For the two followers who read the previous post, F&O have survived the pressure of making spring a travel decision without having a breakdown. They spent hours scouring the internet, pouring over wide open options related to locations, flight schedules, hotels, cars, and all the bells and whistles that go along with them. The basics are picked, there is still work do be done.
The final choice is to hit Key West, a bit of mainland southern FL, and then go to Las Vegas for a few days before home. Simple, logical, and easy breezy, hitting all the high points of a nice vacation.
The problem with being *slightly* obsessive is that one must make the perfect decision about every single option. There are far too many options to be able to do this with a few swipes of the keyboard. One has to decide how long to stay in each place, which airport, which car rental, which flights, and where to stay.
Where do you start? Even the departure date is a dilemma. Stay at home for a day or two after work to pack and relax, or jet out as soon as humanly possible after the day job? Is it better to arrive on a weekend, or start the trip during the week? Where do you stay? With dozens of travel websites, ratings, reviews, and individual websites it is a daunting task to pick the perfect place to lay one’s head. Is the location where you want to be? Is it clean? Do they have king beds? And, of course, what is the cost? If you move the dates around by one, does it cost more or less? How many days to stay in one place? It boggles the mind.
Don’t even get us started on flights. Again, the internet is not our friend. Use a mega site or scour individual airlines? Must do both, of course, since some airlines do not participate in the big cost comparison sites (Southwest). Fly directly to KW, or go to Miami or Ft Lauderdale? If the latter, do we stay a night on the mainland before driving Rt 1? Take a red-eye? Fly coach, or upgrade? How many stops and how much flight time are we willing to endure to get a decent price? How many windows can we have open at one time on the laptop without losing our place?
At this point, the most important parts of the trip have been locked in. Two legs of the flights, and the hotel in Key West. These seem to be the most important since the trip is during the high high high season. Mainland FL has not been touched, nor have LV accommodations or the flight home. No cars have been rented. Clearly there is still a lot of hours to be spent working on this vacation.
It is obvious now why travel agents still exist. They are a dying breed, but for the amount of time and agony spent on one little vacation, it would be nice to have someone else to blame if everything does not turn out perfect. Such is the burden of being slightly obsessive.
Fin for now
Flynn
I feel your pain but multiplied many times over – I’m on the road at least half the year!
I use https://matrix.itasoftware.com/ for flights – it’s pretty intuitive and saves using a travel agent and it’s great for searching multiple dates really quickly.
Thanks for the tip! Need all the help we can get.