When was the last time you just picked up your bags and decided on the fly to book a ticket and just go? No concrete plans, no nothing. Just your passport and a destination. If you haven’t, you don’t know what you’re missing, spontaneous travel is the best kind of travel.
I won’t sit here and try to convince you that I’ve been doing this my entire life. I have not; I am a planner. I put pen to paper and plan my trips months in advance. To be honest, it’s actually quite annoying at times. But, I stumbled upon the notion of spontaneous travel this year, most recently this month. For some reason, I was unaware that there were two holidays “sandwiching” the weekend making for a four-day break from the 9-5. I had no plans to go anywhere, but a day before my boyfriend and I decided to make it an adventure.
We had NO idea where we were going. We wrestled with thoughts of Jamaica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, San Franciso but finally decided on St. Maarten and St. Barts. We booked our plane tickets the day before and guess what, it was hands down one of the best baecations we have ever taken.
We didn’t feel any pressure because we had no plans, no itinerary, we were free to just explore the islands at our leisure or do nothing at all, both of which I may add we did. It was refreshing not to feel like I had to constantly check my schedule to figure out ‘what’s next’.
If you’re still not sold on this spontaneous train, here are a few more reasons you should give the spontaneous life some serious consideration.
- Spontaneous travel can be cheaper. Part of the reason we decided to travel to St. Marteen & St. Barth’s was because the plane ticket was very inexpensive. Initially, it was $370 ish for a roundtrip ticket from The Bahamas, but the plane ticket rose because I wasn’t proactive enough to book when I saw the price. You can find a ton of cheap last minute plane tickets if you’re not restrictive on destination. Many search engines like Skyscanner have the amazing ANYWHERE options. Try it!
- Spontaneous travel teaches you to relinquish control. If you’re averse to spontaneous travel, it’s because you’re Type A and love to be in control of every aspect of life. Sometimes it’s good to let go and just let things happen. I know there is this saying ‘if you fail to plan la la la”, but sometimes the best things in life aren’t planned, they just happen. Be open to doing unusual things, allow locals to help you plan while you’re in your destination, rent a car and just hit the road and explore.
- Spontaneous travel allows you to write your own story. I had no expectations for my trip, I didn’t obsess over my visit (because I had no time to) and we choose to travel to a place where you don’t normally see on social media therefore, it was refreshing to not have to meet a preconceived expectation. It was perfect because we didn’t follow a cookie cutter itinerary set by someone who probably doesn’t even like the same things that we do. We created and executed our own game plan and it was epic. Write you own spontaneous story!
Are you a pickup and go kinda traveller? Do you love it? Have some additional tips? Drop me a comment!
LET’S KEEP IN TOUCH!
