How Not to Travel

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

I am certainly not a "pro" at travel. With my country count in their 30s, some of you are certainly more experienced than I am. But as someone who likes to learn from my mistakes and share, I write this blog post to show you how to avoid making the mistakes I made. Before I continue, feel free to connect with me on social media, my IG handles are @intraordinarytravels @thisisintraordinary @theintraordinaryshop and on pinterest. Or you can simply subscribe to my travel channel.

Now I'm ready to begin.

I took a 3 day weekend trip to Nice, France in the last week of March. It was a good break but I will consider it one of my least successful trips. Why? Because I think I wasted a lot of time and used more money than I could have.

Watch the Nice/Cote d'azur vlog below.

Behind the scenes of making of this vlog, I deleted a lot of photos and video footage of this trip so I've had to manage with what I had left to put this together. Phone storage issues are the worst!

Anyway, let's talk about how to not travel within any country like I did.

My overarching advice is to do your research well. 

Public transport

First of all, find out the public transport options available if you would like to use public transport for your journeys - even if you intend to make 1 or 2 journeys by public transport. Sometimes using public transport is inevitable so it's better to be well-informed so you can plan your journeys.

What should you find out? You can find out:

• The cost of 1 ticket and duration (if it's time-limited)
• The cost of a whole day ticket/pass if it exists
• The cost of multi-trip tickets (eg. 5 trips)
• If there is a standard ticket that can be used across different transport types: trains, buses, trams etc. So something like the equivalent of a travelcard in the UK.

It's less hustle with a pass

Secondly, in doing your research also find out if there is a touring pass or attraction pass available. Touring passes like the French Riveira pass offer free or discounted entry to important activities like museums, parks, tours and fun activities including sports across Nice and some surrounding towns of Cote d'azur.

If like me you like to do a lot in a short amount of time, then it saves you a lot of money and also time spent researching activities you can do; as usually key activities and places will be on offer with the tourist pass.

I got the 72 hour or 3 day French Riveira pass. This pass includes free entry to Marineland in Antibes. I would highly recommend a visit. Also included in the 72 hour pass is the Promenade Côtière Trans Côte d’Azur (from Nice).  

One of my major regrets for this trip is that I feel I wasted this pass. Apart from the fact that my stay lasted from Saturday to Monday so most places where closed for the weekend, the mistake I made was that, I did not do any touring on the first day of my stay. I really should have bought the 48 hour pass instead. 

The money regret

In terms of cost, I could save spent 40 EUR. instead of 59 EUR. (image below). That's only the beginning of my regret.

I bought the 72 hour pass plus transportation which cost 71 EUR. / 62 GBP / 77 USD at the date and time of this post. Apart from the fact that I only used the 72 hour pass for 48 hours (see video), the pass was not recognised by drivers when I presented them on the buses. I was only able to use it on one bus. Although, the look on the driver's face was not convincing. It seemed like he felt sorry for me so he let me board. I'm glad he felt sorry because I did feel miserable.

Looking back on this, I should have just bought the 48 hour pass for 40 EUR. / 35 GBP / 43 USD without public transport and got my transport tickets separately. At least, I would have been able to make more trips by train. Saving me hours of travel made by bus. With time saved, I could have visited more of the towns and taken better advantage of the French Riviera pass which has alot of offers. Seriously about 50 places/activities on offer, which is such a great deal!

With my experience, I strongly advise that you don't purchase the public transport option with the French Riviera pass. Plan your trip and buy transport tickets based on your needs.

Brush up on your language skills

This is really a no-brainer but I just thought to share anyway. 

This advice helps you when you need to communicate with the locals. We all get lost and sometimes when you can't speak or understand the local language, you are in even deeper trouble. 

My third regret of this trip is that I didn't use my language skills. I have been studying French vocationally although not consistently for the past few years. This trip was the perfect opportunity to practise but I chickened out of trying because I didn't think my French is good enough. I didn't try to speak the little French I know so I blocked myself from understanding. I felt that my brain did not take anything in and I missed an opportunity to immerse myself and learn.

So here are my 3 main tips for how not to travel. This trip was a lesson for a spontaneous solo traveler like me to be more of a careful planner. I used to be very good with 'overplanning' before travel but I have developed some bad habits due to being overly spontaneous and sometimes only doing the necessary at the last minute. Don't make my travel mistakes and you'll enjoy travel more, save more time and save more money. I hope you enjoyed reading this post. Please do like, share and comment. I would especially like to hear from you about your travel mistakes if you are new to this blog.

Till next time,

Happy Living!

Claudy xoxo