that if we were visiting a certain part of the city on any day, that we only went to certain landmarks & museums in that area, so as to not have to travel so much.

We did a hop on/hop off river boat tour on one day, and a walking tour on another....but everything else was just good old fashioned wandering and using my trusty guide books with maps and ideas.

Re: Your travel style...

I would say for the most part, we'll have one tour booked per location, and the rest of the time we'll "wander". We rather book a tour when we get to the location. We don't like having our whole vacation booked up with stuff, because we want to be able to go at our own pace. In Rome we did the hop on/hop off bus which was perfect. We got to go see what we wanted to at our pace, rather than a guided tour.

Re: Your travel style...

We do some sightseeing, but it depends where we are. If we are in Europe, we just skip the churches now. We like museums, so we decide on one or two museums we both like. Lately our primary focus while vacationing is hiking or cycling and food.

Re: Your travel style...

For the most part, we like to plan our days ourselves and pick our own itineraries. I wouldn't do a tour in Italy.

However, I've done my fair share of tours. I like to do tours when I have limited time in a city and/or I'm in an area where I don't feel that safe. I've done tours in Egypt, Morocco, India, rainforest in Costa Rica. I've also booked a few trips with a tour group - Greece/Turkey and Europe. The tour group would organize all the hotels and transportation and you could explore at your own leisure.

Re: Your travel style...

We sightsee and plan ahead of time with books and internet guides but we do everything on our own. We like to move at our own pace and do what we want when we want.