Successful trip planning can be a complex and involved process. Check out these guides on how to put together an excellent vacation!
Now that you know where you’re headed (see Part 1: Deciding on a Destination), where you’ll be staying, and what types of things you’d like to do (see Part 2: Where to Stay and What to Do)…next up is building a rough itinerary!
Why do you need an itinerary?
Isn’t a list of things you’re interested in doing enough?
Yes…and no.
Your list of potential things to do and the associated map of where these activities are located are great resources for building your itinerary. However, for a smooth vacation, they’re not likely to be enough.
First and foremost, your list probably includes far too many activities to comfortably fit into the timeframe of your vacation…a rushed vacation isn’t relaxing for anyone. It also doesn’t address when these activities are open and available…it’s never any fun to arrive at something you really want to do, only to find out they’re closed. Nor does it put activities into a logical order…that keeps you from dashing all over town.
An itinerary (even a rough one) helps organize your ideas into a workable plan.
Prioritizing Activities
The first thing I like to do when starting to build an itinerary is to prioritize the things that I really want to do.
Step one is to figure out how many days you have to enjoy at your destination. Depending on your travel arrangements, these may or may not include part of your travel days. For instance, if my flight gets in at 8 am, I basically have all day to enjoy…but if I don’t arrive until late afternoon/early evening after a full day of travel, it’s likely all I’m going to be good for is dinner and an early bedtime so that I’m ready to go the following morning.
Next, take a look at your list and rank the activities as either ‘must see’ or ‘would be nice to see.’ This will help you prioritize the activities as you go forward. If you’re travelling with a group, it’s a great idea to have each person list a couple ‘must see’ activities and a couple ‘would be nice to see’ activities. This helps ensure that you include something in the itinerary for everyone.
Now pare down your list to fit the number of days you have available. I recommend limiting your choice to 2 major activities (ones likely to take 3+ hours) or 3 minor activities (1-2 hours each) per day. Prioritize the ‘must see’ activities first! You’re not assigning specific days for these activities at this point, just figuring out what you can reasonably do in the time that you have. It’s a good idea to pick a couple ‘extra’ activities as well in case you need to make changes later on.
It’s okay to not be able to fit everything in! Consider this a reason to come back. (Even if your destination isn’t Disney, I highly recommend reading ‘The absolute most important thing to know about your trip to Disney World…‘ hint: it doesn’t have anything to do with which hotel to stay at…the best advance dining reservations to get…or which rides need a FastPass)
Grouping Activities
Once you have a general idea of what items you’ll be putting on your itinerary, it’s important to group these into activities that are relatively close together as much as possible. Doing so keeps you from wasting a lot of time travelling from place to place! The map that you put together to help decide where to stay can be really useful for this task. Map out your activities and take note of the ones that cluster together in particular areas.
Activity Open Hours
Finally, you need to do a little research on your activities and figure out when each one is open. While this seems tedious, it helps with figuring out when to schedule certain activities on your itinerary. If a museum you really want to see is closed on Mondays, it’s important to make sure that you don’t inadvertently schedule it on that day of the week! Or if a location has extra late hours on a certain day, that might be the perfect time to fit it into your schedule!
Putting Together the Puzzle
Here comes the hard part…piecing together your itinerary puzzle.
Keep in mind the activities you want to prioritize, where these are located, and when they are open. Then start to slot these into a rough itinerary. So that I’m not exhausted, I break the day into morning and afternoon sections…and try to schedule one major activity or two minor activities (that are ideally close to one another) per section.
It may take some trial and error or some creative shifting to get things to fit best.
Do. Not. Panic. Just because you’re putting things down on an itinerary, you are not committing to them. You can change your plan right up to the last moment if you want (unless you have pre-booked tickets, that is). We’ll touch on this in Part 4: Planning for Spontaneity (coming soon).
A Quick Itinerary Building Example
Let’s take a quick look at a real-world example using my trip to Boston.
This was a quick long weekend trip. Arrive on a Saturday (AM) and leave on Wed (AM). Which gave me approximately 3.5 days to spend in Boston.
When I pared down my overall list of things that I might be interested in doing into a more realistic size and divided them into *must sees* and *would be nice to sees* I ended up with:
Must see: Freedom Trail*, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum*, Medical History Museum at Massachusetts General Hospital, bakery hopping in the North End, walk around Beacon Hill, Public Gardens, Boston Public Market, and a day trip to Salem* (Corwin house, cemeteries, and House of the Seven Gables)
Would be nice to see: whale watching*, New England Aquarium*, Museum of Fine Arts* (special Monet exhibit), guided walking food tour, Boston Public Library, and the Peabody Essex Museum and the National Maritime Historic Site (both in Salem).
(Major activities which are expected to take 3+ hours are starred.)
Next, I looked at where things were located and when they were open.
Thankfully, both Boston and Salem are relatively compact and most things on my list were located in close proximity to one another. With the exception being the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. These would require a quick (easy) subway ride or a longer (but very do-able) walk.
While actually planning, I did break down each item and list their hours of operation (note many of these hours were adjusted from the site’s normal due to COVID). But for a quick summary….
The food tours I was interested in all left mid-morning or early afternoon on Sat. Some sites on the Freedom Trail were only currently open Fri-Sun. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is closed on Tuesdays. The Museum of Fine Arts is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The Aquarium is open seven days a week as are my ‘must see’ sites in Salem. The Peabody Essex Museum is closed Mon-Wed. The Boston Public Library is closed on Sun. And the Medical History Museum is currently completely closed to the public in order to limit people on the campus due to COVID.
Now I had to start making decisions.
A guided walking food tour was out. All the ones I was interested in took place on my arrival day…and were too close to my arrival time to guarantee that I’d make it. Sadly, the Medical History Museum was out as well (even the Ether Dome) and so I’d have to put that in my ‘things to see next time’ list. Since some sites on the Freedom Trail that I wanted to see were only open on the weekend, that meant that I’d have to plan for Sunday if I wanted to see all of them. Though that meant I’d miss out on the chance to see the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. But…in October, Salem hosts a month-long celebration that is heavily attended. While it’s a fabulous event, I was looking for something a little less crowded…so Salem on a weekday seemed like a better idea. And according to my priority list, the Freedom Trail and several sites in Salem ranked over the Peabody Essex Museum. Whale watching would be cool, but I had limited days and already a fair amount of major activities I wanted to fit in. Since I was headed to Alaska soon, I figured I could forego whale watching in Boston (plus it’s October…and starting to get cold out on the water!).
After a little trial and error, a rough itinerary emerged:
Sat PM: Museum of Fine Arts special Monet exhibit (turns out the Museum of Fine Arts is part of the Bank of America free first weekends program…and the Monet exhibit is a Bank of America sponsored exhibit…which means as a Bank of America customer I can get into both for free on the first weekend of the month—which I happened to be travelling on), then bakery hop in the North End in the evening.
Sun AM and PM: Freedom Trail and the Boston Public Market (knowing myself, the Freedom Trail is likely to be an all-day affair as I’ll spend a lot of time in the exhibits and also wander and shop and eat along the way)
Mon AM: Wander Beacon Hill and the Public Garden early in the morning, perhaps the Boston Library if I have time, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Mon PM: New England Aquarium
Tues AM and PM: Day trip to Salem (Corwin House in the AM, wander the town and cemeteries on my way to…the House of Seven Gables and National Maritime Historic Site in the PM)
Overall, a nice, varied plan that incorporated most of the items on my list of things that I wanted to do! (And flexible, as we’ll see in the next part!)
Travel Planning Part 4: Planning for Spontaneity (coming soon)
