Plans or No Plans?

Once we realized that we were departing for New Zealand in less than a week and a half, Greg and I suddenly got really busy researching places to visit and stay in New Zealand. Greg read our entire Lonely Planet guide for New Zealand, and he is a self-proclaimed non-reader! Maybe it's because I made a comment about how the husband usually plans the honeymoon. =P Greg says he started reading because all my questions about where we should go and what to do in New Zealand stressed him out and now his head hurts from all the reading he did. Anyhow, we now have a rental car, our return flight from Queenstown to Auckland, our ferry reservations from the North Island to the South island, all of our accommodations, and even some of our activities booked.

The funny thing is that when I booked our plane tickets way back in July, I kinda figured we'd arrive in Auckland with a really rough itinerary of what parts of New Zealand we wanted to visit and how long, but not have anything really booked besides a rental car. We'd basically wing it. Pick a city, drive there, find a bed and breakfast or a hostel once we arrived, and then go plan our activities. I mean, it worked for me and my brother when we backpacked through Europe for 4 weeks before he started med school. In fact, some of the most memorable moments of our trip came out of trying to find a place to stay when we arrived in some city and didn't speak the language. So, if winging it worked back then, why wouldn't it work now?

Well, we've got some ideas:

• My tolerance for staying in 1-star hotels/motels/hostels with questionable cleaning practices has gone way down, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't stuck with only flea-bag places to sleep, especially on our honeymoon.
• Despite his go-with-the-flow image, Greg is secretly a planner. The idea of flying 13.5 hours to get to New Zealand and missing out on some amazing New Zealand experience (e.g. a Hobbit sighting expedition) because we didn't have a plan just doesn't work for him.
• While 3 weeks seems like a long time, it's not long enough for all the things we want to do! So, we have to plan some of our trip to make sure we include our "must-do" activities.

While we've got quite a bit already planned, there's plenty of opportunity for flexibility and spontaneity along the way too.