H E L L O friends.
Time just flies by and now it's just two weeks till my weekend trip to Paris. I've been planning it for a few days now to make sure I'll get to see as many things as possible in such a short period of time. And I also need to book some things in advance so I don't spend hours in queues in front of ticket counters.
And as this isn't my first trip that I've had to plan all alone I'd say I have some experience with making a travel itinerary, whether it is just a weekend trip or two-week holiday. I also came to understanding that planning a perfect itinerary is the hardest but most important thing about traveling. A few people have already told me that they wouldn't really know how to make an epic and successful itinerary so I decided to dedicate a blog post to this topic and talk about everything you should do in a process of planning.
You don't have to worry, it's not that hard. You can go step by step, I'm gonna talk about all of them. Of course, if you want your itinerary to be perfect, you need to invest some time into it, but the process itself isn't difficult at all.
1. FIND INSPIRATION
Any passionate traveler (like myself) constantly keeps a list of places they wanna visit someday, which is added to every now and then. There are so many sources of inspiration all around us - on the phone, the internet, TV, or in "real life" (a recommendation from a friend or someone from your family). I would advise you to think of some sort of storage for keeping track of everything. My favorite way is to use Pinterest, you can either create public or private boards for this purpose. If you use private boards than you can upload screenshots or snapshots from your phone. If you want, you can check out my Pinterest page where you can find a lot of useful stuff for traveling.
2. CREATE THE MAP
When you think you have all the information you can get in the first step of planning and you have a rough idea of where you want to go, when you can take a trip and how long that trip might be you should creat a personalized map of all possible destinations. I have to say that this step is the most important part for me. It really helps - seeing all the places you wanna visit at one place - highlighted in one map. From that you can quite easily put together a detailed schedule of your trip. I use Google Maps "My Maps" feature for every itinerary I plan. I've already did a blog post just about how to create your own map there, when I was planning a trip to Ireland last year, so you can give it a look here.
3. CREATE A ROUGH SCHEDULE
When you've completed your map, you should have a pretty clear idea about which locations you'll want to visit. Usually it depends on the priority level of each location and how difficult it is to travel between them. I like to start a spreadsheet with a row for each day, choosing the schedule based on locations of every place I wanna visit. (For example, with my upcoming trip to Paris: the first day I'm making my way to the north part of the city to see Sacré-Coeur and Moulin Rouge because they're basically right next to each other; and the second day I'm going to see Eiffel Tower and other places in the city centre.)
4. CHECK BOOKING PRICES & AVAILABILITY
With your rough schedule in hand, go out and look at the availibility for hotels, transportation and those must do activities. I usually do this step coherently with those two above, especially opening hour because I wanna make sure I really can visit the place at the time I plan. After that, the hotel is usually the first think I book as it's probably the most important part. The next thing is a plane or some other transportation that is essential for the trip.
5. MAKE YOUR FINAL DESTINATIONS CHOICES
After you've confirmed that you can book a smooth itinerary, have one last thought about your trip. Remind yourself of the purpose of the trip and if the proposed itinerary will meet those needs. At this point I usually go through the schedule with whoever is traveling with me to make sure they are okay with what I've planned, or eventually hear out their suggestions for any change, so everyone is satisfied with the schedule.
And that's pretty much it. All's left to do is to start being excited about the trip, maybe start thinking about what to pack with you.
Now I need to do few more things before going to Paris (still haven't booked everything), I'll let you know how the trip is going. Till then, stay on top of things and take care!
Lil'
xxx
4. CHECK BOOKING PRICES & AVAILABILITY
With your rough schedule in hand, go out and look at the availibility for hotels, transportation and those must do activities. I usually do this step coherently with those two above, especially opening hour because I wanna make sure I really can visit the place at the time I plan. After that, the hotel is usually the first think I book as it's probably the most important part. The next thing is a plane or some other transportation that is essential for the trip.
5. MAKE YOUR FINAL DESTINATIONS CHOICES
After you've confirmed that you can book a smooth itinerary, have one last thought about your trip. Remind yourself of the purpose of the trip and if the proposed itinerary will meet those needs. At this point I usually go through the schedule with whoever is traveling with me to make sure they are okay with what I've planned, or eventually hear out their suggestions for any change, so everyone is satisfied with the schedule.
And that's pretty much it. All's left to do is to start being excited about the trip, maybe start thinking about what to pack with you.
Now I need to do few more things before going to Paris (still haven't booked everything), I'll let you know how the trip is going. Till then, stay on top of things and take care!
Lil'
xxx
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