Going on your own

"The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page."  
St. Augustine

                                                     Independent travel

The Shambles, York, England

In my last posting, I talked about the pro's and con's of escorted tours vs. independent travel. If you have never given thought to taking off for a foreign country on your own, then there are some things to think about before going.

Just how independent do you want to be? The first time I went to England it was in March, which is definitely off-season. There wasn't a big need to have hotel reservations in advance. My daughter had been a student in London for 4 months, and I flew over at the end of her semester to join her. She had a flat in London, so I had a place to stay there. We had 3 weeks, and a rough itinerary of places we wanted to go. I had done research, and had purchased Britrail tickets in advance. After several days of staying in London and seeing the sights, we headed for Dover and took the hovercraft to Paris. We had no reservations, but I had written down the name of a hotel that looked good and was not too expensive. The cab took us there, and they had rooms available. We spent several days in Paris seeing the sights, then took the train to Dieppe and the ferry back to Brighton, England, We spent the next 2 weeks traveling and exploring places like Penzance and Bath, then over to Dublin, Ireland, then up to Edinburgh, Scotland, and our last stops were York and Cambridge, before returning to London. We didn't have a reservation anywhere we went, and hadn't decided how long we would stay in each place, but we knew when we had to be back in London, so we worked with that. It was fun, exploring on our own. Sometimes we stayed in hotels, quite often it was a private home (Bed & Breakfast) and in Bath we stayed at the Y for $5 a night. If it had been high season, this would not have worked, as we might have found places were completely booked.

So if you want to just go and wing it, that's fine, but keep in mind that hotels might not be available where you want them. Some planning in advance might be a good idea.

Harbor in Rethymnon, Crete

Monastery in Meteora

The way my husband and I usually travel when we head for Europe is to plan the trip out in advance. We pick the country, then I research the places we want to go and decide how long we will stay in each place. From there I start making hotel reservations in the different cities or towns. Once I do that I start looking at transportation. Do we want to drive or take the train? Or a combination of both?

 My husband is getting to the point where he has decided he doesn't like to drive all over a country, not knowing where he is going, so the train will get us to the destination, and then if we want to rent a car for the day to go outside the city and see some things, then that works too. So if we are going by train, I buy the Eurail pass before we go. Next I think about the cities we are going to be in, do I want a city tour? Those can also be purchased in advance, through a travel agent. Also, day tours from most locations are available. When we were in Athens, Greece we did a tour, which I had pre-purchased, that took us over to Delphi and Meteora. It was a 3 day trip and it included transportation, sightseeing, and hotels. They took us by van, and it was a wonderful side trip. Getting to those places on our own would have been difficult, so this was a nice option. I also pre-purchased a 3 day Greek island cruise as part of our trip to Greece. But a good portion of our 3 weeks in Greece, we were on our own. We even did the rental car for our week on the island of Crete.

 So you can go independently but have plans and reservations in place, and even have city tours set up at each location, which will orient you to the city when you first arrive. Then you are free to spend your time doing what you want, eating the local food, people-watching, shopping and seeing the sights. To me, this is the best way to travel.