How much of your time do you schedule when you travel? How many meal slots do you book?

[John_Davis]

We will schedule most dinners especially with hard to get reservations. Rarely schedule lunch. We sometimes cook on vacation if we have a kitchen.

[Barry_L_i_p_t_o_n]

I have a bittersweet feeling towards those breakfasts. I take long vacations and I have little willpower. 1000 calories before noon adds up quickly, and kills lunch opportunities. But it is very enjoyable.

[Dave_H]

I will say that by Day 5 I don’t want to look at another piece of cured meat and my body is asking if we can please get back to oatmeal.

[LoriMcLaughlin]

@Sarah_Kirschbaum

using a template I built years ago so I can see at a glance what each day holds for lodging/breakfast/lunch/dinner and travel times, I’m curious how people here approach planning? Do you think of each day with 3 meal slots, like we do, and have either a reservation or a loose plan for most? Or do you often wander and wing it?

Yes both - similar we have a template for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as things to do and travel time. But we mostly wander and wing it but we first identify the must visits - typically book dinners (or a lunch if there’s a restaurant we can’t get into for dinner). Start with the must do’s and have a loose plan for the rest.

[Ian_Sutton]

@Sarah_Kirschbaum

I’m curious how people here approach planning? Do you think of each day with 3 meal slots

Not so much meal slots, but we found that the day naturally split into 3 in Italy due to the lunchtime (~12-4pm) closing of most places except restaurants. Failure to plan around that downtime caught us out initially, e.g. arriving somewhere at 2pm and it was like a boarded up ghost town, yet 2 hours later would be vibrantly open. What would we do until the re-opening?

[KhaN]

Depends. For hard itinerary trip I plan to the T, but it’s only when traveling with my parents. Otherwise I’m winging it like Anthony Bourdain, no reservations.

[Robert_Dentice]

A recent trip…

Nashville - Restaurants/Bars/Breweries/Music

Still in awe at thinking about the amazing food and wine scene we found in Nashville. We knew at least one or more restaurant professionals in each restaurant we went to from either NYC, LA or even Copenhagen. Just last night Bastion, Catbird and Locust received Michelin stars - I can see why. Here is a ready made food agenda for anyone who wants to go! I would like to thank board member @alex_burch who runs Bad Idea and reached out to me with help on a reservation and with some great suggest…

[Larry_Stein]

Got back from my 2 week trip to Japan a couple of weeks ago. Here’s what I learned and did.

1. Out of the 14 days there, we only booked dinners in advance on 5 nights. We ate very well on the other nights.
2. We figured out what style of cuisine we wanted to eat on the day of.

Just by accident, I found the tool which guided us: Google Maps. Click on the restaurants button at the top for places near your location. A pop-up window appears with cuisine types: ramen, yakitori, sushi, etc. You can then sort by location (how far away) and ratings (on a scale of 5). It only failed us one time. The issue several times was actually finding the restaurant! We realized that some of the places were not on street level. However, the glass-half-full way of looking at it is walking down alleys that you normally wouldn’t have.

We didn’t book any places in Osaka. Google Maps guided us to a great okonomiyaki place. Total hole in the wall, that was yes, difficult to find. Prior to our last night, a friend pm’d me and said he would be really disappointed if I didn’t eat hitsumabushi, an Osaka speciality. I had no idea what that was! That turned out to be our best meal, thanks to a place we found on Maps.