Planning a trip around real constraints

Most travel advice is written for a traveller who does not exist: someone with no dietary requirements, no small children, no knees, and no fixed bedtime. Real trips have constraints, and a plan that treats them as complications to be worked around later is a plan that falls apart on the first afternoon.

A constraint is not a limitation on the plan. It is information the plan needs before it is written.

Constraints come first, not last

The instinct is to build the trip you want and then adapt it. That order is backwards, because the adaptations are usually structural. “No long walks” is not a note you apply at the end — it changes which neighbourhoods work, which order they go in, and how many stops fit in a day.

Put the constraint in first and the plan builds itself around it. Put it in last and you are editing a plan that was never going to work.

Eating with dietary needs

The trap with dietary requirements is not finding one suitable restaurant. It is finding one at the right time, in the right part of the city, on the day you are there. A single vegetarian place across town does not help at one o'clock when you are somewhere else.

So plan food geographically, like everything else: for each day, know one place in the area you will actually be in. Markets are worth knowing for the same reason — they solve breakfast, lunch and picky eaters at once, and they are almost always central.

• Note the local phrase for your requirement before you go.
• Look for one option per area, not a shortlist for the whole city.
• Lunch is easier than dinner almost everywhere; make lunch the proper meal.
• Carry something. The gap between a museum and a restaurant is where plans fail.

Travelling with small children

Children do not shorten a day; they change its shape. The workable pattern is one substantial thing per day, in the morning, followed by somewhere they can move freely — a park, a waterfront, a square. Two museums in a day is one museum and an argument.

Naps and meals are fixed points that do not negotiate, so build around them rather than hoping. And keep the base central: the ability to go back to the room for an hour in the afternoon is worth more than any single sight.

Steps, distance and mobility

Historic centres are beautiful and frequently hostile: cobbles, stairs, hills, and lifts that were added as an afterthought if at all. Distance on a map says nothing about gradient, and a viewpoint is by definition uphill.

What helps is asking specific questions rather than general ones: is there a step-free entrance, is there a lift to the upper floors, how long is the walk from the nearest stop, is the route paved. Many places answer these on their own site, and the ones that do not are telling you something.

Write the constraint down

Whether you are planning by hand or asking software to do it, the constraint has to be stated explicitly. “Vegetarian, travelling with a toddler, no stairs” is a better brief than any amount of browsing, because it rules out most of the wrong answers before they are considered.

It is also the difference between a plan that technically includes you and a plan you can actually follow. The second one is the only kind worth making.

Leave room to fail

Finally: constraints make delays more likely, not less. The restaurant is full, the lift is out, the child is done. A day with slack in it absorbs that. A day scheduled to the minute converts a small problem into a ruined afternoon.

One unplanned hour a day is the cheapest insurance in travel, and it matters most exactly when the trip has constraints in it.