Trip Advisor
My friend Erica suggests using this site as jumping-off point to get familiar with a new place. You can search “Top Things to Do” for a destination to get an idea of the popular tourist activities to see if any interest you. Also a great resource to double-check a hotel property before booking.
Google Flights
Ashley loves using the ‘explore flights’ option, it lets you type in your departure city and see prices for flights to destinations all over the world. A great way to find cheap flights.
Lonely Planet
The motherlode of travel advice by destination. The site is very well designed, making it easy and quick to browse a location to get the information you need.
Rick Steves Guidebooks
If you’re headed to Europe, trust us and pick up a Rick Steves’ guidebook. Erica and I both recommend him for great advice for daily itineraries, boutique hotels, city walks, museum walk-throughs and history.
Ooh! I love this post. Lots of good tips! I love looking at Atlas Obscura before a trip. It doesn’t matter how remote or random a place is, they’ve usually got some weird statue or creepy house to check out. For book travel guides, Considered Guides and Monocle guides are really good. I find myself really looking at the Monocle guides before a trip because they have things like cool neighbourhood walks and interesting facts about the place. The last thing I do is create a map on google maps for my destination. It helps me create a loose itinerary because you get a visual picture of how close different sights are but it’s also helpful for those spontaneous moments where you end up somewhere you didn’t plan and you’re hungry! That’s when I pull up google maps to see if anything I pinned on the map is close by. 🙂
Hi Jamie! I feel like we would be good friends, I agree on everything you said!! Yes, love Atlas Obscura – such great, unique places listed. I have heard of Monacle but not Considered Guides, I’ll have to check them out! And I’m 100 percent with you on custom Google Maps, I plan my trips the same exact way. A habit of mine is “saving” any cool thing I hear about on my Google Maps too (like a great restaurant someone mentions from a recent trip, or a cool place someone is at on Instagram). It’s been really helpful to give me a jump on any place I visit because I usually already have a few places “saved” there anyway. Thanks for commenting!
If you are planning for long trip, you need quite a bit of patience to get it done correctly, you must take care if the destination is in the same time zone, hotel check in and check out date is correct, and a lot of other things.
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thanks!
Awesome tips! I travel a bunch and these are super helpful.
One other thing that I tell everyone is a MUST have is the app Tripit. It lays out your entire itinerary all in one place and is super easy to use – you just forward any emails of your booking confirmations (flights, hotels, etc) to them and they automatically file them into one simple and easy to read itinerary.
That sounds so much easier than constantly searching your inbox! Thanks for the tip Ali!
Ooh love that idea!
I haven’t heard of so many of these websites – thank you! Noting them down now since I’ll be travelling in a month’s time, to Seoul! 🙂
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