My trip was planned with a little less than two months to go, and I wasn’t really intending to get into travelogues about Hamburg. I started by casually reading up on the travelogues I’d read for Copenhagen which had various mentions of the city, often the first port of call for travellers coming by boat from England. Just doing that sparked my curiosity, though, and I ended up going a bit deeper than I’d intended with my reading!
Another trip — this time a solo trip with young kids in Hamburg and Lübeck? Yes, please. After our last-minute trip to Hanover in February, I knew I wanted to go back to Germany with my kids again soon. It was such a nice, dare I say easy, time away with the kids. So I booked another solo trip the day after my son finishes school to head to Hamburg on the train. Frustratingly, there’s no direct train from Amsterdam, but I did manage to book the private kids compartment for both legs — it will take about 5.5 hours.
I wanted to use this post as an experiment in trip-planning, and then compare how it actually went afterwards. A big part of my hobby of traveling is the anticipation of it! The excitement and planning is integral. It certainly adds to the enjoyment – unless you fall into the trap of over-expecting and then being underwhelmed and disappointed if an experience or a hotel under-delivers. I’m notorious for this when I go to very nice luxury hotels – it’s easy to expect a lot from them because you’re paying so much or have heard so many good things.
Have you heard of the concept of a travel rule, or is it something I’ve just made up? My trip planning has had to get a bit more rigid lately. My son is now old enough that he’s required to stay in school full-time. Combine this with my obsession with Ramit Sethi’s Money for Couples podcast (he suggests you set ‘money rules’ for yourself), and I decided to try out a new rule (experiment?): if someone invites me on a trip – just go!
I went on a bit of a binge reading about travel writers and Hawaii. After going to Japan with my 1-year-old and 4-year-old, we stopped in Honolulu and Kauai for nine nights.
I’ve been to Hawaii many times before and had a vague understanding of its history. But as a kid, you don’t think about how a place used to be. You don’t consider what’s been lost or how America forced it to change. Or how beautiful the indigenous culture itself is.
Ahead of my trip to Japan, I decided to do a more thorough review of what 19th century travelogues about Japan exist in the English language. Maybe I’ll do Japanese as well, but starting in English. The thing I find so fascinating about reading these is that I compare my knowledge of Japanese culture today to what it would have been like centuries ago. You notice the little changes and what has held steady over the years in Japanese culture.
I went to Copenhagen to see a friend – it was my third trip there, and my first time during the warmer months. And to get ready, it’s also my first time reading through some old travel narratives about Denmark. Here are the books about Copenhagen I read prior to my trip. I have to say, I’m surprised I was able to get through so many in a month before my trip! I didn’t read all of them but mainly focussed on the Copenhagen, Elsinore and Roskilde portions.
What makes me pull the trigger? I’ve been thinking about this lately. There are some travels I ruminate over (Egypt again at some point soon is one example). There are also the ones I play with on Google Flights whilst never really planning on taking that next step. And then there are the ones which I dream up, and then before I know it we’re going, bringing a trip into reality, making it happen.
Learn about Genoa before you visit. On the way to a new place, they say that anticipation can be just as good as the trip itself. After my first visit to Egypt in 2019, I developed a pretty involved method to savour that pre-trip excitement. Like most people I love to scour TripAdvisor, ask friends for tips, and save cool-looking cafes on Google Maps.