darthbimmer

I discuss this sort of thing with prospective travel partners as part of my due diligence prior to final commitment on the trip. Yes, I conduct due diligence with friends and relatives I would travel with. It's worth identifying incompatible travel habits and mismatched expectations in advance to determine if/how they can be worked out.

GRALISTAIR

^ Great advice - I learned this lesson the hard way.

howahya

My annoyances so far come from my in-laws. They like to be attached by the hip. A group of 12 people ranging in age from 7 to 80? Yes, we must do everything together. But talk about it for an hour first, getting no where fast. Should we meet at the parking lot or ticket area for the place we're visiting? No, we'll convoy there and if you have to stop for gas, then so will we. If I want a donut, we'll all stop.

Drives me crazy but I do love them. I would just never, ever, travel for more than 2-3 days with them or go to anywhere expensive or exotic in any group of 12, especially if I know it to be a slow moving barge!

invisible

No. After arriving and finding the situation and then finding a solution on our own it was communicated to her that we are leaving tomorrow at 10AM. She said it was fine.

If that is ok on your book to treat people that way who trusted and rely on you - you two should probably hitch, you would make an excellent couple.

Good look. Wanna me give me her contact details? She just gone thru her third divorce in five years and 'up and looking'.

ProleOnParole

What I mean is, I'd usually have a plan but expect it can go south anytime, and wouldn't go into panic mode if that happened.

It's difficult to travel with someone whom you can't trust not to screw things up. I agree that the OP's ex-friend breached that trust, it's just that (1) he himself put her in charge of planning the trip and didn't do his due diligence, (2) the issue was relatively minor, so I feel it was blown out of proportion.

I think this summarizes very well the personality clash that was at the root of the problems the OP had with his ex-friend.

Excellent advice. What also worked for me:

• You don't really have to spend all the time together, especially if you know you have different ideas on what to do.
• Avoid travelling in a group over 4 people: it's very difficult to reach an agreement on anything, and it slows everything down.

Annalisa12

About 16 of us were going to Fiji in a group to celebrate 2 of our birthdays. Everyone was all super excited about it for months before. However, the trip wasn't meant to be! About 4 weeks before we went it transpired that one of the ladies was having an affair with her best friend's husband. The cheated on partners said they wouldn't go and the other two having the affair were going to go. Then the reverse happened.... the cheaters stayed home to shack up together and the dumped 2 people went and had their own room. There were also brothers of the cheaters and in laws on the trip.

The two dumped husband and wife whinged all the time about what happened which got the trip off to a good start. Then after another day they said..."1 more hour of bagging them out and then we won't talk about them anymore". In the end we had a decent time. Yes it was a little weird but we all did our own thing and had a meeting place in the pool near the bar and someone would announce where they were going to go for dinner and others were free to join or do their own thing.

invisible

Did you try to sell this story to soap opera producers?

GRALISTAIR

Yikes

StartinSanDiego

Spot on, Darthbimmer! As I've evolved as a traveler, the vetting process has evolved, too. I'm not willing to travel with just anybody anymore. Any whiffs of high maintenance...out! Excessive fear is not compatible with my travel style, either, since I like to get off the beaten path, eat at the local eateries, etc.
The group mentioned above that takes an hour to decide whether to meet in the parking lot or elsewhere... that would drive me bonkers! Of course, you're going to pay a price for traveling with 3 generations of family members. There's just no way around that! The payoffs come via the bonding of young, medium aged and old, not necessarily that it's the most amazing trip you've ever had.

Tchiowa

I travel alone or with my wife. No drama.

Loren Pechtel

Yup, we have a relative we won't travel with again because the one trip we took with him wasted too much time.

chgoeditor

I will offer one word of defense on behalf of the morning slow pokes: Some times they are slow for reasons we can't see or understand. One of my best friends suffers from chronic pain, but I never realized how bad it had become until we traveled together. It literally takes him about two hours each morning before he's stretched out all of the painful spots and is able to move like a normal human. It's incredibly frustrating to deal with as a travel companion, but my heart also goes out to him.

We did a trip with about 20 travel companions in February (celebrating a 40th birthday). The birthday girl was awesome because she organized two -- and only two -- events, so everything else was up to individuals to arrange in smaller groups. It made for a very pleasant trip because we never had to worry about 20 people having to agree on plans.

Jamarynn1

My late husband and I used to have a criteria list to "rank" our friends on traveling:


1. Can we go camping with them?
2. Can we go camping with them in the rain?
3. Can we go camping with them in the rain with a leaky tent?

We'd do foreign traveling with 3's.
Domestic traveling with 2's.
Short domestic weekends with 1's.

darthbimmer

I employ a similar approach. I use these ground rules for traveling with others (beyond my wife):

• I will book my own travel arrangements. If you wish to do it for me, I will ask you a few questions to determine if you're suitably clued in. If you pass the test, great. If you fail, there will be no more discussion about it.
• My wife and I will have a private room.
• My wife and I will have access to suitable transportation that requires no permission or scheduling from anybody but ourselves. If walking, public transit, and taxi/Uber/Lyft meet our needs then great. If not, we will have a private car.
• If there are more than 4 people I will not agree to fully planned days that involve everyone. I'll accept simple plans like "Tuesday we'll have dinner in the hotel restaurant at 8" or "Saturday we'll have a nice dinner at the steakhouse down the street at 7." Complex plans will only be made with specific people whom I am comfortable I'm compatible with, travel-wise.

Any of these ground rules can be broken, of course. But only when I know what I'm getting into and accept the tradeoff.

stut

Don't know if 'horror stories' is the correct term, but a couple of 'fun' experiences:

First, inter-railing in my late teens, just as Central and Eastern Europe had opened up in the 90s. It was a fantastic trip, but not without its faults (mostly with one of the group of four, let's call him 'K').

We arrived in Berlin Zoo Station, and needed accommodation. We agreed that K and one other would check the hostels/agencies in the station, and the other two of us would watch the backpacks. So we grabbed a pretzel and a coffee and waited. And waited. And waited. Started to get a little concerned. After two hours passed, we were fuming. They returned. They'd hopped on an U-Bahn out to Wedding to check out a hostel which K didn't like in the end. And hadn't thought to tell us they were doing this. (Pre mobile phone era, remember). I was rather annoyed, so picked one at random out of the Lonely Planet, dragged us all down there, and it worked out just fine.

So, this could be forgiven, but then...

We were visiting Friedrichstrasse station. Remember this had just opened up, so was all the East-West crossing point stuff was still there (just without the controls). We were having a quick look while changing trains, and noticed that K had disappeared. So we waited in the same spot. And waited, and waited and... Got a little concerned. Phoned the hostel to check if he'd returned (GCSE German coming into use finally) and nothing. We decided to head back to the hostel early. He was there. He'd gone off to look at something that had caught his eye, neglected to tell us, got lost and assumed we'd gone away, rather than waiting in the same spot.

Got to Poland, and I went out for some food, K following. Found a local shop, with some OK veg and bread. The bread looked quite nice to my eyes, but K wasn't having any of it, didn't like the look of it, wanted some packaged stuff. There wasn't another shop around, it wasn't a great part of town, I'd slept on train seats/floors for the last two nights, and I lost my temper. Which resulted in some surprisingly nervous looking people staring at us and watching our every move until I sheepishly paid for the food and headed out. The argument continued out in the street.

He then decided that, not liking the bread, he would seek out fast food chains for the rest of the holiday. I told him in no uncertain terms that I would not be accompanying him. So a lot of the rest of the holiday was split into two pairs (which actually worked rather well). At a couple of points, I disappeared off for a day with other backpackers too. Sometimes, you just need a little distance to maintain a friendship...