How Varied is My Mileage

[mangosteen]

Context: I'm currently in the UK on vacation, and have had some desperately needed downtime. I'm pretty sure that I'm having the vacation that I wanted.

In traveling, I have found that there are two extremes for approaching travel in a foreign city:

1. The Cultural Blitzkrieg: "We've got 75 tourist attractions to see on this checklist, AND I WILL NOT BE COMPLETE AS A HUMAN BEING unless I see every one of them!!!! We've only got 10 hours of daylight GO GO GO GO!"

Pros: You really do see a lot of (likely one-of-a-kind) things and if you're handy with a camera, you'll even be able to recall a lot of them later. In addition, if it's a place to which you'll never return ("maybe in a decade or two" = "never"), it's quite possibly the most value for your money in terms of "seeing things you can't see anywhere else".

Cons: I don't know about you, but the times that I've done that I've not really remembered anything about the trip besides the "GO GO GO GO!" part. I remember running around a lot, and I have the ephemera of the trip (tickets, booklets, receipts, currency), but I really didn't get the sense that I actually did anything besides, well, run around a lot.

2. Mindless Bumbling About: "Just relax. A city is a vibrant place with a rhythm all its own. If you just walk around and let the city come to you, you'll be able to experience it just the same as if you did the 10 Kilometer Multi-Stage Tourist Relay(tm)."

Pros: Lower blood pressure. Not feeling like you've just travelled n-thousand miles to a 12 hour/day job. Leaving yourself open to the random experiences that happen when you just pay attention. Having a lot of stories to tell.

Cons: If you're not careful, you end up in roughly the same spot as the Blitzkreigers... you don't remember all that much beyond "walking around some city", and you don't even get the consolation prize of seeing a whole bunch of stuff you vaguely remember. If you're extra special not careful, you get back home, sit on the couch, look around, and say "Did I actually go anywhere?"

So, where does that leave me? I have a decided allergy to the former, and have already experienced the bad parts of the latter. The happy medium I've chosen is "Bumbling About While Paying Attention". I think of it as the intersection of "being armed with a map" and "not particularly caring where I am."

It's the thing that allows me to completely fail at finding The Economist Bookstore on Regent Street and then find myself sitting on the same park bench in St. James Park as the guy in the bowler hat at the beginning of The Great Muppet Caper when Kermit &c. splash down in the pond.

It's the thing that has me inadvertently taking the longest route possible to find the Shaftesbury Theatre, and in the process finding Neal's Yard, i.e. a concentrated node of brightly colored earthy crunchy woo-woo in the middle of London.

It's the thing that allows me to pay attention to everything that normally gets filtered out. Put another way, it's consciously deciding to put away the urge to "get things done" for a while, and telling myself that it's okay just to explore.

It's the thing that keeps the stories coming.

Comments

[arfur]

I find that exploration as you describe - and attendant unexpected discovery - is best for replenishing the soul.

[crouchback.livejournal.com]

I prefer the second method, myself.

Are you going to York, perchance?

[rmd.livejournal.com]

i'm a fan of a middleground in travel. never ever plan more than three things to do on a given day, assume you'll need a day of slack every few days, don't forget that some of the best memories are things like "remember that time we were grumpy and tired and just picked up improvised picnic lunches and sat in the park having a picnic lunch with our aching feet?"

since it's sunday (and hopefully not too late for you to read this), if you're in london and you haven't ever checked out speaker's corner, i'd highly recommend it.

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite things to do in London, which combines several aspects of your various strategies is London Walks. You meet a guide at a specified Tube station and wander around for a couple of hours at a relatively slow pace, hearing about some area of the city. It's a really good way to get a feel for a particular area and have a sense of the interesting things you might choose to do there. The groups tend to be relatively small, although once in a while a whole lot of people turn out for something--and you can always decide "nah, too many people" and skip the walk to go off on your own again. They do things like the tour of the Jewish sites of East London, and some fairly non-standard areas for tourists.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

I tend to watch people a lot, and if I'm walking around, I try to fit into the flow of how people are walking and see what they do. In London, I was waiting for somebody who was poking around a clothing store and ended up just sort of leaning against a post for a while watching people go by. I figured I had succeeded in not looking like a tourist when somebody came up to ask me for directions...

I also usually tend to get a map, pick a goal, and walk there, seeing what I can see along the way. So, basically, "bumbling about while paying attention," like you said. Overall, I'd rather get a feel for a place than hit the crowded tourist highlights...

[tcb.livejournal.com]

I have mostly come to the same realization over time as you. "loose plan" works pretty well.

[ruthi.livejournal.com]

I find aiming for one or two tourist-attractions a day works well for me.
Having a native guide who knows what's close to what - or a trustworthy book/map - is handy.
(Things like walking from that underground station to this one is easier aboveground, or planning to see *that* and *that* in the same day is silly, and so on.)

[ckd]

Last time I was in London, I went to go to the Economist Bookstore and it had closed; that may explain why you couldn't find it....

[fj.livejournal.com]

Oh you're here. Wanna have lunch or something? I am stuck in my flat between 1 and 6 tomorrow, though.

[mangosteen]

Sounds good. I'm Oop North tomorrow and Tuesday, but I should be in London on Wednesday. Can you send mail to mangosteen @ lj with contact info?

Also, my UK mobile number can be found in:
http://mangosteen.livejournal.com/128811.html

[fj.livejournal.com]

> I'm Oop North tomorrow

I can't beleive you are still allowed to go there considering you will only use the training time to torment desk staff further.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Mostly I used your rule, which either was or morphed into 'only plan 2/3 of any given day, if that.' Which I then take as "don't plan either lunch or dinnertime".

By far the best vacation has been our honeymoon -- we went to Sao Miguel and Lisbon, and had very little preconceived notion of 'What we wanted to see'. We wanted to see: the windmill of the town where Tony's dad was born (Sao Miguel), have cozidos (local food, Sao Miguel is a volcanic island, so they bury the food the night before in pots and you dig it up the next day and have it for lunch).

In Lisbon, we wanted to go to the Fado museum and to a Fado house -- local folk music (mostly nostalgic stuff, very good stuff) then we got a guide book and just had to see the puppet museum.

And yet we filled 10 days of walking around, finding our own memories and treasures and experiences. And when Tony got food poisoning (funny that, with all the pork and clams he was eating :) ) and was out of commission for a day, I went shopping, no plans were ruined.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Oh, and we ran into Lisbon's Pride celebration the night we arrived -- very cool!

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend a day trip to Bath and the spa.

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

I tend to plan the day around where I want to eat, and then see what's in geographical proximity vs. what's open. Then I walk a lot.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

My father has a variation of "The Cultural Blitzkrieg", he hates tourists (especially when he's one), but he has a list of people to meet up with, and places to go, and he must see play or two while in London, ...).

On my last couple visits to London, I've been there without my father, so I've been having fun exploring parts of London at my own speed.

"It's the thing that has me inadvertently taking the longest route possible to find the Shaftesbury Theatre, and in the process finding Neal's Yard, i.e. a concentrated node of brightly colored earthy crunchy woo-woo in the middle of London."

That's roughly how I found Neal's Yard. I decided to walk from point A to point B instead of taking the Tube (after many visits to London with my father and traveling by Tube, I was rather amazed how easy it is to get around London by foot (if the weather is reasonable).

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

It's the thing that has me inadvertently taking the longest route possible to find the Shaftesbury Theatre, and in the process finding Neal's Yard, i.e. a concentrated node of brightly colored earthy crunchy woo-woo in the middle of London.

Could you smell the cheesemonger from several blocks away? That's usually a good way to find Neal's Yard. :)

[drwex]

Yeah, I do pretty much that.