A Side Trip is when you travel to one or more locations with an overnight stay before returning to your base location.An example may be that you are staying in Paris for several nights and want to visit the Loire Valley to see some chateaus. You want to stay in the town of Tours for a night before returning to Paris. You have booked your Paris hotel for a week on a package deail and do not want to check out for the Side Trip, so you will actually be double booked in Paris and Tours for a night. There are several advantages to doing this. You will only need to bring your smaller daypack with your and not carry around your larger backpack or luggage on the Side Trip. You don't have to check out of one hotel in Paris and check into another one.
For a Side Trip, create your trip locations just as you would for a Day trip. Review the steps for Day Trips as Locations. The only additional steps are to adjust the nights and location arrival dates as described below for the Side Trip.
Of course, if you would rather check out of your Paris hotel, you could accomplish this journey just as you would a normal trip. It would be Paris-Tours-Paris. You would return to Paris and check in to a new or the same hotel and your trip would continue as normal.
| Day Trip | |
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The screen to the left shows the Day Trip from Florence to Pisa and Lucca. The arrival date in Pisa has been adjusted to -2. The nights in Pisa and Lucca are both zero. The arrival in Orvieto after Florence is adjusted to +2 so that we arrive in Orvieto on the departure date from Florence To review creating a Day Trip, see the page Day Trips as Locations. |
| Side Trip | |
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The screen to the left shows the Side Trip from Florence to Pisa and Lucca. The difference making this a Side Trip compared to a Day Trip is the overnight stay in Lucca. We are maintaining our base location in Florence, so will be double booked for a night with Lucca.The arrival date in Pisa has been adjusted to -2. The nights in Pisa is zero but Lucca is one night. The arrival in Orvieto after Florence is adjusted to +1 so that we arrive in Orvieto on the departure date from Florence. |