Planning Your Trip

So you're in desperate need for a holiday and think you're more than ready to take that time off work and get out of here. Or maybe you've suddenly spotted a ridiculously cheap flight on sale and impulsively bought yourself some tickets. You know the country you're heading to, and the city you land in, but from that point on you haven't got a clue what to do with yourself. How do you go about planning a trip to a place you've never been, or maybe hardly even heard about without heading to a travel agent? Here are a few tips to get you started.

For obvious reasons, one of the best ways of working out a route around a country or area is to speak to people who have already travelled there. Find out as much as you possibly can about their trip. Which places did they visit, and how did they get around? Did they fly or take buses and trains? Where there any places they would avoid next time, or on the other hand places they wished they had more time to explore? This way you will not only get recommendations of areas to visit and ways to travel, but you can also get very useful recommendations of hostels, restaurants, shops, organisations that you may miss out on when struggling through the area on your own. Bear in mind that your friend may be a completely different traveller to you, so what he or she hated may be something you will love. Take note of their stories and advice and use them as a platform to do some further research.

If you don't know anyone who you can easily contact about their travels, or if no one you know has ever heard of your destination, then there is no need to fear for you will find an endless amount of information online. The difficult thing with online stuff however, is there is often so much of it it's impossible to know where to start! An excellent starting point is to have a look through public travel blogs. These are very easy to find, and enable you to read up on people's various travel routes as well as see photos of the places they visit. These are very helpful as you can refine your search to very particular cities or areas and then follow various journeys from place to place and get an idea of the type of travel that would best suit you.

Then, of course, there's the travel guide. You can get around without them but with a lot of difficulty if you haven't already done a heap of research. Travel guides are great not only for their detailed descriptions of the various sights and scenes of your destination but they will also contain very helpful information on daily budgets, accommodation and food, bus and train routes from city to city, and often a brief language section to help you out in non-English speaking countries. Also you will often find recommendations of films or books set in your destination - a fantastic way to get some insight into the countries you will be visiting.

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