What is My Perfect Travel Day?

There is so much to see in the world but what does my perfect day travelling look like?  What is perfect balance of sightseeing/walking/culture/food/partying?  What is the formula so you can get the most out of your days?  Is there one?

I thought about this myself recently – am I doing this trip properly?  I started thinking about what are the best days that I have had and how can I have more of them?  The more I thought about it, the more I realised that the perfect travel day isn’t about cramming in as many tourist attractions as possible. It is about spending time with new friends while you are on the road, and experiencing things together.

Travel friends are a special kind of friend that you can build a strong relationship so quickly that within days of knowing each other it feels like months or years.  They are some of my favourite people to spend time with.  Nothing builds friendships like stumbling your way through a foreign language together, sharing life-changing experiences, or recalling wonderful memories of previous trips, cities, and friends.

It doesn’t matter where I spend my days. I can find the most mundane places whether it be a low key evening with locals, a full day in a car (although the scenery was pretty amazing), a night out in some terrible dive bars – I would even go to a police impound if it was with the right person!  The experiences that you can look back on together are the ones that you enjoy the most.

Being able to sit together and share the memories together – even the most uninteresting things to others – can be highlights of your trip.  These are the things that people will never believe – is a ‘boring’ day traipsing across the city capped off by oven-cooked pizza really a good day?  Not every day needs to be Times Square and the Empire State Building.  If you are having fun doing what you are doing, that is the only thing that should matter.

So when I reflect on some of the things that I have done – there have been some amazing days, but some even better ones just spent with friends.  When I think again, “Am I doing this trip the right way?”  The answer is unequivocally, “Yes.”  I wouldn’t change a single thing.