Itineraries: traveling vs. invading

When I was planning our first international family vacation, we wanted to see so much, from Pompeii and the Tower of Pisa to Vienna, Neuschwanstein, Paris and London.

We had 14 total days, including flying there and back. I mapped out a schedule; we would spend a day or so in each place, take overnight trains, and go, go, go.

When I shared this plan on a travel forum, one person bluntly wrote, "You're not traveling. You're invading."

I think of that now when I see other travelers planning ambitious schedules of half-days here, half-days there, plane travel every couple days, full days of exploration starting 30 minutes after arrival, and overnight trains substituting for most hotel rooms.

Don't do that.

You'll learn to dread train depots, because it feels like you spend all your time either riding a train or waiting for a train. You'll exit one, sprint through the attraction of that place and board another one for the next place.

You'll also learn to hate hotels, because you'll barely be unpacked before you need to pack again. This increases the chance of forgetting something, too.

Worst of all, even though you might work through your "checklist," you won't experience much; your biggest achievement will be figuring out where the restrooms are on trains. If this is your idea of travel, save your time and money, and watch YouTube videos from home. It's easier. On YouTube, at home, you can go to any destination you want, and you already know where the restrooms are.

(On the serious, YouTube is a good choice for people who can't travel at all, and when paired with Google Maps it offers a decent way-finding hack)

The "go, go, go" approach makes one other big assumption: that you'll be in perfect health for every minute of your vacation, with enduring, limitless energy.

What is a better plan?

Assume that you're going back to the continent you're planning to visit now. Break it into regions. Two to four hours on a train every third or fourth day is plenty. A minimum of three nights in one city lets you rest so you can enjoy each place with the intellectual curiosity that dies under the "go, go, go" plan.

It took us a few years to figure this out.

On that first too-ambitious family vacation we took, we pared the schedule down to 12 net days (removing arrival and departure days). In that time, we visited London, Paris and a tiny Yorkshire town called Thirsk. It was still too much; a better plan would have been to stay in London the whole time and do long day trips to Paris and to Thirsk.

For our next big family vacation, I thought I had done better, but we made the same mistake: 8 net days (removing arrival and departure days). In that time, we visited London; Frankfurt, Wiesbaden and Bacharach (all close to each other); and Strasbourg. Near the end of this trip, even our most enthusiastic traveler said she didn't want to see anything new. She just wanted to go to the hostel and sleep.

It wasn't until the fourth international trip that we finally "got it."

In 12 net days, my husband and I spent six days in Rome and five days in Florence. Because we had the luxury of time, we learned where and how to buy groceries. We got comfortable with the public transit system. We knew where the parks, the bakeries, the buskers and the farmers' markets were. We explored Naples, Pompeii and Sorrento as an easy overnight add-on, with only the train schedule as our timetable.

When a downpour lasted all through one morning, our plans weren't ruined; we just shifted them to the afternoon. On a couple other days, my husband wasn't feeling terrific, so we took a slower pace guilt-free until he felt better.

It's simple to "invade" a continent on paper, but it isn't much fun. You'll like traveling a lot more.