This post is meant to be a guideline for travelers to follow when initially planning and eventually going to a new place. Some, or most, of you will already do this, but it is nice to have it written down so you can easily go step-by-step through the list in order to have a fantastic time on your trip. Because, let’s face it, for most of us, having a fantastic trip is the most rewarding part of our travel experience!
1.) Research It!
Look in to the place(s) you are planning on going. If you haven’t decided, you should consider whether one place will offer more bang for your buck than the other. This is the initial planning stage of a trip. Find prices for travel, hotels, and food and weigh those against sites and activities that you are interested in seeing. I cannot thank TripAdvisor and WikiTravel enough for this. WikiTravel, although a little outdated, gives you a full run-down, Wikipedia-style, of tourist sites and all the necessities of hundreds of cities and area. TripAdvisor can help you in so many ways. Go to the forums and other travelers can tell you their itineraries and tips, check out hotels on the site to find the cheapest and best rated places to stay, and look at the top attractions in the area you are traveling to in order to get an idea of what you want to do while you are there. This is my favorite part of the pre-trip process! Last year, when my fiancée and I were deciding on places to go for this summer, we each chose 5 destinations and picked one each from a hat then spent the next couple of days looking up the two choices and coming to a decision. This step bleeds right in to the next one, which is…
2.) Plan It!
The next step in achieving a fantastic travel experience is to plan accordingly. This step goes hand in hand with research. You should be prepared and ready to list the major things you want to see at your destination. However, with this step, you need to figure out how to get there. I am, and always have been, fascinated with public transportation. Learn it! It is invaluable to understand public transportation in a new place. I am sometimes horrible with directions (once I get underground, and even above ground on the tracks, I don’t know what direction I’m facing!) and I can tell you that studying the different routes helps a lot when you are improvising from your initial itinerary. It is never a bad idea to reach out to someone who looks local, but if you want to avoid the tourist stigma, learn the maps, key landmarks, and streets ahead of time and not while your standing on the street!
3.) Book It!
This list isn’t necessarily chronological. You can absolutely book the trip first if the price or award availability. There are many different places to find flight and hotel deals on the web. Kayak is a great starting point to gauge how much your flight is going to cost. I like to see what their confidence level of buying is (located in the top right when you search for flights) to see whether or not this price is on average. I also follow a lot of flight deal blogs on Facebook for up to the minute sales or mistake fares that people find. You can get great deals from sites like Secret Flying and the Flight Deal (they even customize your posts to show your main airport hub!). Everyday I see deals sub-100 for domestic flights and sub-1000 for long-haul flights that I could have paid more than $1000 for. For hotels, check out TripAdvisor; they rank hotels in every city based on reviews and collect several websites prices (even the hotels) for easy comparisons. In addition, Secret Flying also has hotel deals, although you’ll have a small chance of getting a sale through them since they look at thousands of locations.
4.) Prepare for It!
The take-off date is looming and you still have plenty to do even if you have a minute-by-minute itinerary! For international trips, this is a very important step in order to save money. Go to your bank and ask for about $100-150USD in the destination’s currency. They will most likely need to order this money, so it may take up to a week, but the exchange rate at your bank is much, much better than the rate at the airport or at currency exchanges. Go to XE.com to see the up to date exchange rate to compare with the bank’s offer just to make sure you aren’t being duped. I would also check, if you are taking a trip to a less developed country, if they accept USD. Some countries do, but I feel like they may charge more than their own currency. On that note, if you are going to a less developed country, I would take out about $300USD in their currency since it may be hard to find places that accept credit cards. Finally, have a credit card that has 0% foreign transaction fees, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred Card. It is definitely worth it. If you don’t have a card with this feature you could see a 5-7% charge on each transaction. The next part of this step would be to get the right power converter! This is super important if you want to charge your iPhone to take those awesome Instagram shots. Google the voltage of your destination and go out and get one. If you plan on doing multiple destinations throughout your life (UK, Europe, Japan, Australia), throw in some extra money for the multiple converter. Lastly, although this list could go on for days, check the weather and weather patterns of where you are going and pack accordingly. This one is super obvious, but you don’t want to be walking the streets of a city at night in shorts when the weather dips to about 40 degrees after an 80 degree day!
5.) Enjoy It!
This is the best part! Enjoy your trip; remember that itinerary I suggested you make? Well, you’ll almost certainly change it up once you get there. Talk to people on the street, engage in the culture, and ask for off the beaten path location and just have a good time. For example, when I went to London last year, we ran through our itinerary so quick that we had about three extra hours to do whatever we wanted. We took that extra time, and spent a day in Brighton, a nice beach town on the coast of South England. Thanks to our host, we were convinced to go there and it was a great experience to be outside a big city in the U.K. Be adventurous! Don’t just stay in the tourist areas of the places you are visiting; go outside these areas and check out the real culture of the country and/or city you are visiting. The one thing that grinds my gears about people coming to Chicago is that they stay in the Downtown Loop area the entire visit. We have awesome neighborhoods with great character that can be visited easily by public transportation. It is up to you of course if you want to stay in the tourist areas, which may be a good idea if you’re only there a few days, but trust me, you’ll have a great time once you wander off that beaten path.
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