Everyone one has friends – of one kind or another. We have family friends, work friends, regular old friends, facebook friends, imaginary friends, animals who are our friends and some of us even have non-human friends. When you’re traveling with friends (no matter what kind of friend they are) it’s a good idea to set some ground rules so you don’t ruin that friendship.
I made the mistake one time of taking a cruise with two other girls. The three of us shared a single cabin – boy, did that test our friendship. I’ve traveled to foreign countries with several different friends and at times have shared hotel rooms and not shared rooms. I’ve done weekend road trips with friends and learned how to spend a lot of time in a car with other people. Each trip has tested friendships in different ways and taught me a lot about how to travel with other people. Here are some of my tips:
- Set the ground rules before you decide to travel together – you don’t want to end up on an island only to find out you can’t agree on anything!
- Travel with people you have things in common with and who have similar travel styles – don’t travel with someone who likes to wake up with the sun if you’re a late sleeper!
- Talk about what you’re going to do on your trip with there is disagreement – have a plan for how to handle the inevitable disagreement. If you want to go to the pool and the other person wants to go to the beach, how will you handle that? My friends and I handle this by agreeing that we don’t have to do everything as a group. If one person wants to do their own thing, that’s okay! If everyone wants to get Indian for dinner and 1 person doesn’t like Indian, they can do their own thing for dinner – we never change the groups plan to accommodate 1 person.
- Be flexible – when you’re traveling with friends, you have to be flexible with each other. Don’t sweat the little things. I have one friend who I travel with and she can literally spend an hour in the shower. It drives me nuts! I just want to get ready and go. I have to just deal with it and let it go or we’d never be able to travel together.
- Don’t pressure your friends to like things just because you do. I love volunteering while I’m on vacation and most of the friends I travel with don’t. That’s okay – and I never pressure them to volunteer with me. I usually volunteer when they’re doing something that I’m not interested.
- Talk about finances before you go – how will you handle paying for incidentals on the trip, what happens when one person in the group isn’t drinking and the drinks add up on the dinner bill, etc.. Talk about what type of places you’ll go to eat (you don’t want to make reservations at a 5 star restaurant if the other people aren’t prepared to pay for it!)
This December I’m taking a trip with three other women. I’ve traveled with one of them for the past 3 years. It will be quite an adventure and we’ll see how the two new women travel. We picked them to join us because they seem to have similar interests and are easy going – hopefully we were right!
How do you travel with friends? What rules do you set?
During the month of October I’m celebrating 1 year on BoardingArea by giving away 1 million points. The contest will run from 10/1/12 – 10/28/12 (please see the terms & conditions on the contest home page) Your first chance to enter will be tomorrow, October 1st, and here’s a hint: you’ll need a friend, a stuffed friend, and some creativity!