Thursday, March 21, 2013

Small Town Talk

Dear Alina,
We have worked for a week with Alex from Family Travel Concierge to create a detailed itinerary for our family trip to Europe. The itinerary included visiting several small towns, just as we wanted. Since we are not familiar with the country, we relied on FTC’s recommendations, and ended up being very excited about our itinerary. Then, our friends looked at it, and said that it’s all wrong; they said that we should skip a couple of small towns that we planned to visit, and instead, suggested a few other towns that they liked during their travels to Europe. Now I’m not sure whether to scrap our itinerary with FTC and instead, go with our friends’ recommendations, creating a whole new itinerary ourselves. How do we decide?



Dear Small Town,
In the spirit of full disclosure, I have to say that I went with numerous recommendations from Alex in the past, and have never gone wrong. Having said that, it sounds like you are not looking to visit a particular landmark in a particular small town, but rather to get a general sense of small towns in the country you’ll be visiting. So, this would not be the case of one recommendation being better than the other; it’s more about following one person’s positive experience vs. another person’s positive experience. If this is the case, it sounds like one itinerary would be just as good as another, provided that your friends are as experienced of travelers as Alex is. There are so many beautiful small towns in Europe deserving your attention that you could keep re-writing you itinerary endlessly. So, unless you are extremely worried about missing out on a specific small town that your friends recommended, I would stick with the itinerary that you already put together. And perhaps when you come back, you could tell your friends all about the beautiful small towns that you got to see, making them wish to follow your itinerary next time. Enjoy your travels!

- Alina
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Alina Bas, M.A., is an Executive Coach and a Life Strategist who helps leaders connect to fulfilling work and live an engaging life. She has over 10 years of corporate experience in Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership Development, and is a co-author of the book “Changes of the Heart”, offering the best coaching strategies for life’s toughest moments. Connect with Alina at www.MindTerrainCoaching.com
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