Travel days can be tough, especially when it is the last day of a fun trip and you're getting a bit stressed about heading home. There are a ton of logistics to worry about - returning the rental car, remembering to put gas in the rental car, hoping there are no surprise scratches on your rental car, getting through security at the airport, repacking your carryon to fit some of those last minute souvenirs... the list goes on. With this mumbo jumbo in mind, Anna and I have made a habit of booking afternoon flights and sneaking one last side adventure into our travel days before the chaos at the airport begins. We usually pull this off by driving to within 30 minutes of the airport with a while to spare before check-in and then finding a random country road to explore. Driving aimlessly is the best especially since this part of the trip is completely unplanned and anything you find is totally unexpected. We did this in Portugal where we found some amazing landscapes in the Algarves just off the main road back to Lisbon. In Scotland, we found the perfect loch-side spot for scarfing the last of our snacks that we weren't going to pack. In Austria, we gave this strategy another go by arriving in Innsbruck with about an hour to kill. Anna pulled up a map and saw some cool roads winding up a nearby hillside overlooking the city. We started our detour with the goal of finding a place to grab a coffee with a view. Fifteen minutes later we were at a beautiful roadside hotel, sipping kaffee looking out over the Inn valley. This place wasn't a spot that we would normally plan to visit but still it stands out now as a favorite memory from the trip. With that in mind, we're chalking this one up to another win for intentional travel day detours.
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