Travel Planning Guide: How Less Planning Leads to Better Travel
I don’t have much patience for waiting in line. More than fifteen minutes and I’m gone, off to find the bakery two streets away with no queue and a window seat nobody is fighting over. I’d rather sit somewhere quiet and unremarkable than rush through somewhere loud and chaotic that exists primarily to be photographed. I want to enjoy my coffee without ending up in someone else’s reel. What follows is a guide to making slow travel possible.
I often wonder whether the need to tick off sights, countries and lists is more about ego than joy, a badge we display rather than an experience we keep. It almost sounds counterintuitive coming from a travel writer. But in midlife I’ve found myself gravitating toward peace over performance.
I’m no longer interested in seeing everything. Running around a destination only to come home more exhausted than when you left defeats the purpose of rest.
If you’re interested in learning more about what slow travel is , you can read about it here.
This piece is about how I approach travel planning differently now and why this guide will change the way you travel.
How I start the slow travel planning process
Once a destination has been decided, it’s time to get to work. Here’s the exact process I follow to research and build the travel plan or ideas that I can choose as I go once there.
Firstly, check your passport validity, visa requirements and any departure/arrival documentation requirements for every country you’re entering, including transit stops.
Now to the fun stuff. My research doesn’t begin with a highlights list. It begins with the big picture. Before I look at anything else, I want to know the main areas: their character, their pace, how they connect to each other. A city isn’t a collection of sights, but neighbourhoods, and choosing the wrong one as your base can impact everything that follows.
From there I look at accommodation, not necessarily central, but connected. Good transport links matter more to me than being in the middle of everything. Being slightly removed from the tourist centre often means quieter streets, better value, and the kind of local rhythm that’s impossible to find when you’re surrounded by other travellers.
Once I have a sense of where I might stay, I look at what’s nearby, not what’s famous, but what’s there. Markets, parks, independent restaurants, museums worth the time. I’m building a picture of what daily life in that area actually looks like so I can immerse myself in it.
Planning a base for slow travel
Where you stay shapes everything. Not just your budget or your commute to sights, but your entire experience of a place. Choosing the right base is where slow travel planning diverges most sharply from conventional trip research.
I don’t default to the centre. As mentioned earlier, it’s convenient, but it’s also loud, expensive, and rarely gives you any sense of how a place actually feels to live in.
How to choose the best area to stay in
What I look for first is comfort, not luxury, but non-negotiable basics. Enough room to unpack properly. A good bathroom. A large bed. Air conditioning or heating, swimming pool, gym, depending on the destination. Reliable wifi. A room that’s 10 square metres is a no, regardless of the price.
From there, location. Is there public transport nearby? How far is it to walk to the areas I want to explore? Can I get back safely at night? I research neighbourhoods carefully. Main train station areas, for example, tend to be busy, transient and uncomfortable to walk at night. I’d rather be ten minutes further out and feel at ease.
Breakfast included is contextual. It sounds like a given but depends entirely on what’s being offered and when. Sometimes the breakfast timing doesn’t suit how I travel, and I’d rather find a local café on my own terms. Particularly if you have IBS or a digestive condition, bathroom accessibility is worth researching before you book.
Travel planning requires flexibility so I always book with free cancellation. It might cost marginally more upfront but the flexibility is worth it and I’ve found better last minute deals more than once as travel rarely goes entirely to plan.
My guide for finding the best rates is using a combination of Booking.com and Expedia cross-referenced with Google and TripAdvisor reviews. Shopback is worth running alongside any booking for cashback, as small amounts accumulate.
Food research
Food is where slow travel pays its greatest dividends, but only if you’ve done enough research to avoid the obvious traps.
Before I arrive anywhere, I have a rough sense of where I want to eat. Not reservations as I rarely book restaurants unless the alternative is genuine disappointment, but enough knowledge to have options when hunger strikes rather than defaulting to whatever is nearest and most obvious.
I use Google, Instagram and local food blogs to find highly reviewed places, but more importantly, which areas locals actually eat in. The best and cheapest food is almost always a few blocks from the main sight, where the tourist markup disappears and the quality goes up. The restaurant with the English menu and the photographs of every dish outside is rarely the one worth eating in.
I don’t visit viral places simply because they’re viral. If one happens to be in an area I’m already exploring and the queue is manageable, I’ll consider it. More often they’re overhyped, overpriced and full of people photographing their food rather than eating it. I’d rather follow a local recommendation or find where the locals are quietly queuing, so long as I don’t have to wait long.
If you have IBS or any digestive condition, this research layer is non-negotiable. Before I arrive anywhere I want to know which cuisines are likely to work for me, which neighbourhoods have accessible bathroom facilities, and where the nearest supermarket is for safe fallback options. It’s not glamorous travel planning, but it’s the difference between enjoying a destination and spending it anxious.
On that note, supermarkets are one of the most underrated parts of travelling. I visit one in every destination without exception. Interesting local snacks, ingredients I’ve never seen, affordable meals when I need them. They’re a genuine window into how people actually live and eat, and for keeping costs down across a longer trip, genuinely useful. Food souvenirs are also my love language and I’d rather bring home something edible and local than something decorative and generic.
What to book in advance
I review the standard checklists and suggested sights for every destination in order to understand the options available, not what I should follow. I then filter it against my interests, my travel style, and realistically how much time I actually have.
I’ve seen itineraries packed from morning to night with specific restaurants, timed entries, and no room for delays. I cannot travel this way. It might suit some people, but it exhausts me just looking at it. Slow travel is having options and permission to choose your own adventure on the day, depending on how you’re feeling, what the weather is doing, and what genuinely appeals in the moment. It’s also permission to skip the FOMO.
What I do book in advance is minimal and deliberate.
In Japan, the only thing I booked ahead was TeamLab Planets and even then, there was still a queue (as covered in my Japan article). Some experiences genuinely require advance booking now; that’s the reality of popular travel. But if I arrive somewhere and the queue is enormous, I won’t join it. I don’t pay for skip-the-line either. I can enjoy myself without ticking off every must-see on someone else’s checklist.
In Paris I booked the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre in advance which were worth it, and both genuinely require it. In Taiwan, I booked only my train tickets. The two activities I’d booked through Klook I ended up cancelling due to the typhoon (which you can read about in my Taiwan article), which is precisely why a packed schedule creates more problems than it solves.
Travel requires flexibility. Things don’t go to plan. The more tightly scheduled your days, the more frustrating it becomes when something shifts, and something always shifts. Book what genuinely requires it. Leave the rest open.
A guide to building a flexible travel itinerary
I don’t build itineraries. I build lists of things I want to see. The most liberating shift in slow travel planning is this: stop building itineraries.
The distinction matters. An itinerary is a schedule with times, places, reservations, a day planned to the hour that unravels the moment anything goes sideways. A list is a set of options. It gives you somewhere to start each day without locking you into a sequence that stops being enjoyable the moment you’re tired, the weather turns, or you simply don’t feel like it.
Mornings are for rest and setting the tone for the day. Afternoons are for exploration. This isn’t laziness but the rhythm that makes slow travel sustainable across a longer trip. It also means accepting that you will sometimes miss things because everyone else had the same idea, or the weather didn’t cooperate. C’est la vie. There are always other options.
When I do build a list, I think in neighbourhoods and sequences rather than sights. The goal is to move through a place logically, perhaps spending a slow day in Shinjuku and Shibuya makes sense; adding Ginza and Ueno to the same day doesn’t. They’re on opposite sides of the city and the result is a rushed, exhausting day that could have been two unhurried ones.
In Sri Lanka I planned nothing beyond accommodation. Everything else was decided on the ground, because the upfront research meant I already knew my options (as you can read about in my Sri Lanka article). I wanted to move very little, enjoy each place fully, and rest. It remains one of the most restorative trips I’ve taken.
Travel planning guide to safety & getting around
Research doesn’t stop at sights and restaurants. Knowing how a city moves, and where it’s comfortable to be is part of planning a trip that actually feels good on the ground.
Safety is a practical consideration I take seriously, particularly when travelling solo. I research which areas are comfortable to walk at night before I book accommodation. Main train station precincts, for example, tend to be busy, transient and best avoided as a base. Being slightly further out in a quieter residential neighbourhood often means feeling safer, not less so.
If you’re staying outside the centre, check your late night transport options before you need them. Knowing which metro lines run late, whether rideshare is reliable in that city, or how far a walk back to your accommodation actually is at midnight matters, especially if you plan to explore in the evenings.
Transport logistics between destinations are worth sorting early. Airport to city connections, train bookings between cities, ferry options are the practical threads that hold a multi-destination trip together. In Taiwan, train tickets were the only thing I booked in advance to avoid missing out.
A few things I always check before arriving:
- Public transport options from the airport and approximate cost
- Whether a transit card is worth buying – almost always yes
- Rideshare availability and which apps work locally
- Walking distance and safety of the route between accommodation and main areas at different times of day
- Passport validity and visa requirements
- Local currency and card options
- Plug type and voltage adaptor for the destination
- eSIM options researched before departure
- VPN if travelling to destinations with restricted internet
The goal isn’t to over-plan. It’s to arrive informed enough that logistics don’t eat into the time you came to enjoy.
Why slow travel is key in midlife
If my years of travel have taught me anything, it’s this. Travel for others, presenting a curated version of life through your photos and you end up needing a holiday from your holiday. Travel for yourself, and you come home rested but still having indulged your wanderlust and your need for exploration, on your own terms.
Slow travel gives you permission to simply be. It’s not about staying in one spot and never leaving the hotel, but tapping into your genuine interests, what actually lights you up when you travel, and doing so at your own pace.
Slow travel planning isn’t a rigid methodology. It’s a different set of priorities and I hope this travel planning guide inspires you to explore another way. It’s the best way I’ve found to travel, especially in midlife and beyond, when energy is finite and how you spend it starts to matter a great deal more. These days, I’d rather leave a destination feeling rested and connected to it than simply able to say I’ve seen it.
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