So, you’ve got it in your head to take a trip. There are many factors to think about when planning…location, transportation, how far away is it from your home, what you’ll do, and time of year you’ll visit. While there are a host of things to think about as you plan, one of the main considerations is what will you do when you get there?
Taking into account your preferences for things you like to do is key. You may want to visit Prague like David and Rebekah, but you may want to sit in cafes or pubs and enjoy your reading list. For our family, we like a good mix of exploring, learning new things, trying local restaurants, and resting together.
Each new place you visit has something to offer–and typically you know ahead of time where you want to go because you’ve heard about one particular place or have a desire to visit. So you decide to visit, but what else are you going to do while you’re there? And where are you going to eat?
This is where all the fun research, daydreaming, and planning happens! I love this part of trip planning; making reservations, finding flights, etc., that’s all well and good, but the researching and figuring out what you will be doing when you visit a new place is almost as good as the trip itself. I enjoy it simply because it builds anticipation for the trip and excitement for whatever I’m about to experience. Today I’ll be sharing some of my favorite strategies for trip planning!
First, if I know someone where we are about to visit, I ask them for their favorite places to take friends and/or eat. If you know a local, that seems to be the best starting place. If I don’t know a local, I might consult friends who have visited or put a post on social media to see what suggestions others might have. Next, I use a combination of TripAdvisor, Groupon, Yelp, UrbanSpoon, and the city or state websites (most of which have websites dedicated specifically to attract visitors).
We love to find unique things to do, sometimes the timeline that we are planning to go on a trip coincides perfectly with a local festival or city event. Being able to find those gems and plan them into our trip is always a highlight.
As I said, I use a combination of tools to find things to do; reading reviews on TripAdvisor or Yelp and visiting attraction websites, is a great starting point. For attractions that seem interesting, I type up all the pertinent information: days & hours of operation, cost, ticket needed, is there a tour, parking, specific highlights of the attraction, or any specific notes from reviews such as best time of day to visit, etc. Once I’ve gathered all the relevant information, I try to “organize” it into a loose itinerary.Our family likes the structure of planning what we’ll do each day but by gathering the extra information such as days & hours of operation we also have some flexibility.
I use a similar strategy, although using primarily Yelp to finding restaurants and places to eat–this includes any snacks or dessert options. Once we have a good idea of what restaurant options are available, we may plan to bring or make breakfast/lunch foods from home. Again, I try to gather relevant information such as address, days and hours of operation, as well as get an idea of the type of cuisine and cost.
Once I’ve gathered all the information about things to do and places to eat, I’ve found it most helpful to map everything. This is an extra step that I don’t always take, but have found it to be very helpful, especially if you’re trying to save on fuel and mileage on your car. For example, during our Madison trip, our hotel was on the far west side, the first night we got into Madison, we ate at a restaurant that was less than a couple miles away. It would have been a pain (and made us more hungry) to go all the way to downtown or the east side of Madison just to eat that day. So, we were purposeful in planning all of our east, central, and west side attractions and restaurant groupings.
What tools do you use to plan your trips?
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