Spontaneous travel takes planning, expert says

This article first ran March 17, 2004.

Taking an unplanned trip is easier if you plan it first, a local travel expert says.

“Everybody talks about how much they like spontaneous travel,” Mary Esther resident Lynne Christen said in an interview. “It’s much easier to take advantage of opportunity when you plan ahead; my primary example would be to get a passport. Don’t think if a trip comes along, you can get a passport in a week.”
Christen, a former flight attendant and the author of “Travel Wisdom: Tips, Tools, and Tactics for All Traveler,” will give a free travel-tips presentation at the Destin Library, 6:30 p.m. this Thursday.

“I’ll be demonstrating how to pack a carry-on bag and travel seven to 10 days without wearing the same thing twice,” Christen said. “(Travelers)  say they want to get away from it all and they try to take it all with them.”

Christen said her husband, Hank, a director of emergency-response operations for a counter-terrorism consulting firm, will give guidelines for travel safety as part of the seminar.
People attending the presentation will be able to buy the book that evening at a discount, the library said last week.

In her book, Christen — a veteran world traveler even outside of her former airline career - recommends would-be travelers build a resource file listing trips they want to take someday, upcoming trips, references sources for research and lists of likes, dislikes, mistakes learned from past trips. Christen also recommends creating a dream travel list that includes everywhere you want to go.

“At one time my travel dream list had over 100 places on it,” Christen says on the site. “Today, it still has thirty-five and continues to grow as fast as it diminishes.”

The book’s topics include business travel, the complications of taking kids on a trip, travel for the physically handicapped and traveling solo.

“I was a flight attendant for 22 years,” Christen says. “All through these years it was ‘someday I’ll write a book’ ... We just thought the time had come.”