Have you had to walk back your travel plans?
Above: Piazza Trento e Triste, Ferrara, Italy.
© Joyce McGreevy

Travel Planning Tips for Italy (& Other “Delayed Gratification” Destinations)

You can take the girl out of the travel, but you can’t take the travel out of the girl. Like many people today, I’ve put international travel plans on pause, but that hasn’t changed my love of journeys. My wanderlust for Italy is simply waiting in the wings.

Make that on the wings, whether those of a spacious Dreamliner or a petite Britten Norman Islander, a plane so small you basically wear it.

Perhaps you, too, have postponed overseas travel for a year. Or two. However long it takes for a vaccine to be developed and your dream destination to re-open its borders.  If so, consider planning a “delayed gratification” vacation.

Why plan now for a trip that may be far off in the future? Firstly, science has proven that the pleasure of anticipation benefits your brain. Secondly, time in abundance presents unique opportunities to enrich your travel experience.

Here are a few of my favorite plan-ahead (way ahead!) strategies. Mine are travel planning tips for Italy, but the general approach works for almost anywhere.

A food stall in Bologna, Italy offers an abundance of choices.
© Carolyn McGreevy

Educate Your Taste Buds

If your experience of Italian cuisine is based outside of Italy, then the real thing will surprise you. Surprises are good, but first-time visitors are often so flummoxed by unfamiliar dishes that they end up sticking to what they already know. What’s the fun of that?

But which ravioli, biscotti, or panini? There are hundreds of varieties.
© Joyce McGreevy

Instead, make tasty test-runs before you go. The culinary gems I’ve found online include illustrated and in-depth guides to food by region, online cooking courses, recipes, and interactive food maps. For links to these and other great travel resources cited in this post, download “Italy Online,” our free travel planning tips for you (see link at end of post).

Sweetest pre-travel homework ever: researching Italian gelato flavors.
© Carolyn McGreevy

Conquer Tricky Details Before You Go

Ladies and gentlemen, signore e signori, I proudly present . . .la logistica! OK, even in Italian, “logistics” isn’t as appealing as la spontaneità. Yet thinking through trickier aspects of travel in advance will free you to be more spontaneous.

Case in point: Arriving in Milan, you head to the train station, a head-spinning hive of hyperactivity that makes utterly no sense to the uninitiated. By the time you’ve cracked the intricacies of buying tickets, finding the platform, validating tickets, and decoding the Italian for train class, carriage, compartment, and seat . . .you’ve gotten on the wrong train anyway and are hurtling back toward the airport. Enjoy your jet lag!

You know what’s more fun?

• Relaxing at home with a multimedia guide to trains that walks you through the process.
• Finding an app that makes it easy to buy train tickets worldwide.
• Knowing all you’ll have to do is board, sit back, and enjoy the scenery.
• Celebrating—spontaneously—because you found a nonstop train with elegant carriages and services. At a discount. Evviva la logistica!

Careful prep makes for carefree travel to places most overseas
tourists miss, like Comacchio.
© Joyce McGreevy

Take Time to Amass Travel Treasures

Official tourism sites often offer a range of free goodies. For instance, I’ve found maps, screen savers, audio guides, calendars, recipes, language lessons, and even virtual reality tours.

While you’re at it, stop by your local library to gather a stack of books. From travel books that you can spread out across the coffee table and leaf through while sipping your favorite Italian beverage, to novels and nonfiction that will transport you to Italy from your sofa.

Far from spoiling the thrill of discovery, getting lost in a good book makes it even more fun to get lost in the actual country, because it illuminates aspects of place that pique one’s desire to know more.

Italy’s many hidden gardens are a great reason to do some advance travel research.
© Joyce McGreevy

Get Comfortable with Another Language

My obsession with language-learning began as a teenager in Milan. I can no more resist language lessons than I can resist Italian food. It’s not about mastery—in some countries, I speak like a kindergartener—but about experiencing places at a more intimate level. But give me a week and I’ll at least do a crash course. Now imagine what you can do with several months.

Convinced you’re too busy? Start by setting the bar low. “Phrase a Day” calendar? Perfetto!  Five-minute podcasts of “Coffee Break Italian”? Va bene! Ten minutes a day with an app? Le possibilità sono infinite!

Eventually you’ll wade in deeper. Meanwhile, you’ll be amazed at the big difference a little learning can make. The secret is to make it sustainable over time.

Reason #738 to learn Italian: In line for a bus, you meet a young historian
who’s just published her first book.
© Joyce McGreevy

Save for Travel the Easy Way

Even at home, “travel” is part of my budget. To make saving painless, I automate it using an app or online banking program. This lets me stash a specific amount each week or round up to the nearest dollar with each transaction.

Because I “set it and forget it,” I’m used to living on less. On a tight budget each amount is small, but over time a little becomes a lot.

“Final Days–Everything Half Price.” Saving for travel offers multiple rewards.
© Joyce McGreevy

Explore the Cultural Scene—Online

It’s never been easier to access the world’s great museums and popular media. I often tune into online radio stations from Italy. Do I understand every commentary or lyric? Heck no, but the ambient sound alone evokes a rich sense of place.

While Italian movies have long been available worldwide, Italian TV programs are harder to find. MHz Choice and public libraries are your best bets, and some cable companies will add Italian channels to your line-up.

Should you bother? Consider this vignette from the Olden Days before Internet.

On an extended visit to Italy as a single mom, I and my then 13-year-old son fell in love with an Italian miniseries—about a single mom and her 13-year-old son. Every Tuesday, we’d make supper with fresh ingredients from the Mercato Centrale. Then we’d watch L’avvocato delle donne (“Lawyer for Women”). Filmed on scenic locations, the series inspired many side trips—to the Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, the Trastevere district of Rome, and more.

Even a frivolous show boosted our conversational skills. In Colpe de Fulimine, (literally “thunderbolt,” the Italian expression for “love at first sight”), a roving host pulled two young strangers off the street and got them talking. While the responses were as varied as the individuals, the conversational framework stayed the same, making it easy to learn authentic Italian expressions.

After a stroll through the Trastevere, relax in the Roman sun-glow.
© Joyce McGreevy

The Joy of . . .Travel Delays?

For now, my wanderlust for Italy (and a dozen other destinations!) will have to wait. Yet, following my own travel planning tips for Italy while I wait to travel will only deepen the excitement of my eventual journey. In other words, don’t let the need to postpone travel dishearten you. Instead, make the most of having added time to plan a trip to Italy, or wherever your wanderlust calls you.

Oh, I see:  When life puts your travel plans on hold, turn “wanderlust in waiting” into a travel advantage.

Taking the long view can enrich your perspective.
© Joyce McGreevy

Download our free travel planning tips for Italy to help you get to Italy eventually and to bring Italy to you right now!

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