I’ve discovered the unexpected cost of not planning my travels

Be spontaneous, people always tell you. It’s the only way to travel. Leave everything unplanned and just go with the flow.

Wake up each morning and see how you feel. Wander the streets and decide what takes your fancy. Allow space for chance encounters and the wild adventures that strangers in strange places can lead you on.

You can’t just jump on any old TGV train up to Paris.Credit: iStock

I know this is true. Plenty of my best travel experiences have been entirely unplanned. Some of the tastiest food I’ve eaten has been found by chance. The most memorable people I’ve met, the most interesting experiences – almost all of them have been spontaneous.

And that’s all well and good, except that if you don’t have any plans, then you don’t have any reservations, and if you don’t have any reservations in this overly busy, saturated modern tourism world, then you are probably not going to be able to do anything.

Case in point: I’ll be in France next week. I have a day where I will wake up in Tours, in the Loire Valley, and sleep that night in Paris. The rest is up to me. The perfect chance to just get out and explore.

Except, you can’t hope to just jump on any old TGV train up to Paris – it’s peak summer season; it will probably be packed. So I’ve booked a seat on the 10.57am train, getting me into Paris an hour later.

You can’t just roll up at the door and walk in at the Musee d’Orsay.Credit: Getty Images

I want to go to the Musee d’Orsay while I’m in Paris, too, and you can’t just roll up at the door and walk in. The entire museum gets booked out in advance. So I’ve had to reserve a ticket not just for a certain day but for a certain time: I’m entering at 3pm.

Then I want to have dinner somewhere exciting, somewhere memorable. I find good restaurants through research, through asking friends, through hunting social media and blogs and other sources. There are plenty of bog-average restaurants in Paris – I want a good one.

And you can’t hope to just walk into a good restaurant on a Thursday night in summer and sit down at a table. Plenty of other people are out there doing research and planning memorable meals too. They’ll all be there.

So I have a reservation at the beautiful, historic Clown Bar at 7pm.

‘There are plenty of bog-average restaurants in Paris – I want a good one.’

What a spontaneous, chance-filled day that will be, with just three appointments to meet. You can taste the freedom.

This, however, is the paradox of the modern travel world. You know that the best way to travel is unplanned and reservation-free. But you also understand that if you do that, you won’t get in anywhere because everyone else has scooped up all the spots.

Belle Epoque beauty: Paris’ historic Clown Bar.

This is partly the fault of modern tourism and its sheer numbers. There are just so many of us travelling now – wandering art galleries, eating at bistros, visiting monuments – that it’s not possible to leave these places open to random visits.

There would be crowds, shoulder-to-shoulder, even more so than there already are, at the world’s most famous art galleries. Peak time would be like rush hour on Parramatta or Punt Road. Awful. There would be queues around the block for popular restaurants, and plenty of people – including locals, and reasonably so – would be upset that they can’t score a table.

But this is also the fault of businesses and the managers of attractions who like to lock their customers in, who force you into this world of reservations for every last experience because it works better for them.

Tokyo’s TeamLab Planets needs to be booked months in advance.Credit: TeamLab

Want to call into a winery for a tasting? We prefer you to have a reservation. Want to hire a paddle boat to cruise around a lake? You’re going to need to book that in advance. Want to visit a tourist site, or enjoy a tea ceremony, or go to a theme park, or do a cooking class? You will have to plan around that for months, even if you arrive there and discover there’s basically no one else doing it.

These businesses and attractions will tell you that a reservation system helps to streamline the process. It makes things more comfortable for you, the visitor, because you spend less time standing in queues and more time doing the things you want to do. And you won’t be disappointed when you miss out.

And of course, if you change your mind at some point that’s fine – you just have to pay a cancellation charge. You have to wear that as part of the modern tourism experience.

What you lose though, and what no one likes to talk about, is spontaneity. You lose the chance to just discover things. Now, you have to do this discovery via internet research months in advance, or you miss a spot.

You can choose to do that, to miss spots. You can visit somewhere like Japan and not go to TeamLab Planets, not go to the Ghibli Museum, not go to a high-end restaurant, not guarantee yourself a spot on the shinkansen that you really want. All of that is OK and you will probably have a great time, but you will miss some of the country’s key experiences.

Same goes in Paris – those impressionist masterpieces just can’t be seen anywhere else. So you have to make a reservation, and plan your day accordingly.

See you there at 3.