The travel plan
There will not be a newsletter next week as I will be attending When Words Collide festival. I’m on a panel about writing Middle Grade and I’m running a memoir workshop. In between, I’m taking a masterclass about food writing, hanging with my writer friends, and supporting my fellow word people by attending their panels and seminars. If you’re a writer, reader, artist, or publisher, this festival is brilliant.
Here’s a funny thing: I have been to Europe twice, went to school in Italy, visited Israel for two months, spent Christmas breaks in Florida, sailed on 10 cruises, and have gone to Vegas more than a dozen times, but I have never built an itinerary.
The European adventures were organized by school (high and uni). Israel was handled by the friend I travelled with. Florida was the same every year. Cruises take care of everything; we only have to choose from the offered excursions. For Vegas, we only have to decide where we want to go for dinner and book a month or so in advance. Travelling has always been easy.
Last week, when I sat down to plan an itinerary for a family trip to Japan, it took about 30 seconds for me to be completely overwhelmed. I had built a list of possible tours and activities a couple of weeks earlier. I knew where we were landing and leaving (Tokyo). I knew what were must-dos for Jeff (Hiroshima, feudal castle, and Tokyo Disneyland) and the boys (ramen, Electric Town, Nintendo). On my list is Tokyo Night Market*. The dates shift from year-to-year, so I’m crossing my fingers that it will line up with our trip.
But the overwhelm…there was so much I needed to find out before I could lay down a single thing. Trains - bullet and non. Luggage sizes permitted on the trains. Hotels and districts. How do we pay for things easily? Cash, credit, Suica? Data plans. Tours. When to book what. How to book. The geography of Japan. Everything was swirling madly in my head and I couldn’t focus on a single thing.
After taking a deep breath, I started laying down how many days we might want and need to spend in Tokyo. We planned to go to Osaka and maybe Kyoto; we can book a one-day tour to Hiroshima from either city. I made a loose itinerary for those places as well. The night before, I enlisted the help of our 20-year-old, asking him to present me with a list of where he and his brother wanted to go and how much time he thought they might need.
He understood the assignment and did the extra work.
I had barely populated the spreadsheet and he appeared in my office with THE LIST. He had spent hours—late into the night—searching, planning, and watching videos about Tokyo. He sat on the floor in my office (I have a chair, but whatever) and helped me map out five days in the city. I had thought four would be adequate, but Tokyo has so much to offer and we want to maximize our time there at a reasonable pace. We decided to add three more days in Tokyo at the end of the trip to give us room to do things we couldn’t in the first five days or that were newly discovered.
I then went back to the tours, eliminating the ones no one really wanted to take, clicking hearts to favourite the ones that were really interesting and/or non-negotiable. One-by-one, the days were filling up. When I got to Osaka, I hit my first real snag: tours that we wanted to take were only available on certain days. I had to go back and cancel some tours that we booked, shift dates around, re-book, and make some tough choices. I was slipping into overwhelm again, this time with a sprinkling of FOMO.
I had to back off for a bit. I needed to stop worrying about doing everything. If we never get back to Japan, it’s okay. We can plan a great trip without visiting every temple, shrine, and ramen shop. Once I accepted and acknowledged that, building the itinerary go so much easier.
Between my son’s research and mine, we were able to figure out where we wanted our hotels to be. Jeff jumped into the fray, booking the hotels we chose based on location, not amenities or brand. I felt myself relaxing as the bones of the trip fell into place. Overwhelm morphed into excitement. Now I get to tweak, make small changes, and add things I learn about as I scroll (thanks, algorithm).
I have a new respect for people who do this kind of thing daily. I spent 12 hours in one day planning this trip. I can’t imagine—and am not built for—doing this professionally. Hug your travel agent.
xo Dana
*Fun fact: The Tokyo Night Market had 65,000 visitors over 6 days in 2023, its inaugural year. The Richmond Night Market in B.C. brings in more than 100,000 visitors each weekend between April and October. That surprised me too.
What I’m reading
If a book I borrow from the library is worn, wrinkled, and torn, I always have high hopes that it’s a winner. I’ve only read a couple of chapters, but the main character, 85-year-old Veronica McCreedy, is so cranky. I truly hope the novel delivers on the promise of a heartwarming story.
