One of the biggest questions we had before we embarked on our trip was how much time to spend in each place we were going to visit.
The advice we read online seemed very idealistic, calling for spending a month or even several months at a time in each place. In fact, we had followed similar advice back in 2010. We decided to stay in Buenos Aires for three weeks (skipping Patagonia and the Malbec wine region).
However, we ended up so bored in Buenos Aires that by the second week we went to visit the Buenos Aires zoo. We love animals but we would never make time to visit a zoo back home in California because those kiddies running around are as wild as the caged animals! In retrospect, we should have went to Patagonia and the Malbec region. Unless we had a project — like volunteering, trekking a mountain, or learning to salsa dance — staying in one place for any longer than a week gets really boring.
During our stay in Bath, England, we shared a house with another Airbnb guest from Australia. She was taking three months off, and had taken three months off a few years before. She mentioned how it would be ludicrous for her to travel to Europe unless she had at least eight weeks off. Eight weeks!! Stephanie and I were surprised by this wondering what she’s going to be doing for all that time. We couldn’t imagine staying eight weeks in a relatively small area when there’s so much of the world to see!
I mean, there’s a reason why Rome, Paris, and New York are more popular than Pisa, Lyon, and Boston. Not to say the latter aren’t great places to visit too. But, if you have two or three weeks of vacation per year, you have to be choosey and only spend a limited amount of time in each. Thus, our recommendation for the average American traveller who is not embarking on some personal project is to spend anywhere between 2 to 7 days in a given city, town, or natural setting.
We spent the first 5 weeks of our trip travelling much faster than what we wanted. We wanted to get to South Africa before October for prime wild-life viewing, and we also wanted to spend a good amount of our European time in Spain or Portugal. Thus, we whizzed through Northern and Central Europe spending an average of 1.7 nights in each place which was definitely too fast. More than half of that was staying in each place for one night.
Now, and for the rest of our trip, we’re able to spend about 4 nights in each place on average. This gives us plenty of time to get situated, do laundry, catch up with out family back home, etc. I’ve actually noticed that when we’ve had 6 nights in one place like Lake Como, we actually end up getting lazy and not seeing as much as if we had just 3 or 4 nights. This paradox is actually found in the workplace and is known as Parkinson’s law: “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In other words, too much time can actually be detrimental because you end up putting off that side-trip or not trying that restaurant.
If you fall in love with a place, city, or country, that’s when I think it makes a lot more sense to spend extended time there. But again, without something to do you may fall into our Argentine trap.
If we could take a three month sabbatical every three years, we would stay longer in each place too. The really interesting commonality between Europe and Australia is a generous vacation policy. Even our British host had spent many a holiday around the world for weeks at a time. While we were envious of their perks, we shared that most Americans don’t even get two weeks off per year for vacation. This blew their minds! And, maybe that’s what has shaped our view of choosing the “top-tier” places and spending time wisely.
So, given time and resource constraints where should one travel? In a future post I’ll share some tips on deciding where to visit in the first place.
