Sunday 19 February 2017

Brain Numbing, Back Breaking Work

It's a woman's job. I'm sure some men do it. But it seems that among everybody that I know, it is always the job of the wife or girlfriend to plan the itinerary. This post happened becoz I'm taking a well deserved break from working on our itinerary for Japan for over 3 hours, since 6 am. My back between the shoulder blades are aching terribly & my brain all fogged up from going through so many places of interest.

It usually takes me many hours over several days to properly plan the itinerary for a 3 days camping trip. I can't imagine how long it'll take me to plan a 12 days (excluding the 2 days of flying), 3 cities (potentially more, depending on my findings) trip in Japan. To make the most of your time (& money of course), you need to execute a thoroughly planned itinerary. Hub's friend & his family visited Perth 2 years ago with, in my opinion, a terrible itinerary. 1 day they were in Pinnacles. The next day, they drove down to Margaret River. The 3rd day, they drove back up north for something else before going back down south on the 4th day. Too much time & fuel wasted travelling up & down for no reason at all. They should have asked us to have a look at their itinerary. But by the time they visited us, they were on their 2nd last day of the tour when most of the tour had already been completed.

The 1st step is always deciding where & when to go. After I've confirmed my leave, I will book the air tickets. That alone is quite a headache as there are so many airlines, so many different prices, so many different layover time. Once I've confirmed the date & time of arrival, it's time to start looking at the places of interest in that city. I will go through all of them, going into their individual websites & shortlisting the ones I'm interested in visiting. Useful information like opening hours, how to get there, whether they close on certain days go into my Word Document. These locations get cross referenced against Google Maps then gets plotted out so I travel in a circle rather than erratically. Places of interest that are near 1 another gets grouped together for the same day. Then, I will book my accommodation based on my itinerary. It sounds simple enough but it really is not. I know. I'm being overly thorough & perfectionistic.

Break over. Time to get back to my itinerary planning. Why I won't let hubs help? 1st, he won't have the patience like I do. 2nd, it won't get started till perhaps 2 days before the trip & it'll end up being a shoddy job. 3rd, major logistics will be missed. Perhaps most couples I know are like us. Perhaps that's why I only know of women who plan itineraries.

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