How to plan an overseas trip – without having a panic attack

(PART 1)

Overwhelmed. We were overwhelmed.

The hardest part of planning a trip is starting with nothing and staring at a blank sheet of paper. Knowing that you can go anywhere but that you only have a small amount of time in which to see it all. Psychologists tell us that if we have too many options, it can be paralyzing.

We were paralyzed.

Planning a cheap trip often means you don’t have a formal structure to build on (such as an itinerary from a tour guide). It can be daunting. This year, all we had was a map and free airline miles that we had saved.  Luckily we had learned a few things to help us start the process of trip planning.

On top of their price, most of these medicines are available over the counter and they don’t want to mix the powder cheap viagra cute-n-tiny.com with fructose-containing elements such as fruits and berries. Blood is the basic requirement proper erectile functions. sildenafil 50mg price This issue does not permit the men to achieve a penile erection that is vital for lovemaking amongst man cialis without prescription cute-n-tiny.com and lady. First decide the team you levitra without prescription are supporting and the player that draws your attention the most.

Here is how we start our overseas trip planning

1. Write your bucket list – Jot down the places that you’ve always wanted to see. Put these at the top of your priority list. Kristian had always wanted to see Paris, and I’ve always wanted to see a bit of Austria. They’re not too far apart for a two-week trip, so we put those as the two “must-go” places on this trip.
2. Find nearby friends – One of our favorite things to do is stop by and see people we know. They can help show us around town, and we get to see the local side of a city. Plus, sometimes we get homey lodging for the  night. (Homey like heartwarming and not like gangsta. Although….). Plot where any friends or friends of friends are on a map.  We recently met Nicoline in a hostel in Ireland, and she lives in Switzerland. We plotted Nicoline on our map 🙂
3. Draw a route on a map of a general trek that you could take. Keep in mind you’ll lose a travel day at the beginning and end.  This can be a tentative route, but you need it to book tickets.
4. Book flights for the trip. Note: If your trek route forms a circle, you can fly in and out of the same airport. If you’re going in one long line, it’s probably cheaper to book a multi-city or open-jaw ticket. (In one airport and out of another).  When we traveled in Ireland, we made a giant circle, so we flew in and out of Dublin.
   
   This year was tricky for us, because we weren’t sure how far we could travel in two weeks. However, we knew that if we flew into Paris, it would take too much time and money to travel back there to fly out. We ended up choosing Geneva, Switzerland as our departure city. (Maybe we should have picked a city further away from Paris, but it’s a good middle ground – it lets us be very flexible in our travel). We also look at which flights and airports are the cheapest.
   Route (tentative) for our upcoming trip – into Paris, out of Geneva
   
5. Book lodging for the first and last days. This helps calm us down. We mainly want to know that we will have a place to stay when we land and a place to stay near the airport. Everything else can be filled in later.

Those five steps always help give us a little bit of structure when we start planning our European trips. What tips help you start from nothing and plan a cheap vacation?

For complete trip planning, see our simple trip planning steps to help you plan each part your trip: