Developing Your Own Travel Style for Europe

Given the budget constraint, I had to figure out where my priorities lie.  I am not telling you this to say you should have the same priorities; I just want to show you that you can think for yourself about what’s important. For the sake of having an example, here is my reasoning:

• I hate flying anyway, so I wanted to make the most of each plane trip across the ocean. (I don’t love water either, so I immediately ruled out the idea of several days on an ocean liner to cross the ocean.) To maximize my across-the-ocean value, I am taking long trips; all of them so far have been fifty nights plus.  This way I am spreading out the cost of airplane travel over several cities.

• Next I had to figure out what I value most. Would it be sightseeing, nice hotels, or fancy food for every meal?  I prioritize the sightseeing and experiences, with a secondary emphasis on the occasional splurge meal at a quality restaurant.  I really adore splendid hotels; in fact, two of my top 20 or so experiences as a professional have been the stays in spectacular hotels taken at my employer’s expense.  However, my thought was that the quality of the lodging is the least important of the three.  This led me to stay in hostels almost all of the time.  Some of you can’t do that at all because you value your privacy, you are afraid, you are an introvert, you don’t like young people, or you are a clean freak.  All of that is fine; I’m just using this as an example to show that you need to think about who you are at this point in your life and how you want to spend your time and dollars.

• Choosing your destinations also requires careful thinking about priorities. Since my graduate education and the bulk of my career has been in city planning, I have focused in on cities.  In more than 100 nights thus far, and another 60 or so to be added in summer, 2026, the smallest city I have stayed in thus far is probably Dresden.  It’s not exactly a village, folks.  I do some day trips to outstanding sights in the countryside, but those are limited.  If your reason for the trip is nature, calm, quiet, and outstanding scenery, you would find my style a terrible choice.  The point here is not to convert you to my way of thinking, but rather to encourage you to think for yourself instead of copying someone else’s trip.  I’m on Trip 3 about now, I have Trip 4 planned in the same vein, but by Trip 5, I hope to pick up the scenic and atmospheric places, such as Santorini, Siena, Lauterbrunnen, and Iona.  I’m going down my priority list in choosing an itinerary also, to some extent.  (The other consideration is geographic proximity and relatively convenient travel between cities.)

• When I first thought of actually going to Europe, instead of just daydreaming about it, my perspective was finding the best group tours to join. The more I researched the various tours and companies carefully, the less excited I became about spending some of my precious travel time on “experiences” such as visiting a perfume factory or having lunch with a local family.  Again, if I had all time and all money, I am sure I would enjoy those things, but I don’t want to spend either on these things right now.  I also cannot bear the fact that many group tours allow so little time for what I consider to be key sights, such as major art or history museums.  Yes, I could go back there on my own during my free time, but that seems like wasted effort too.  As a city planner, I actually love the planning part of a trip, so doing my own planning for independent travel seemed like a natural.  Yes, it is a lot more work, and if I were still in a full-time job, I would not want to do it. But given my circumstances, I want to tailor the trips to my own interests and energy levels.

• I prefer a balanced approach between finding sights and experiences that will really challenge me with things that are somewhat familiar or at least less culturally challenging. In my case, I was a girl who almost always selected a place in Europe for my elementary school assignments that amounted to reading a couple of different encyclopedias and then writing a “report” on a topic. For example, I wrote about Switzerland, Finland, Norway, and Pompeii. As of this summer I will have visited three of the four.  So those are in the somewhat familiar range.  Now I’m off on a trip that includes Istanbul, and that definitely will feel unfamiliar, and I predict wonderful.  I’m not going to stay in a Holiday Inn if I can help it, but on the other hand, if a McDonald’s or Burger King is convenient in a train station, I’m not going to stick my nose up in the air and say I can’t make a quick stop there when I’m hungry and pressed for time.