In my previous post, I narrowed down my trip options to two itineraries: one was 10 days to London, and 5 days in Spain. Another one would be 10 day sin London, and 11 days in Spain.
The decision between both itineraries rests on whether I want to visit two Spanish regions (the Basque Country and Andalusia) or stick to one region. Another consideration is if I want to spend a full 10 days in London, or if I can shorten that time and travel elsewhere.
To figure this out, I started binge watching some travel videos. Here are some of them:
- Bilbao / San SebastÃan
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgcBQTiPr_A
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joQ97DBM344
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYwUUDdYi9I
- Sevilla / Granada
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gLhx8bC0fw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72aaBV9882I
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlf-CawFZA
- London
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p1rzw-7Jho
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUyQzpMODBI
After watching a number of videos I’m just not that interested in spending a long time in London. It seems like a cool place, but the other locations seem far more interesting. This concurs with advice I’ve gotten from two friends – one who lives in London, and one who studied abroad there, who advised me to not spend more than 3-5 days in the city.
My plan now is to do 5-7 days in the UK, with a day trip to Cambridge mixed in. I do want to see the British Museum and visit the South Asian majority neighborhoods like Southall. Then, I’ll head to France and make my way to the Basque Country somehow, and then spend a few days there. I’ll fly to Sevilla and explore Andalusia (or just hang out, tbh), and then head to Madrid a few days before my flight. My total trip duration is 16 days, but I bought a fare that has no change fees, so I could choose to extend it in either direction.
I tracked my time using Toggl for this planning process, and I logged more than 6 hours of planning just to figure out the dates and cities. I don’t know if that’s a lot of time, or not a lot of time, but I did not think it took that long.