There are several ways to plan your next trip to a destination you haven’t been before and also to destinations you have been before.
I will describe my way to plan a trip all the way from deciding where to go, how to get there including the hospitalities to use, over planning the must-see spots and my personal way to get around in the destination.
Let’s start.
Phase 1: Where To Go
Where to go is practically to find the best time to go to a destination which, in my opinion, includes the following important points:
- Avoid the major touristic times:
I’m checking the school holidays and try to find a time outside of these periods of time, as everything will be less crowded. This can be easily done through Google (Example: Holiday density for Germany).
I know this point is a major drawback for my readers having kids in school age, because they just can’t go outside the school holidays. Still you can find the best time during the school holidays, because the density varies even during the main summer season for example.
Advantages:- Saving money
- Avoid having too crowded sightseeing spots
- Have a great overall weather:
Climatic curves help a lot here to predict the weather including: Temperature day/night, sunshine hours and number of rain days.
The service Weather Spark is definitely my favourite service to get information for finding out the best time or if it still is possible to travel to a certain destination.
Advantages:- Pleasant weather and better photo opportunites
- Avoiding rainy days as much as possible
Phase 2: How To Get There / Where To Stay
There are different approaches to this. One is to book everything seperately. Flight. Hotel. Car. Tours.
Mine is a relatively simple rule:
Be sure to keep even the rainy days stressless!
This means that I book all destinations as package tour, so I have complete coverage of flight, hotel, transfer and food. On one hand because this is the cheapest way to get to most destinations and on the other hand: If you have rainy days, you don’t have to worry about anything.
Doing it that way, you just have to be comfortable with one basic rule:
You don’t have to eat in the hotel, even if you paid for it!
This means I often miss breakfast, lunch or dinner in the hotel, just because I’m already or still somewhere exploring the country, either by foot, by car or by public transportation. And honestly the food in packaged tours is so cheap most of the time, that it doesn’t hurt to miss it.
Also instead of eating in the hotel’s restaurants, I prefer to go out and have lunch or dinner during my tours and enjoy the traditional food of the country, because in hotels you mostly get the same continental stuff, that’s designed to be everyone’s darling.
For me as a German, I use all services and sites to search for package tour offers of the area I want to go to. And I prefer hotels in the upper class ones. That’s just because in a week I like to have at least one day to relax and chill and therefore the hotel has to be a good one.
Another thing I recommend doing at home already is to get a rental car reserved. Also be sure to go for the more local car rental companies, which can also be easily found through Google and Google Maps.
They’re cheaper than the big ones and also the full coverage insurances without deductible is cheaper most of the time. Please do yourself a favour and always pay the extra bucks for the best insurance that also covers glass, tires and underbody.
I prefer the hotel delivery of the rental car. The fee for it is cheaper than the public transportation or taxi to the offices in most of the times.
Phase 3: Finding The Personal Must-See Spots
This by far takes the most time for me, because I’m using the internet and Google Maps to plan the most important spots I want to visit and see.
In the past I made heavy use of printed travel literature, which I hardly do any more. This is because the Internet gives me everything I need for finding it and I divide the sightseeing spots into:
- Landmarks that every tourist visits
- Special things almost no tourist visits
The first one can be found through websites like TripAdvisor, GoogleSearch or GoogleMaps itself.
For almost every destination you can find a Top 10 for the most visited landmarks and sighseeing spots. Pick out the ones you want to visit or that are of interest for you.
For the second one you have to show a little bit more effort. These are usually found through GoogleMaps while just searching for specific interests like castles, churches, lookout points, etc. and then getting more information about it.
And now comes the thing I absolutely recommend:
If you’re not already have one, get yourself a Google Account and head over to Google My Maps, which gives you the opportunity to create maps for a specific region or a travel route and add your own marks in it.
Searching the places on Google even quite often gives you a hint when it’s the best time of the day to visit it, because it shows you how many visitors are usually expected at this place at different times of the day.
Now every time you find something you want to see:
Search for it on Google Maps, set a marker to this point and add it to the Map you created for your travel destination. In the end you will have a map like you can find it on my destination pages. This maps contains everything you want to visit during your stay.
Perfectly convenient and you will never miss a spot again!
Phase 4: During The Trip
Finally. You’ve arrived in your desired destination and enjoyed the hassle free trip with the planned types of public or private transportation and the first thing that I do is:
Sit down for a coffee and relax. Get rid of all the everyday worries and start to enjoy!
I usually have a day to get used to the climatic changes compared to Germany, where I come from and then the time has come, where my rental car arrives.
Now the fun starts!
And this is also the time where you can take full advantage of the specific map you created in Google My Maps, because you can fully use it for navigating in your rental car. I even prefer it over any built-in navigation system that’s provided with the car, because often you will seamlessly get out of the car and use it for navigation by foot.
You can also use the map to decide what spots to see on a single day.
My recommendation is:
Choose an end point for the day, that you can easily reach within 1-2 hours and then add the spots in between, so you have a nice tour for the day that will make you return to the hotel with countless beautiful moments.