Has anyone tried back to back trips?

[Trixieandboots]

We are currently looking at the Ireland trip next summer but maybe also Scotland. They run a couple days apart and I’m wondering how burned out we may all be. Has anyone here gone back to back?

 

[Donalyn]

I have not tried it. I think if you could relax on the days in between, it could be okay. Could be kind of fun.

 

[WeLoveABD]

We are currently looking at the Ireland trip next summer but maybe also Scotland. They run a couple days apart and I’m wondering how burned out we may all be. Has anyone here gone back to back?

Our first ABD was Italy immediately followed by a DCL med cruise-- our kids were then both preteen and it was a little long/tough on them. My wife and I have done back to back trips since-- including an ABD to Tauck, and BTB Tauck (land and river cruise), and though without the kids it was still a little long for us. I guess there is no easy answer here-- depends on your tolerance, whether you have young or older kids in tow etc. The plus side of course is doubling up your trip experience while reducing the number of flights etc.

 

[woodleygrrl]

I would personally rather die then have two of these vacations back to back. They are so so so very expensive that I would rather really enjoy the trip than be exhausted for the second one. Just my opinion of course.

 

[Mathmagicland]

We are currently looking at the Ireland trip next summer but maybe also Scotland. They run a couple days apart and I’m wondering how burned out we may all be. Has anyone here gone back to back?

I’ve not yet done a back to back, but have also been looking at trying it with these two destinations. So, please post back if you do decide to do both with how it goes for you.

My thinking is it would not be much different than some of the 12-day adventures, like New Zealand. The number of activity days would be similar, and unlike NZ which was 12 days straight, there would be the break of a couple of days in between the two.

 

[jimmymc]

Not me personally, but I've talked to people who did both Italy and Central Europe, separated by just 1 day. They chose to do the one night in-between in Prague as a pre-night to the second trip and enjoyed both legs.

 

[TravelJunkieHubby]

We have not - but in 2019 while on the Canada ABD, I met another guest who had done Viva Italia and Bella Italia back to back in 2018 with her daughters. It sounded pretty straightforward since it was all in one country. I would anticipate Ireland and Scotland would be similar.

 

[lpm23]

My gut is you would be exhausted. We have done 8 ABDs and loved them all but by the end you are exhausted. I can’t imagine doing two back to back.

 

[TXAKDisneyFan]

I think it depends on your usual travel style.

A lot of people on the Disney FB pages I follow say they have to take a rest day every two or three days they're at the parks. Or they have to go back to the hotel to nap every afternoon. We've never done either, even when our kids were infants. If we go on a 20 day trip to WDW, we're in the parks for 20 days. I'd be bored to tears sitting around a hotel room all day; and I can only take sitting on a beach chair (/pool chair) for about half an hour. I wasn't crazy about Cancun bc I just can't lounge around that long.

Last summer we did Naples, Capri, Sorrento, and Rome (incl Pompeii & Herculaneum) for about a week before the Italy ABD started. Then after the ABD we stayed in Venice before driving up to Austria and Germany. We set up private day tours for the different locations/sites outside the ABD, so we didn't have any down days. We (including our kids) were fine. There were some early days and I'm very much not a morning person, but there are also early days with school, work, and sports - I'd much rather get up early to go tour places I've been hearing about my whole life than to drive a kid to a sports practice.
I love longer trips because I feel like I'm really making the most of traveling so far. Where I grew up is really remote to traveling pretty much anywhere (and flights are expensive), so it's very common for peoples vacations to be a couple weeks long (my friends back home have a "why bother?" attitude to week long vacations). I guess we still have that mentality even though we've lived in the States for so long.

 

[Skylarr29]

We have. We did the France trip followed by the Austria trip. We weren’t exhausted at all except for one morning that lives on as one of our most favorite vacation memories ever. However that morning was on our first trip and we would have been tired either way on that day . In our case the second trip started the same day the first one ended so we just hopped a quick flight over for the next.

 

[chuff88]

We are currently looking at the Ireland trip next summer but maybe also Scotland. They run a couple days apart and I’m wondering how burned out we may all be. Has anyone here gone back to back?

I haven't done it, but on my Norway ABD last summer there was a grandmother/granddaughter pair who did Iceland immediately before Norway and other than their luggage not making it to Iceland with them (my worst nightmare) they liked doing back to back. The two trips you mentioned, Ireland and Scotland, are the two I've been thinking about doing BTB in the future. I think that'd be a natural pair of trips to link up.

 

[sayhello]

I haven't done it, but on my Norway ABD last summer there was a grandmother/granddaughter pair who did Iceland immediately before Norway and other than their luggage not making it to Iceland with them (my worse nightmare) they liked doing back to back. The two trips you mentioned, Ireland and Scotland, are the two I've been thinking about doing BTB in the future. I think that'd be a natural pair of trips to link up.

I'm a little confused. If they did Iceland first (before Norway) how is their luggage not making it to Iceland with them affected by the fact that they did Norway after the Iceland trip?

Sayhello

 

[chuff88]

I'm a little confused. If they did Iceland first (before Norway) how is their luggage not making it to Iceland with them affected by the fact that they did Norway after the Iceland trip?

Sayhello

It doesn't! I just meant that was the only hiccup in their trip. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

 

[AquaDame]

I was seriously considering doing exactly this, but I would have had the Sicily tour end the day I needed to start the next in Oslo. There was no direct flight,so while I technically could have done it, I opted to just go to Greece with my brother and his partner for the week prior instead and head straight there from Chania a day early. Had it ended a day or two prior, that would have made it easy.