What do you think is important in a travel companion and why?

that you like him(her)

Being in the military I do a lot of driving so I like having someone who is talkative. As for the civilian side, I’m with you Marina.

I think that you need to have open communication with the person. Nothing worse than being annoyed, upset, frustrated on vacation and feeling that you can’t voice your feelings. Also, I you need to have the same travel styles—planner vs. non planner, night owl vs. morning person, amount of money you spend on activities, etc… Also, if you like to go off on your own for some time, make sure that person is comfortable being on their own as well.

Someone who is resourceful, so that they’re also adept at handling anything that could happen. Someone who is easy-going, and flexible, someone who’s excited about discovering new things (the worst is traveling with someone who’s apathetic about all of the new things you see) and someone who’s interesting to talk to. Someone who’s cool with spending time alone is also important; if you’re traveling with somebody you want to build in time that you can go off and do small things alone- even if it’s grab coffee. You need that kind of a break.

Bring a close friend that you can talk about anything with, I have a friend that expects anything coming from me.

Flexibility. No matter how alike you are, the chances are good that your agendas will be at least slightly different. I prefer going alone and meeting people when I get there.

When my sister and I went on our first trip together,we agreed to take
time outs on a regular basis – a half-day every three days, maybe. We had so much fun together that we forgot. But it helped us to know we weren’t
going to get clung to. And if someone wouldn’t like the sound of this agreement,
I would know it wasn’t going to work.

I agree that a good travel companion has to be flexible and on the same page about things like how many sites you want to knock down and approximately when you’ll get up each day. But another valuable quality is a good sense of humor, or, at the very least, a willingness to grab a drink.

Traveling can be tiring and things can go wrong, but if you both realize this and make snarky comments throughout, it’s great. Also, I believe the best way to experience a new place is to get away from the typical, so someone with a hard and fast list of standard tourist traps would drive me nuts. I’d rather meander, get lost, and sit in a cafe somewhere.

I’ve found that it’s best to only schedule one main thing in a day, whether it is a museum or a monument or whathaveyou. Hmm, now I really want to take an exotic trip…