Vacation Planning: The Dugal Conspiracy
“Is it Cologne with its great cathedral?
Milan with its glamour and its pace?
London with its river and its bridges?
Lisbon with its beauty and its grace?
[...]
Is it Dublin with its culture and its wit?
Madrid with its market square?
Paris with its bustling cafes?
Hull with its musical flair?”
~ Pretenders to the Throne, The Beautiful South
It’s been about a decade since I last had a proper vacation – and I use the term vacation because I’m developing my American language skills. I’ve had a few weekends away in the UK to see friends and a few overnights up and down the country for past work, and for the most part I’ve been happy with that, but it has been some considerable time since I’ve really set sail or spread wings for an adventure on a different shore.
It was about this time last year, or maybe just a tad later, that my mind was made up about going on a proper vacation. By May, I’d even decided exactly when and where I was going. I’m due to fly out in the middle of May this year. Now, given flight prices and the increase of simple agency vacations, it may seem a long time to go between the plan and the actual date, a lot can happen and change – and indeed has – during that time, and in the timespan I’ve seen a lot of people arrange a lot of weekend or week hops on budget flights for package holidays.
However, for me there was a lot of factors that I wanted to consider in the trip. The package holiday, for example, would not really have been suitable for a few reasons, firstly the location I’m going doesn’t tend to get a lot of deals in the local high street chains of travel agencies, it wouldn’t have been impossible but choice would have been limited and I’d have been stuck with the places they liked and their arrangements – this, however, may prove to be a drawback if all my organising gets a hit in the nuts.
It’s probably at this point that I should say about one of the most terrifying things of this trip. I’m travelling alone. Granted, I’m meeting up with people who live locally when I get there, but the travel and the residing, I’m on my own. With the exception of the forementioned UK short trips, I’ve never travelled alone before. I may keep mentioning this point, because it’s one that actually adds a lot of ‘adventure’ to the minutiae of my humble little vacation.
There have been and are, therefore, other considerations I have to take in to account, things like visas and the reissue of my passport; money, exchange rates and allowances; luggage and clothing; communication and entertainment; transport and mobility. All these things that I’ve never really had to think much on, either they were arranged for me, were ignorable because of how simple things were younger or they weren’t needed for the destination.
All these considerations affected the timing, I knew in May last year that if I wanted to travel I’d have to expect big spending. I worked on an assumption the it was going to cost me about three to three and a half thousand quid (£3000 or $4200) to cover all expenses and have spending cash enough for a damn good time. Having the new job was a must and I even managed to change job, drop pay, increase pay and still manage to keep saving on track.
I also made the rule, everything had to be paid from saving, no use of credit card because of shortfall and no overdraft or loan use. In fairness, this is potentially a dumb rule, because I’ve proven I can pay it back, but the temptation to misuse hasn’t been there and I haven’t gone without stuff in the meanwhile. Things took a little longer to sought out than they’d possibly have taken a person spending normally, for example, I waited until I could afford half the hotel and the plane far before booking the flight in October. Along the way I’ve made additional purchases, most of which are from seperate money pots and others have been very generous freebies, and there’s been quite a few arrangements that I hadn’t thought too much about but come up with ways around.
So, for a little while you may well find blog entries here about how an oversensitive, overthinking, paranoid, excited and scared Brit goes about booking a vacation that pretty much anyone else could probably do simply in minutes. For some of you, this may prove just a tad disappointing and redundant, but maybe, just maybe out there we’ll find someone who has never travelled alone, never had to make all those arrangements and never had to wonder how to set off on a big adventure. Maybe, just maybe, this will lead someone else to the biggest quest of their life.
Alternatively, it might just be enough of a source of filler entries until I get my mojo back. Hey, it’s this or lame comments about boring news stories.
I had wanted to keep the destination a tad secretive, but almost as soon as I said that I was going to take a trip, most people were able to work out very quickly the destination and reasons for going, and so the cat was out of the bag. But, I’m still going to hold on to a little bit of the mystery for those who don’t know, and unravel it bit by bit.