Unscheduled days

"Beware the barrenness of a busy life," Socrates cautioned, some 2,500 years ago.

That works for travel, too.

If you're planning an hour-by-hour schedule every day that you travel, relax. Then reconsider.

Not only are you probably overdoing it, but you're leaving yourself too little time to explore your new destination and add sites on your own. You won't know ahead of time what these places are; that's some of the delight of traveling. Why deny yourself?

As an unlikely "maybe," you're also forgetting that you might have a day when the weather is truly impossible, when trains or planes run late, when you are sick or when you just want (need) a slower pace.

The solution to all these dilemmas is simple: unscheduled days.

I plan an unscheduled day about every fourth day that we travel. On that day, I have never once lazed around in the hostel or apartment room, wondering what to do. I was either sick (ha) or I already had a list of places to visit that I hadn't thought of exploring until we got there.

An unscheduled day gives you the flexibility to explore these new places, to revisit places where you didn't have enough time before, or just to enjoy a more relaxed day and recharge your human battery.

Unscheduled days enabled us to experience (among many more):

• Borough Market in London, England

• Piazzale Michelangelo in Florence, Italy

• Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus) in Rome, Italy

• Chinatown in Manchester, England and in Washington, D.C.

• Ancestry research in Haguenau, France - the photo below is from there

Without "down time," we wouldn't have experienced any of this. So go ahead - leave a day unscheduled now and then! Enjoy where it takes you.