7 Easy Steps Toward A Better Trip

1. Read. You can get through life (dimly) without books, but not through travel. Guidebooks are essential: those you read before you go (like the Insight series) giving you background information on the place, and an idea of what’s worth seeing there and those you take with you (like Eyewitness), with their brilliant graphics and practical tips.

Maps also are to be read avidly, as are histories, travelers’ accounts (both old and new), novels set in the place, and - if you’re going abroad - language books. Even the most superficial linguistic study will give you not only a basic vocabulary of helpful words but, often, valuable insight into the customs and culture.

2. Pack. This is the only part of travel to be taken lightly. Start with one wheeled carry-on bag, fill it with two skirts or pairs of trousers (one dress, one denim - preferably black, which can pass for dress), half a dozen shirts (or blouses), one sweater, and a week’s worth of socks and underwear, even if you’re going for a month. (Make sure that the clothes are similar in style and color to those worn in the place you are going: the less obvious the tourist, the more clueless the pickpocket.) Then slip into the side pockets your toiletries bag and a rolled-up trench.

Over your shoulder sling a satchel containing documents, tickets, notebook, pens, camera and books.

3. Walk. Your first waking hours in a new place should always be spent tramping about. Your senses, even if jet-lagged, especially if jet-lagged, are at their sharpest; everything appears fresh and new in those important first hours. “No one,” Paul Theroux wrote in “The Pillars of Hercules,” “has ever described the place where I have just arrived.” There should be no direction or purpose to your wandering other than to soak up the atmosphere; you head out from your hotel not planning to see anything but hoping to see everything.

4. Sit. Walking is tiring, so after awhile find a bench or cafe table. Immediately your perspective changes; you are no longer part of the passing crowd, you are a stationary observer. And instead of noting buildings and shop windows and doorways and signs, you focus on the people from whom you’ve just parted. You see what they’re wearing, how they walk, the condition of their shoes, their manner of greeting, their smiles or lack thereof, their eye shadow, their bald spots, their feelings toward glasses.

5. Eat. All this walking and watching make you hungry, so you look for a restaurant. Pass by the ones that are half empty or full of fellow tourists; if you’re in a foreign country, ignore the places offering menus in English. (You’ve studied a little of the language, remember? And real pleasure results from taking risks.) Also, abroad, do not succumb to McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. Eat what the locals eat - indigenous foods cooked in traditional ways with regional seasonings - even when the locals are chomping Big Macs.

6. Write. Every tourist takes pictures, but how many keep journals? My mother does, and not because she hopes to make a quick buck off her softy son the Travel Editor. A written record of your trip captures more than snapshots ever can: anecdotes, conversations, impressions, feelings. Writing about something helps prolong the memory of it, and years later, when you finally do forget, it’s still all there.

7. Talk. Everything up till now has been pretty much a passive affair. And it is only when you move on to the active - participating in the life of the place - that a trip truly becomes memorable. The way to do this is to connect with the people who live there. This can be difficult when you don’t speak the language, though often the more exotic the locale, the easier the contacts. You are a novelty, a curiosity, and people will surmount trivial obstacles like the lack of a common language to get to know you. Those places where they don’t, it’s up to you to do it yourself.