Stretching a Trip by Leaving Nothing to Chance

Every year when I go on vacation I have to endure the teasing and taunting of well-meaning but benighted friends, relatives, colleagues and assorted kibitzers who insist that my compulsive trip-planning robs me of the ineffable charm of spontaneity and serendipity in exotic lands.

Some people pride themselves on playing it by ear on vacation--just tossing a few things into a suitcase at the last minute and winging it, with no reservations anywhere.

Not moi . I’m the sort of fellow who plans his vacations in such meticulous detail, so far ahead of time, that two weeks before leaving I type self-adhesive address labels for all the post cards I expect to send to friends and relatives back here.

I also take with me on vacation: a clothes de-wrinkler, a Swiss army knife, corkscrew, spot remover, Scotch tape, packing tape, a heating element to make hot tea, individual foil-wrapped packages of honey and brushless shoe polish, a lap-top computer, extra glasses and contact lenses, a 25-foot electrical extension cord (you never know how far you’ll be from an electrical outlet in your hotel room when you have to de-wrinkle or compute), rope (which I’ve used at various times to tie up a bulging suitcase, a broken shower head and a sagging closet rod), and a small pocket tool with pliers, chisel, hole punch, file, stapler, two kinds of screwdrivers, measuring tape and scissors.

But it’s not so much for what I take on vacation as what I do to prepare for one that has friends shaking their heads.

As soon as my wife and I decide which countries we’ll visit--as much as six to eight months in advance, if possible--I consult my voluminous travel files and a couple of shelves of travel books and start firing off preliminary letters to four or five hotels in each area, as many as 50 or 60 letters in all for a trip of four to six weeks.

As replies to those letters come drifting in, answering my questions on price, view, facilities, driving times and the like, we pick the ones that sound best, and I write for reservations.

I also reserve a rental car and, if we’re going to France, I write to restaurants six to eight weeks in advance to make reservations for dinner every night of the trip--and I ask for written confirmations.

I have computerized my own form letters, in French and English, for hotel and restaurant reservations. I have another letter that I send about 10 days before we leave, asking the concierge at our first stop to be on the lookout for a package addressed to us. It will contain the maps and guidebooks I mail ahead for use on the trip (as well as the books I expect to read on the return flight and several Jiffy bags, so I can send the guidebooks back home as I finish using them).

I have also computerized several checklists to assist me in vacation planning.

One is a list of what to pack, which I update each year. Another, three pages long, includes everything from reminders about reservation confirmations to “take clothes to dry cleaner,” “cancel newspaper subscriptions,” “get prescriptions refilled,” “Xerox restaurant reviews” (from guidebooks and other sources, to be clipped to the appropriate reservation confirmation letter from each restaurant); “get francs, lira from safe deposit box” (I always make sure to come home from a vacation with enough foreign currency so that on my next trip I’ll have cash ready for tips, cab fare and phone calls as soon as I land), and “buy food and wine.”

(I refuse to eat airplane food; my typical carry-on meal includes Norwegian smoked salmon, duck liver pate and roast chicken, along with some fruit, cheese and a nice dessert. On my last trip I also brought half a bottle of 1979 Mouton Rothschild.)

The first day that boarding passes are available for my flights--usually 30 days in advance--I get mine for both the departing and returning flights (having long since reserved specific seats (aisle, by the exit) based on my chart showing the configuration of most commercial airliners in current use).

There are, of course, those who mutter Freudian words like “anal retentive” and “compulsive/obsessive”--or even a non-Freudian word like “stupid”--when they hear of my approach to vacations. I try to organize most of my life that way, but on vacation, friends insist, so much planning inevitably (and foolishly) sacrifices the charm of spontaneity.

“I spend my regular life having to make plans for everything,” my brother-in-law Howard, a Denver attorney, often says. “The whole idea of a vacation is to do something different; I don’t want to plan anything.”

Howard insists that the spontaneous approach has enabled him to “stumble across” remarkable sites and experiences, among them breathtakingly beautiful state parks in Kauai and Maui and a small, rustic, ocean-front hotel in Northern California, “none of which we would have seen if we’d made all our arrangements in advance.”

Several friends share this view. They say they just don’t want to lose the element of serendipity that makes an unplanned vacation so enjoyable. Nor do they want to spend time “working” to plan what’s supposed to be pleasurable--a vacation.

But for me, planning is not work; it’s part of the pleasure--an extension of the vacation.

Non-planners have only the two or three or four weeks of the vacation itself to enjoy; I have all those months of thinking about it and preparing for it. I like coming home from work night after night and seeing all those foreign postmarks in my mailbox; I rip open the envelopes, translate the letters, look at the enclosed brochures and discuss it all with my wife--who, truth to tell, shares some of our friends’ views about my lack of spontaneity.

There’s nothing that says one can’t be both organized and spontaneous, though.

I have hotel and dinner reservations every night, for example, but my wife and I play each day’s sightseeing by ear. Besides, even with dinner and hotel reservations, we’ve made changes--leaving a town early when we didn’t like it, switching hotels when we’ve heard about a good one en route, even canceling dinner at one restaurant and going to another when someone’s given us a good recommendation.

But I don’t see any “charm” in spending an hour or two at the end of a long day of sightseeing, wandering around the countryside in the hope of finding a hotel with a clean bed and a private bathroom.

Nor do I see the charm in missing a chance to spend a few days in a glorious hotel perched on a cliff on the Amalfi Coast because the place is fully booked when I arrive spontaneously.

Where, I ask, is the charm in spilling red wine on your favorite tie and not having the means to clean it? Or in schlepping 15 pounds of guidebooks onto the airplane. Or in spending eight hours trapped between a screaming kid and a talkative bore while you eat the shoe leather and library paste the airlines call food?

Or in discovering, when you arrive, that no rental cars are available with automatic transmission, and that the hotel you finally find has a magnificent view of the ocean but that your room looks out onto the parking lot?

Yes, you say, but do I really have to make dinner plans for every night, months in advance?

Indeed I do. Eating well is my hobby, my passion. In France, in particular, I think it’s a capital offense to go a single day without at least one exquisite meal, and you can’t be assured of that without a little planning. Getting reservation confirmations in writing in advance can come in handy, too.

One year, after arriving at the famous three-star Tour d’Argent in Paris, the maitre d’ huffily assured me that I had no reservation and that the restaurant was full. I whipped out his confirmation letter, sneered back in my haughtiest French and was immediately seated, amid profuse apologies.

On another occasion we met friends in Venice, Italy, and after they teased me about my compulsive planning I decided not to call ahead to Milan, where we would be in a week, to make any dinner reservations. I figured I could wait until we got there.

But by then all four restaurants I wanted to eat in were booked for every night of our stay. We had decidedly disappointing meals elsewhere.

One of my oldest friends laughed when I told him that story recently. His name is Lou, but I think of him as “Mr. Spontaneity.”

Years ago, when Lou and his wife Barbara got married, they promised themselves that as soon as they had $5,000 in the bank they would quit their jobs and go on a “totally spontaneous” trip to Europe, making no reservations and staying as long as their money lasted.

They did just that, spending six months in Europe before their money ran out--they’re frugal sorts, and that was 1969--and they had a wonderful time. That remains Lou’s favorite way to travel--”no planning, no reservations, just play it by ear.” But they’re finding it increasingly difficult to do that successfully, even in this country, especially during the peak summer season.

“We went to the Colorado River,” Lou told me a few weeks ago, “and we couldn’t find a hotel room within 50 miles of the river. We drove six hours to get there and finally had to turn around and come right back home.”

Lou says he’s had similarly unhappy experiences in recent years in Las Vegas and Mammoth, sometimes turning back in frustration, sometimes sleeping in the car and posting the family dog outside as a lookout.

I have no desire to spend a night on the Amalfi Coast (or anywhere else) sleeping in my car.

So if you’ll excuse me, my wife and I are thinking of going to France in September, and I have to write to a few hotels in Burgundy and Brittany. I’m already several weeks behind schedule.