
So, Vegas was surprising. Long story short, a 15-year friendship is over. Regardless of it all, Vegas was a real learning experience so here are a few do’s and don’ts for when you’re traveling with friends.
Do:
- Discuss what your expectations are: it’s important to make sure you’re on the same page on things you want to see and do so that the vacation isn’t one-sided.
- Respect preferences and set boundaries, whether it’s with smoking, drinking, or anything else – remain respectful of your friends and the people you’re traveling with.
- Set boundaries if you’re taking a long vacation (a week or more) together; chances are you’ve never lived with the person or stayed with them for longer than a few days (if at all), so no matter how great your friendship is, you never know how a person is after a while of cohabiting.
- Figure out budgets and spending money – this will make it less stressful for each other when paying for certain things or covering for each other when needed.
- Understand that things don’t always go as planned, but that’s kind of the beauty of traveling.
- Try to keep your traveling days short (3 days or so) for the sake of your friendship, but if there’s a good deal and you need to extend those days, talk to your friend and make sure there are no issues during your trip. It’s better to diffuse a situation right when it’s starting than to let it go on and eventually boil over resulting in–you guessed it–part ways.
Don’t:
- Travel if one of you is sick… but if it can’t be helped, take care of each other. You’re not vacationing just to stare at your hotel room’s walls.
- Bring a significant other. Chances are you’ll either be exhausted from playing middle ground or you’ll end up making someone extremely uncomfortable during the entire trip.
- Undermine or dismiss your friend’s opinion just because you’ve got more knowledge of a location than them, connections, or other reasons. Listen to each other and make decisions together.
- Make the trip all about you: if that’s what you want, simply solo travel and focus on your own itinerary. Chances are that if you’re traveling with a friend, it’s because one of you (or both of you/your group) WANT to travel together, spend those days together making new memories, and are willingly taking time out of their personal and working schedule to spend time with you.
- Ignore your friend’s feelings when something goes awry; the more you let things continue in a negative aspect, the worse the outcome will be (learn from our mistake, please!)
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