The mosiac walkway of Alicante that features on postcards
The mosiac walkway of Alicante that features on postcards

Spontaneous trips with minimum plans are the best and the most exciting. However, knowing your geography is also important if you want to go on sudden holidays. Landing up in a country, where it rains in winter or is 40 degrees Celsius in summer, might just ruin your trip. I’ve done both in the past! This time, we are going to Alicante in Valencia, Spain. It was a sudden plan over a chat window earlier this week and we booked flights and hotels in a span of an hour. My flight is booked for later today (I must be mad to be blogging right now!).
All I know about Alicante is from our research on the internet. I know about the weather, what I should see, eat, buy and whether there is a beach. More about it later, after I’ve visited this ancient Spanish port city. I’ll write a post with all the bells and whistles of photographs and witty remarks.

I’ve never written a post about ‘ 5 Tips for travelling’ or ‘5 exciting tips to remember, when shopping for your extended family’ etc. So, I decided, this last minute rambling before my flight, should be about:

Five tips to help you make your sudden holiday abroad  successful:

  1. Always keep your passport ( and if required, visas)  updated. This enables you to travel beyond your own country. Also, do not decide to go to India or Russia, unless you are Indian or Russian, suddenly, because everybody needs a visa to go there.
  2. Short trips abroad are most successful if you have loads of air miles, won a lottery, money to throw around, or, if you find a good deal. They tend to be very expensive otherwise. Collect all your air miles, chain hotel rewards points etc. like crazy. They are the best way to plan a (cheap) sudden luxurious getaway. Keep an eye on the airline emails before you send them to junk mail, they sometimes have good deals.
  3. If you are going away for the weekend, choose a destination that can be reached in a few hours. Only if you can plan a few weeks holiday, suddenly, go across the world. When I’m in London, I choose Europe for my getaways and when in India, I choose a nearby state, that way I can make good use of the extensive Indian Railways network. Visiting different regions in India often feels like ‘abroad’, even to an Indian!
  4. Read about places you want to visit. Research and information is the key to making your travel endeavours successful. You don’t need to subscribe to travel magazines or buy travel guides all the time, the internet has it all. Read about your destination on the flight. You can always go somewhere you’ve been before.
  5. Have a clear idea about what you, and anybody else on the trip with you, are expecting from this sudden trip. A relaxing and lazy trip, a cultural extravaganza, or, a bit of everything. You don’t want to spend your 2 days of sudden holiday quarrelling about what to do!

So, the next time you want to take off on an impulsive trip to an exotic beach, or snowy mountains. Go ahead!

Written by Amrita Dasgupta - Visit my blog for more food and travel stories
I love to travel, discover new things, experience new cultures and then I get back home and experiment with the new food and recipes I discovered on my travels. My blog is about all those life experiences. If you’ve enjoyed this post, keep in touch with Drifting Traveller on Twitter and Facebook or by adding my blog to your RSS feed. Follow my blog with Bloglovin or Networked Blogs! If you really like reading the Drifting Traveller why not share it with people you know who'd like to read it too.