How to Turn Vague Inspiration Into a Travel Plan

Adventure is a State of Mind

The Birth of an Idea

My husband, Greg, and I are planning to spend a week in Scotland next year with friends. We decided to extend our stay beyond that week, however, and invited other friends, Tony and Lori, to join us.

We’ve previously camped and gone on long roadtrips with our friends, so we’re pretty sure we’re compatible travel companions. Tony and Lori have never been out of the country, and Lori admitted to being nervous, but she also said she thought the best conditions for her first overseas adventure would be to travel with someone who is experienced and enjoys planning. (That would be me!)

We’ve had a general discussion about the budget and a brief discussion about what we’re each interested in doing. And, of course, we reminded them to get their passports sooner rather than later!

Now we just have to figure out where we want to go beyond the general idea of “Scotland.”

Before the Basics

In past posts (How to Start and Putting Pencil to Paper: How to Start Planning Your Trip), I’ve discussed how to take that first step and start organizing what you want to do into the beginnings of a travel itinerary. What I haven’t discussed, however, is how to come up with those ideas when you don’t have a clear idea of what they are.

To Be Determined

It’s okay to have a vague idea in the beginning. Many a wonderful travel adventure starts off that way. For example, often when someone says they want to visit someplace – Scotland, France, or Kansas City – they have a vague idea of what the place might look like from seeing it in movies or in the news. They may even know a little bit about it – in this case, whisky, cheese, or barbeque.

The problem is that vague doesn’t translate well to a map. Where’s the best place to find the whisky, cheese, or barbeque? And what else is there to do that make that plane ticket worthwhile?

I’ve talked about goals (How to Create a Travel Goal), but again, these are often quite broad and general – visit a whisky distillery in Scotland – and don’t translate well to a map, at least initially. So how do brave, wise travelers mold vague ideas into a travel adventure that they can actually take?

Getting Some Ideas

As we ended our first Scotland-discussion phone call with our friends, Lori commented that she doesn’t know much about Scotland and joked that she’d start looking at Top Ten lists. I told her I actually thought that was a good idea.

The internet is full of click-bait articles about why you should travel someplace and the top ten things to do there. I don’t think it’s a great idea to adopt any of these articles as your itinerary – after all, what’s the point in planning your own independent trip if you don’t customize it to do the specific things you want to do? I do think, however, that these sorts of articles, or the AI- generated responses to questions, are a good place to start developing a very general feel for a place.

Internet and magazine articles with titles like “Top Things to Do In (insert a city name here)” or guidebook chapters titled “How to See (insert country name here) in (insert a number here) Days” can be a great way to get ideas about things to do on a trip.

Sometimes we pick a location because of one specific thing — maybe you want to see Old Faithful erupt or want to see where Kings Landing in Game of Thrones was filmed — but you don’t really have any ideas as to what else there is to see and do in the area. (Please, please don’t take a trip with plans to do only one thing unless you are planning a day trip from your home. And even then, I hope you also visit a restaurant or coffeeshop in the area!) Top Ten lists and similar articles can give you some ideas of other interesting things to do in the area, but use them as a starting point and not to dictate the entirety of your itinerary. Keep in mind, those list were written by someone who may or may not be interested in the same things as you.

Observe what stands out for you. Are you repeatedly drawn to photos of beaches? Or castles? Or crowded pubs? Sometimes this can give you some guidance as to what to seek out.

Talk About It

Most of my friends know that I love to talk about travel, both theirs and mine. Bring on the vacation stories and pics!

When I start planning a trip, however, my travel conversations become a little more pointed. If I know you’ve traveled to the area I want to visit, it’s almost guaranteed that I’m going to ask you about what you enjoyed and why, as well as what you wouldn’t do again and any advice you might have.

Travel is one of the topics that I even enjoy talking about with strangers. If you’re looking for ideas, try to find a way to casually drop it into a conversation with someone you don’t know very well. Not only could you find inspiration, you might make a new friend in the process!

Create a Theme

Sometimes creating a theme for your trip can get the ideas and inspiration flowing. For example, Greg and Tony both enjoy trying different whiskies, so when we identified that as a theme, it gave some form and direction to start planning the trip.

We started identifying the locations of various distilleries with interesting or especially good whiskies, and looking at where those places were located on the map gives us further direction as to where we might want to spend most of our time. For example, Cragganmore and The Glenlivet Distillery are located near each other and not that far from Cairngorms National Park. Since we all love to hike, it makes sense for us to spend time near a national park.

In our case, a theme helps provide structure for our plans. For other trips, a theme can add extra fun and fresh eyes to an experience. For example, while on a trip to France with our friends, Mike and Shelley, at some point in the trip we realized we had seen so many statues of naked people that we started joking we were on the “Butt Cracks of Paris Tour.” Of course, once we started joking about it, we saw them around almost every corner… including on living breathing humans on a few occasions!

If you’re interested in how a theme can breathe new life into an area with which you may be very familiar, read this post by Nomadic Matt about using a theme – Jazz Age Paris – on a return visit to the city and how it helped him to try new activities and visit parts of the city that he hadn’t visited before.

Flesh It Out with Research

Once you have at least a few ideas, start researching those ideas. For example, if you’re going to Scotland and want to visit Cragganmore Distillery, in addition to looking at their website, you can also look in guidebooks or on the internet for information about the town and surrounding area.

In the case of Cragganmore, you’ll have to scroll through a lot of Google pages before you finally come to something that isn’t about their whisky. It was Secret Scotland’s blog post about a Speyside whisky tour by bike. So, I guess it was about whisky too, but it wasn’t just about the whiskies that Cragganmore Distillery produces.

In the process of learning more about places and activities, you’ll realize some of your original ideas aren’t aligned with what you actually want to do, and you can take them out of the running. On the other hand, sometimes you’ll find yourself going down a proverbial rabbit hole for a few hours and emerge with a dream to see or do something you didn’t even know existed the day before.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safe-guards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

John Steinbeck

Watch the Plan Come Together

As you research your ideas and get a clearer about what you want to see and do, start marking them on a map. When I first started traveling, I used a highlighter and a paper map. These days, with online maps, there are easy options to mark or pin your locations virtually.

Sometimes a little magic occurs at this point – the pins on the map seem to cluster together! Some of my favorite trips came together this way. We would plan to visit a country or region and, as we identified what we wanted to do, two or three areas would have a high concentration of pins. This makes it easy to identify where you want to create a home base so you can plan to spend the night in one place and take day trips from there.

The Pros and Cons of Flexibility and Choice

One of the best things about independent travel is having the flexibility to go and do what interests you and your travel companions the most. Creating your own travel adventure makes it extra special.

Be cautious, however, about trying to do and see everything. It’s tempting. I know, I’ve been there. FOMO is real!

At some point, however, trying to do it all results in exhaustion, which means you aren’t going to enjoy your travels much at that point. Instead of trying to do it all, identify and plan for the things you really want to do, but also plan some open time in your schedule.

Exploring a tiny village, walking on a path to an unknown destination, or lingering over a delicious meal and good conversation are some of my favorite memories from past travel adventures. None of them were planned. How could they be? We didn’t know they even existed until we were there with some open time on our hands.

Do you have a vague idea of where you want to travel to next? How can you start to flesh out your ideas?