I’m going on my first overseas trip with my girlfriend since we started dating. I worked hard all last year to earn and save money for this trip. It will be our first international trip ever, and I want to make it perfect, memorable, and the best trip of our lives.
I’ve read countless articles online to ensure everything is perfect. It felt overwhelming to the point that my head started to hurt. Fortunately, I found an article that provided a detailed guideline, and it seemed like the perfect guide. My girlfriend and I have been following it, and it has been very helpful so far.
However, I decided to come to this community to seek additional guidance, advice, and tips from you all, just in case the article missed something important. My girlfriend and I would greatly appreciate any travel tips, advice, and guidance you have, as this is our first trip abroad together.
Lower your expectations. “This has to be the trip of our lives, we worked so hard, …” is a recipe for disaster. Things will be different from what you have planned. You will be disappointed by some things, others may just not work out at all. If you get hung up on that, you won’t be able to enjoy all those little moments that make a trip memorable.
If you have to leave the beautiful little Café early because that one big thing on your checklist is closing in an hour and tomorrow you have to leave early for the next stop, you won’t be left with any nice memories, only pictures of things that have already been photographed a million times.
My advice: already make plans for the next trip. Yes, you won’t be making it back overseas in a while, but there is just no correllation between how far you travel, how much you spend and how good of a time you have. I’ve traveled a LOT all over the world and some of my best memories were made in places I could reach by car. The biggest disappointment was a long, expensive overseas trip that was “maybe the last big holiday before we get kids”.
Take the pressure out, this is just a holiday of many more that will follow. Don’t plan too many things in advance, don’t make a list of “must sees”. Make sure that if you like a place, you can just stay a few more nights.
I was recently on a three week trip through Italy, from the alps in the north all the way to Sicily in the south. We stayed for a few more nights on a nice little camp in the middle of nowhere, with no major attractions nearby, just because we enjoyed lying in a hammock and reading a book. We skipped Rome instead.
We’re 21 years old. We are naive, as you can tell. I’m glad that I came here and got some really good advice from you and everyone else. You’ve mentioned in your comment that you’ve traveled a lot all over the world, so I want to request something. Can you please check out this article that we are following and tell us whether it has good advice or not?
Re: pictures of things that have already been photographed a million times
You want to remember your experience. And although the place you went is certainly part of it, when you are older you will be more likely to want to see you and your SO’s past selves having a good time, than a picture of the sights some photographer has captured much better than you have.
Feel free to disregard this advice if either of you are photographers, whether professional or amateur, as you would probably reap more enjoyment from taking that picture than the rest of us, and are probably way more likely to be the person capturing the place better than the rest of us can. And if it is a unique moment or you really think nobody else has put this sight on the internet already, your choice!
I needed to see it explained this way for it to really click for me. I think the part about the pictures of the sights alone being easily found online was what clinched it for me. I can go “see” that again easily, the scarce part is the part where I am there. A picture of me and a loved one at the sight might be valuable to us two no matter how amateur my photography skills. A picture of the sight probably will not be.
But it’s also relevant that some people already know this and still derive a lot of pleasure from taking a picture of the place themselves, knowing that a lot of other good pictures also exist. If you are one of those people who know that you really like taking pictures of it yourself, feel free to disregard this advice! It’s useful for quite a few people (I think most people?) but not universally applicable. Exceptions almost always exist.