How to Make a Meal Plan for Your Next Vacation
I’ve always been a fan of pre-travel planning, which is why I build a packing net before every trip. The packing net includes gear components for every day of travel (depending on the forecast weather and activity), as well as a list of essentials I don’t want to leave behind: Advil, Band-Aids, my Fitbit charger, etc.
When I was planning my last trip, a study tour spanning four states in thirteen days, I added a few extra lines to my packing grid. These rows covered breakfast, lunch and dinner for each day of the trip: what I planned to eat and where I planned to eat it. Here’s how to make a similar plan for your next big trip:
How to plan meals while traveling
If you want to make a meal plan while traveling, you need to consider the following:
- Where will you be
- How much time will you have
- How long until the next meal
- How much do you want to spend
- Should it be a “special dish”
Let’s take a look at each of them:
Where will you be: at the hotel? On the highway? In the airport? Your location will help determine your options – whether you want to take advantage of these options, or plan ahead for something else (such as going to the supermarket before checking into a hotel or ordering room service after arriving).
How much time do you have, is it a situation where you can have a leisurely lunch, or will you need to catch the bus in the next 30 minutes? Did you schedule meetings in a row or did you promise your grandparents that you would arrive by 5:00 pm? Knowing how much time you have will help you understand what type of meal to plan and make sure you fit it into your schedule.
How much time is left until your next meal: This is important. If you’re going to board a five-hour flight, you’ll likely need a different type of food than, say, planning to visit a relative who will offer you delicious homemade cookies as soon as you arrive. Knowing when you are likely to eat next and what kind of meal it will be can help prevent malnutrition or overeating.
How much do you want to spend: Check restaurant websites and make sure they are within your price range.
Should it be “special”: Traveling often means going to new restaurants and stocking up on larger-than-usual snacks, but if you’re hoping to stick to a budget it is helpful to label a few dishes as “special” and keep others cheaper or “regular” … Knowing that you have a special meal also gives you a reason to look forward to it.
I used a combination of Yelp, Google Maps, and restaurant websites to select the restaurants I planned to visit, and wrote down the names of those restaurants in my travel table under the itinerary (and matching clothing) for each day, for example, Breakfast: Free at the hotel. ; lunch: World Foods next to the Bolt Bus stop; Dinner: Hearthstone. ” If you don’t want to create an entire spreadsheet, you can add your meal plan to the calendar or drag and drop it into your favorite to-do app.
Benefits of Knowing Where Your Next Meal Will Be
Planning ahead of time for your meals has been a game changer. Instead of asking myself every few hours where I was going to eat and how far I had to go to get food, I was able to start my day with a plan. This could have meant continental breakfast at my hotel, extra banana / bagel / yogurt in the room for lunch, and meeting friends for dinner. Perhaps that meant mixing some of the meal replacement powder I had packed in my carry-on and doing it the night before so that it would be nice and cold for breakfast the next morning. Maybe this meant spending money on a really good fixed price meal – though is it really considered a trifle if it’s on schedule and on budget?
My meal plan also allowed me to get rid of some of the humiliation associated with travel: arriving at the airport and buying a cup of hummus for $ 6, because I didn’t think of bringing anything better; showing up at my hotel and having to choose between ordering room service and the risk of choosing restaurants that offer delivery; I only pick a fast food place for lunch because I’m familiar with it and I’m too hungry to look for better options. I researched my options before leaving, as well as their prices and different distances from all the places I planned to visit while traveling. (I even searched for food photos on Yelp to get an idea of serving size and fat levels.)
Avoid the phrase “Where do you want to eat?” “I don’t know …” Discussion
If you’re planning meals for a family or a group of people, finding the available options before you leave – and choosing one in advance – will save you a lot of time asking “Where do you want to eat?” “I don’t know where you want to eat?” hassle. You can find information on nutrition and allergens before you get stuck on the highway (or in the middle of a busy sidewalk in the city center). You can make sure that everyone gets their favorite cuisine at some point during the trip. You can have an entire party in a restaurant or cafe before hunger forces you to choose the closest option – and you’re less likely to eat one of those dishes that end up with everyone complaining about the food.
Of course, just because you are making a plan does not mean that it has to be carved in stone. Your meal plan is a guide you can follow if something else doesn’t work . Maybe you drove past an unusual diner and decided to stop and try. Perhaps the restaurant you chose was too crowded, too noisy, or unpleasant for other reasons. You may have forgotten to check the opening hours and have chosen a location that was closed on Mondays. In this case, abandoning the plan means making a conscious choice of where to spend your time and money, which is very different from getting hungry and deciding to stop at the first restaurant you see.
If you’ve also tried planning your meals before you travel, let us know what worked and what didn’t work for you. Do you estimate how much each meal will cost and do you include it in your travel budget? Are you packing non-perishable groceries in your suitcase, or planning a trip to the supermarket or grocery store for fresh fruit and other essentials? When you search for restaurants online, do you plan which meal you will order and how much will it meet your daily nutritional goals? I love planning, so I’m curious about how you prepare food when you travel and if I need to add a few more lines to my packing net.