Rome. Late summer. The crowds aren’t easing, nor is the sun, and it’s about to sear a hole in my relationship. Hot, hangry and hungover – a diabolical combination – we’re our own kind of ancient ruins, skulking aimlessly in what feels like a black hole: an area nowhere near any of the 50-odd places I’ve saved on Google Maps for our four-day stay.
A bakery appears. Then a panini bar. Then a trattoria. Then another. We don’t stop. Instead I feverishly research them online for any signs of superiority. None were pre-approved on my months-long mission to compile the ultimate Rome hitlist, cross-referencing recommendations from friends with what I had found online.
Not one review is screaming “molto delizioso” and my patience with myself wanes, far sooner than my girlfriend’s. Our final destination is one of desperation: a chain supermarket where we buy cherry tomatoes (insipid), mozzarella (waterlogged) and bread (surely yesterday’s) for a 4pm panini lunch at the Airbnb.
My girlfriend, who was happy with the first bakery, eats in silence. I lament breaking my “no bad meals” rule so early in our holiday and start mapping out a solid plan for the next day.
If you don’t see yourself in me, a genuine congratulations. If you do, commiserations.
As Type A travellers, we might think we’ve reached peak planning. But there’s always another mountain. Despite living in the post-wanderlust era, aspirational travel content is increasingly inescapable, with suggestions for what to eat, drink, do and see bombarding us from all sides of the internet. So it doesn’t take much to buy into the more-is-more mentality, looking to emulate the endless highlights reels on social media and believing you really can’t go to [insert city] without visiting [insert viral food spot]. I imagine those wired like me, who grew up in the Lonely Planet heyday, had a similarly toxic dependence, not on their smartphone but on their brick-sized travel bible.
Coming to in the air-con after inhaling that self-made panino – almost certainly inferior to those sold at the countless eateries we bypassed along the way – it gets me thinking: is the never-ending quest to better my holiday actually making it worse?
Does arriving in a new place with more pins dropped than total days away make for a higher stakes to-do list than if I stayed at work? Am I turning the heavenly holiday I’ve been pining for into a living hell of my own creation?
When things go well, the answer is no. There’s nothing more vindicating than when an overseas restaurant you’ve set an alarm in the middle of the night to book exceeds your expectations, or a street-food vendor you’ve queued an hour for is worth the hype.
But when things inevitably go south? That’s another story. My cousins will never let me live down a day in New York when I made them schlep from the Lower East Side to the Upper East Side, on foot, to a diner supposedly revered for its cheesecake which, as it turned out, was a rubbery, extortionately priced doorstop with strong notes of fridge.
I blame my TikTok “For You” page – I swear the algorithm knew I was going to Rome before I did – for this new frontier of being over-informed to the point of over-planning.
It wasn’t always this way. Some of the most memorable travel experiences I’ve had have been completely spontaneous: life-altering bún chả on a roadside in Hanoi, knock-your-socks-off Thai (both in spice and spectacularity) in a suburban strip mall in Los Angeles and a tagine for the ages at a random rooftop deep in the medina of Fez, Morocco.
Seeking to recapture that magic changed everything on the aforementioned Italy trip. The tyrannical tour leader (me) retired and a truly extraordinary week in Tuscany ensued.
Following our noses – not my notes – led us to the kind of hidden hilltop restaurant that epicurean dreams are made of, and we somehow weaselled a walk-in table. But also to a god-awful osteria where each dish managed to resemble genitalia. Instead of it landing as an epic fail though, it was one of the funniest nights of my life.
So if I’ve learned anything as a recovering Type A traveller its’s do less. Take a punt. Live in the moment. And don’t let a subpar sandwich ruin your day. Or your relationship.
