How to Pace Your Travel Itinerary

Last updated: December 1st, 2024 | Originally published: November 25, 2024

When it comes to pacing a travel itinerary, the main question to ask ourselves is: What kind of a vacation do we want? Am we looking to sightsee like conquistadors? Or is standing for a refill labor enough? Most likely we fall somewhere in between, which is where travel pacing nuance lies.

In this article we’ll discuss some simple planning concepts we hope will make your holidays more enjoyable.

Very few people can go full-bore for a week or longer because its mentally and physically exhausting. Nonetheless we’ve found no shortage of internet itineraries that stack one full day after another as if nobody sleeps or showers.

The truth is, an experienced traveler eventually learns how to plan downtime into the itinerary because exhaustion on parade will dampen the experience we hoped would bring us joy.

If your idea of vacation is an absence of labors of any kind, by all means enjoy eating, drinking, sleeping, sexing, and reading your book. For the rest of us, we probably hope to enjoy some memorable activities, which means we have to plan our days.

Some people prefer not to plan, opting instead to, “go where the day takes them.”

While inspired wandering sounds romantic and might produce something great, there’s a good chance it simply won’t. On the other hand, planning an amazing adventure, and being whimsical within the plan, will almost certainly grant better results.

We aren’t saying you need a well paced travel itinerary to rock an epic adventure.

However, after a few failed vacations you might find yourself wondering if there is a better way. The following system is the result of our attempt to find that better way. We hope you enjoy.

The Four Kinds of Days in a Travel Itinerary

Firstly, if you want help with the entire process of planning a vacation, check out this article, How to Create the Perfect Travel Itinerary. The article you are reading is the companion piece to the article in the link.

When on vacation there are four significant levels of activity to define your days: The Full Day, Partial Day, Easy Day, and Down Day. We will briefly explain each in this section, and in the next section we will demonstrate how to implement them into a well-paced travel itinerary.

The Full Day

A Full Day takes eight or more hours. Good examples would be a guided raft trip or a 12-mile hike. Sometimes a cluster of excursions are grouped together for proximity purposes which results in a piecemeal Full Day.

The Full Day often begins early and/or extends late into the evening. Sometimes it will include a 2 hour or longer drive between lodging and the locale.

It is common for a Full Day to exhaust the vacationer.

Related Article: How to Save Money for Trav el

The Partial Day

Anything that takes between 4-8 hours usually constitutes a Partial Day. Typically the Partial Day will begin in the morning and end in the mid-afternoon.

Many tours would qualify as Partial Day excursions. A catamaran or snorkeling tour usually last between four and six hours. If you are into hiking, most hikes are less than eight miles and commence in 3-6 hours.

Often a Partial Day excursion, like an art-museum, will be grouped with another nearby activity to create a Full Day.

The Easy Day

The Easy Day has a plan that requires very little effort or time constraints. For example, you could drive to the beach and stroll the jewelry vendors, or go shopping at the market for a sunset picnic.

Maybe you want to check out the old church in town and take in the view from the top of the hill. Perhaps it’s a cooking lesson you have in mind.

If it requires less than a 30-minute drive (or a brief walk) and you end up doing something chill that lasts less than four hours, that’s an Easy Day.

The Down Day

A Down Day has no plans. Now this doesn’t mean you can’t do anything; by any and all means, do whatever you feel inspired to do. The big idea is to allow yourself to be a can-crushing, page-turning, pistachio nut receptacle if you like.

Want to read your phone all day? Do it. Is a 3-hour nap calling your name? Hell yeah, mine, too. Feed the birds. Walk to nowhere special. The Down Day is for doing laundry and much, much more.

Now why would you waste a precious vacation day doing absolutely nothing? Well, we’ll tell you: To preserve emotional and physical durability on vacation.

If you love to travel, we have something we would like to give you. It is our professionally designed e-book and it is FREE of charge. We think it’s pretty great, and we’re hopeful you’ll like it, too. It’s called, “Cultivating a Lifetime of Travel”. Click HERE. and we’ll send it on over!

The Rhythm of Your Days

The two goals of an adventurous vacation are, 1. Doing cool things. 2. Creating joyful memories. We facilitate this objective via thoughtful pacing.

Another way to illustrate this concept is to say we avoid overexerting ourselves, which makes doing cool things less enjoyable, and we plan cool things to do so our memories aren’t dull.

A well-paced travel itinerary designs the shape of each day, so when the days are laid out in logical sequence a pleasing rhythm is created. We will utilize the four different types of days to accomplish this rhythm in our effort to produce and preserve good times on vacation.

Here is a SAMPLE ITINER ARY of a 3-week Bali vacation. Check it out to see what our idea of a well-paced itinerary looks like.

The primary objective in pacing your travel itinerary is to stagger the Full Days far enough apart that the vacation slows down and allows for our energy to recharge.

One method to facilitate this is to place a Down Day every three or four days.

Think of Down Days not only as a recharge, but a palate cleanse to heighten the impact of our adventure. It is a shame to spend our time racing from place to place if the lasting impression is that of feeling rushed.

If You Prefer a Mathematical Formula…

Score your days as such: Full Day = 3 points. Partial Day = 2 points. Easy Day = 1 point. Down Day = 0 points.

Every four days should achieve a total of 6 points, which can look like the following formulas:

Full Day (3), Down Day (0), Partial Day (2), Easy Day (1).

Full Day (3), Down Day (0), Full Day (3), Down Day (0).

Partial Day (2), Partial Day (2), Down Day (0), Partial Day (2).

Easy Day (1), Full Day (3), Easy Day (1), Easy Day (1).

Occasionally we’ll spill over into 7 points, but seldom will we score fewer than 6 points. This is the rhythm of our days. This is our sweet spot for doing cool things AND creating joyful memories.

We typically follow a Full Day with an Easy Day or a Down Day. The pacing allows a Full Day to be followed by a Partial Day, but if so we make the following day a Down Day.

We never place Full Days back-to-back. If you vacation is so short that you have to pack it with can’t-miss activities then you will always run the risk of turning the vacation into work. That said, most folks have the energy stores for a week straight of intensive discovery.

Sometimes we will stack Full Days and Partial Days early in the vacation because we are fresh and can handle the exertion. However, we will usually compensate for this in the following days, utilizing a string of Down Days and Easy Days to allow for a solid recharge.

Related Article: 10 Travel Mistakes to Stop Making Today

Putting the Puzzle Pieces Together

Now that we’ve organized our itinerary into well-paced, four-day puzzle pieces, the final step is to place them in an orderly sequence.

We don’t want to complicate this process with too many words. A logical flow exists when the pieces are arranged in the most balanced manner. Occasionally the days within the four-day compartments will shift to accommodate a sensical flow to the final rendition.

For a better overall perspective, please check out How to Create the Perfect Travel Itinerar y.

You Can Always Call an Audible

The level of detail in our planning is meticulous, yet “life” will always happen regardless of our artfully arranged ideas. To preserve a good time we simply have to remain flexible no matter what transpires, e.g., garbage weather, an unfortunate accident, monstrous crowds, mood shifts, unexpected closures, or any number of lousy and frustrating events.

In any of the above situations we can call an audible and change plans on the fly. In fact, one of our 10 Guiding Principles on the Road is to always hold the itinerary loosely, as we are best served if we expect things to go wrong and prepare in advance.

Some plans are unyielding because reservations cannot be changed. Everything else should be a moveable tile, shiftable about the itinerary, to accommodate the realities of human beings in a new environment.

An Honest Conclusion: How to Pace Your Travel Itinerary

The longer the holiday, the more important pacing becomes.

Our ongoing struggle with this dilemma is a bit of a white whale for the Hoffmann family. It appears some of us are more driven than others to do cool things on vacation, and pacing frequently reflects that ardor.

Therefore, this process is a compromise that has developed over the years. It has allowed the zealots in our tribe (Ryan) to see more clearly — and entertain more readily — the needs of other family members.

We understand if all of this comes off as a bootless errand. Planning can be tedious, and some folks just don’t see the need for this level of anal retentiveness.

Hopefully there is some component of this technique that is helpful to someone who is perhaps suffering from ambitious exhaustion out there on the road.

Thank you for stopping by our website! We are the Hoffmann family, a full-time RV family that has split residence in Seattle, Washington and San Antonio, Texas. We have special needs children that we homeschool, and work travel assignments for the Veteran Affairs Hospital. If you would like to learn more about us, check out our Start Here and Biography pages. In the meantime, God bless and travel happy!

How to Pace Your Travel Itinerary