Planning for New Zealand

We're going to New Zealand! That's so exciting. We booked our flights to/from Auckland, NZ three weeks ago. And then we... did nothing... for two weeks. 😨

The obvious problem here (I hope it's obvious) is that a two-week trip to a foreign country takes more planning— way more planning— than just booking the flights in & out two weeks apart. It takes researching things to do and places to go. It takes booking 14 nights of hotels, plus cars, ferries, and domestic flights to get around the country.

We kind of suck at planning. ...I mean, we suck at buckling down to actually do the planning. Once we actually make plans they're generally pretty awesome plans. We've always had great trips, whether shorter or longer. But we've got to stop procrastinating.

Two weeks after booking the basic flights in/out we did start making additional plans. That was a week ago. We converged on the shape of a plan for travel within NZ. We booked two domestic flights as part of that, plus a rental car for 1 of the two weeks, plus a few nights of hotels. Then this past week we booked out another several nights of hotels. But we're not done yet.

We're making today our "Get It Done" day. I've started a Google doc to track all of our plans and booking details. That way Hawk and I can keep the details centralized while each of us making some of the bookings. Plus once we're in NZ both of us will have all the details in case one of us is sick or asleep or can't take the lead for whatever reason. Okay, so the Google doc is created, and I've filled in the stuff we've booked so far... but we still have a lot more bookings to make.

Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back

Hawk and I have spent many hours today poring over booking options for our two-week trip to New Zealand next month. This is what we aimed to do today. But it has a) taken longer than expected and b) been a case of Three steps forwards, two steps back.

The mixed bag of progress: I booked the second car reservation we need. Then I changed the dates. Then I canceled the first car reservation I booked a week ago and rebooked it with another company. Then we changed our minds about 2 days in the middle of the trip so I canceled 2 nights of hotels we booked. Then I booked 3 other nights. We made short-lists of activities we want to do several days. Some activities require tickets; we booked a few.

What do we still need to book? Five more nights of hotels. Maybe another activity or two that require tickets. And we have another day or two of short-lists to build out.

Overall I'm less than satisfied with our progress. We accomplished less than I wanted to, and it's taken twice as much time as I expected. It's been looong day of flipping between a dozen+ tabs on our computers just to get this far. Three steps forward, two steps back. But it's better that we put in all this time today than further pushing it off to this coming week.