I have traveled countless times in the past. Leisure, business, living abroad, visiting close family… Throughout my life I have had so many reasons to travel frequently, that the whole experience becomes incredibly repetitive. Suffice to say that for several consecutive years I was travelling every two months.

So the excitement gradually fades and becomes blasé, which eventually becomes annoying and bothersome, and you then look forward to staying put at home for a while, which starts to feel more like luxury rather than traveling.

So needless to say, the novelty has very long worn out. However now that I am not compelled to travel more than around three or four times a year, it tends to become a bit more enjoyable and less cumbersome.

Things have also changed so much over the years. You used to have to book your entire trip through a travel agent, by looking at endless brochures for flights, car hire and hotels, purchase guide books and maps, check for visas for so many places you travelled to, go to the bank to get your foreign exchange, and generally start planning a very long time in advance.

With today’s technology everything has changed. Although many people still prefer to book and plan every detail a long time in advance. Somehow, over the years, I have gone to the other extreme. When I lived an extremely hectic lifestyle, mainly due to many changing work commitments, I really couldn’t plan anything in advance. The few times I did, I ended up having to change everything over and over again.

And you know what, I found out that nothing really changes much when booking last minute. You still find flights and cars and hotels and everything else, in exactly the same way you do when booking ages beforehand. So why bother? And with today’s technology it is even easier to book everything at the last minute, allowing you to decide what you feel like doing very shortly before, rather than tying yourself down so long in advance, and then having to pay cancelation fees or chasing for refunds if something crops up.

The only small difference might be in the price of the flights. However, if you are not willing to book something like 6 months in advance, which for me would be sheer madness, whether you reserve your seats say 6 weeks or 6 days in advance the difference in price is not usually so much. Everything else tends to be the same and occasionally even cheaper, as hoteliers want to fill up rooms which have remained empty and car hire companies give out special offers on unrented cars. So all in all you end up with pretty much the same deal, while remaining free until the very end.

So we are first off to Pairs and then on to Ireland from there, before returning to Malta. I booked the flights just two weeks before, simply by doing it online and by using three airlines – Air Malta, Aer Lingus and Ryanair, for each respective leg. The flights inclusive of taxes came to € 280 per person in all, not bad at all considering that we booked so late.

Then in my typical fashion, I simply forgot about all other arrangements until now, which is three days before we leave. So I devoted literally no more than one hour and here is how I do it.

Starting from Paris, we don’t need a car as we will be in town and we don’t need a hotel as we are staying with friends. The first night we are staying pretty far out from Paris, so all I do is to Google “transport from Paris Charles de Gaulle to l’Isle Adam” which is where we spend the first two days. Up comes the info and yes there are trains and buses too and a quick look at the schedules shows a pretty frequent service for both means of transport.

So that’s that done and I move on immediately after less than five minutes. Who cares about the exact timings! We could arrive early, we could arrive late, there could be queues and we could wait for our luggage, or simply stop for a coffee or something stronger upon arrival, before heading on to our final destination. So it is totally pointless fretting about it all and planning which train or bus to take. We are not in one of those extreme adventure programmes where we will be abandoned in the Amazon jungle and have to desperately work our way out on our own. Au contraire, we will be in Paris with signage, information counters, people all around to ask and every other amenity and convenience imaginable. Similarly what on earth is the use to stay printing or memorising the way to the trains or the buses, when all this is so simple once you are on site.

How often have you planned every little detail, organised yourself to the T, with printouts and notes, which you then never even refer to, simply because all you have to do is follow signs and instructions.

So there are obvious means for us to get from the airport to our destination, and that is more than enough for me at this stage. The rest will sort itself out once we’re there.

And in a nutshell that’s all we needed for Paris. We can easily get around once we’re there. To get to the centre of Paris from l’Isle Adam is very easy, and I know that one by heart. And to get back to the airport we can figure out the time of the train or bus back once we are there.

Great, so now Ireland. First of all we need to rent a car. I searched under “car rental Dublin airport”. I ignore the several billion sites and go for the first. Yes the very first. As expected this is a site featuring all companies operating from the airport and listing them all together in price order. There are dozens and dozens of choices. As our daughter is currently in Dublin and will be joining us on our touring around, there are going to be three of us, plus two large luggage, driving around in this car for an entire week. Experience has taught me that better spend a little bit more and get a larger car than being cramped up and packed like sardines for a whole week.

So I scroll down the offers and notice that every so many cars featured, there is one listed as “Super Offer of the Week”. I quickly stop on a Ford Mondeo Diesel priced at € 127 for the entire week. That looks like a good offer to me. Book! Yes that’s all it took, around 2 minutes flat. Extra options? € 10 extra per day to cover access – thanks but no thanks. € 10 extra per day for GPS – thanks but no thanks. I can very easily do without both.

I always used to pay the extra waiver for the excess for nothing, until recently I decided not to and naturally we had an incident which burst two tyres, had to get towed, etc, etc. and admittedly in this one case I should have taken it. But that only happened once and it really didn’t make sense for me to have paid all that money every time for nothing before that.

As for GPS, I can truly do just as well with or without. I happen to have a gps implanted in my head and have a great sense of direction and orientation. I can honestly make do even without a map, simply by following the road signs. Technology is great and if the gps was included I would have obviously taken it, but between €70 for a gps or €1 for a map, I’ll choose the latter, thank you very much. We tend to forget basics, such as the excellent road signs which guide you just as well.

Our itinerary was next. Now this might sound rather crass and mindless, but believe me it works wonders. I had a vague idea in which direction I wanted to go, as I have obviously mentioned our forthcoming trip to Ireland to several people, and everyone tends to agree that we should head to the West coast. Also through a bit of general knowledge I have heard of the main sites by name, so I had an idea of what to look for.

So all I do is google “sites in Ireland” and up comes the slideshow type of pics you can scroll through horizontally. I recognise all the names. Ring of Kerry – check, Cliffs of Moher – check, Dingle Peninsula – check, Connemara – check, as well as a few others, and for each one I scroll down and click on the map to see exactly where it is located. Immediately I form an itinerary in my mind and very easily check distances. No need to check more than one single distance from one point to another throughout the whole itinerary, to get an overall idea how long driving times will be.

And literally within no more than perhaps 20 minutes I had figured it all out, with the places we had best spent the night throughout the week, so as to visit my selected locations. Dublin for the first two nights, then Cork, Killarney, Limerick and Galway and this still left us with an extra night to spare. I don’t want to book hotels except for Dublin, so as to be free to move around as fast or as slow as we feel like. There is no way on earth we will have problems finding accommodation in Ireland in November, so again it would be really senseless to prebook.

Now that we had a good idea of our itinerary, we were free to add or to remove any sites depending on what we feel like doing on the day and also on factors such as the weather. If we do have disastrous weather, then the last thing I want to do is to be forced to drive long distances in pelting rain just because we had a hotel booked.

Similarly, if we had planned to spend the night in a location which we do not find very attractive, then we just keep driving on. Or on the contrary, if we encounter a truly enchanting place, then we might decide to stay on for a couple of days. All we have to do is to check online once we arrive in town and see what hotels are available, and if the price is right, just book it there and then and turn up within the hour.

This for us is a true holiday, with no routine, no imposed schedules and total freedom to do as we please at the moment. We all seem to forget that you can learn much more what is truly worth seeing once you are at your destination, rather than on the monitor of your PC.

So the only one thing left to book was the hotel in Dublin. Straight onto bookings.com, I know it works, well so why waste time. Enter – Dublin – arrival and departure date – 2 nights – 1 double room. Up come all the hotels. We certainly don’t want a dump, but in this case it needn’t be the very best either. So I scroll down by price order until I start hitting the decent looking ones and stop in the beginning of the 4 stars which already look pretty opulent. I look at just two, the two that most caught my attention without being extravagantly expensive and scroll quickly through the pics. One seems to have slightly more attractive rooms, so next I check the exact location, which is also of great importance. It is very well positioned right in the centre of town, so “Book” it is.

€ 180 for the two of us for two nights including breakfast in a four star in the centre of Dublin looks about right to me, especially compared to all of the others. Just before I press the go button I give a split second glance at the Tripadvisor stars and they indicate nearly full marks. That’s good enough for me. I’m not going to go through everyone else’s boring personal experiences, that’s why there is the average indicated for each hotel.

And there you have it all within one hour. Crazy, you might think? No, definitely not, and let me tell you why. I have done it both ways, I have often in the past spent a lot of time resourcing and reading and studying each and every step I have described above. And then I have also often traveled in this manner. I can very confidently say that by checking over and over again in the past I never saved any money, or if I did it was because I lowered my standards. First impressions always seem best and in most cases you are hesitant, look around again and again, compare so many times, only to come back to your first decision.

As for the quality of our site seeing and visits, there are two things to keep in mind. Firstly this is our first time in Ireland and we obviously have to go to the ‘big names’, so it is pointless checking around for ages, as we still want to see the major sites. And once we are there we can ask around, get recommendations and read the info and the pamphlets, that is why they are there after all. Very often you plan so much beforehand, only to change everything to your mood and real liking once you are there.

But perhaps the biggest advantage, is that we can feel really free and spontaneous and decide on the spot in an impromptu way. That, for us at least, adds that little touch of magic, and from experience these have always been our best holidays so far.