Here’s a little of what I’ve learned in my many hours of online research. Starting from the beginning and ending with my favorite travel links…
An excerpt from an email novel I composed for someone a few months ago:
I’m not sure if you’ve decided where you want to go, but here’s what I usually do….
Start with skimming through websites and guidebooks to see what places pop out at you. Rick Steves has some really good advice on planning your trip to make it efficient and fun (“plan your trip” section) and you can browse by country or get general advice. For indecisive people like me, his opinionated articles on destinations are just the thing I need to narrow down the choices. I like this article to get started. Yes, he looks a bit dorky, but the man knows what he’s talking about. This page is full of great stuff too. I like to look up places on Google (start out on Google image search and if you’re a geek you can look it up on Google Earth, the coolest thing ever) to get an idea of what they look like.
Once you have an idea of where you want to go, you can look at this to estimate train costs/times. For my 10 day trips it has always been cheaper to just do point to point rather than purchase an expensive railpass, but it depends on how long your trip is and where you want to go.
After deciding on places and dates (unless you’re keeping it completely flexible), I start making an itinerary with how many nights I want to be in each place. Then I use the itinerary to start making lodging reservations. This is the time consuming part. You can always fly by the seat of your pants and hope there’s open space at hostels/hotels, but in the summer that is pretty risky as it’s prime tourist season. It’s up to you. For me, I’d rather do lots of work before I go and then know that where I’m staying is at least somewhat safe and cheap and has a room available. And the good places fill up fast so you need to make reservations as far in advance as possible.
To find places to stay, I start with the Let’s Go (or Rick Steves if it needs to be somewhere a bit nicer) guidebook for that country. Make sure it’s the most recent edition. One of the nicest things about these books is that you can clearly see the location of each place to make sure it’s near the train station/city center, which is crucial if you don’t want to waste money on expensive cabs. Then, I start looking up these places on Tripadvisor to get more detailed reviews from people. I sort it by “worst reviews first” to see if the worst thing about the place is something like “squeaky doors” or “rats everywhere” ha. You can find a lot of cheaper places if you click on “other lodging” rather than “hotels” on Tripadvisor. My personal rule is if I can’t find decent reviews on either Tripadvisor or in a guidebook (the ideal is both!), then I probably won’t risk staying there. Venere also has reviews for lodging.
Indispensable items to take on the trip:
1. Let’s Go and/or Rick Steves’ guidebook(s) that are country-specific (especially to know where to eat, one of the toughest decisions once you get there). You can rip and staple applicable pages to save space.
2. An itinerary you’ve made, you can always change it once you’re there.
3. Backpack (or rolling carry-on if you must) packed as light as humanly possible.
4. A little compass to clip on it so you don’t walk in circles.
5. A good little phrasebook (I like the Rick Steves French-German-Italian one, which I used to make many reservations over the phone at great places that didn’t speak English)
Good things to look at before you go:
1. Public library: Rick Steves guidebooks (good sightseeing ideas but lodging and food is more expensive than Let’s Go), any other guidebooks that look interesting
2. Websites:
- www.ricksteves.com – loads of useful goodies
- www.tripadvisor.com - reviews
- www.venere.com – reviews
- www.weather.com – type in the name of a large city, go to “averages and records” to see what the weather will be like
- www.ricksteves.com/rail/itinplan.htm#tips – find link for Deutsch Bahn (German rail site) which is awesome for figuring out how long it takes to get to places by train and finding departure times
- Official airport websites – if you are considering flying between places in Europe rather than taking the train, check out airport websites of your destination cities to see which airlines go to which destinations. Use this info to compare airfares. Learned this trick from my friend Nikki!
- www.skyscanner.net – my new favorite airfare site. Find the places that are cheapest to fly to or from and when they are the cheapest. For example, put in any US airport as a departure point and select ‘Germany-all airports’ and ‘Whole year’ to find the cheapest city in Germany to fly into at the cheapest time of year. Confusing to explain, but easy to use! Have to credit good old Rick Steves for this one.
- www.kayak.com – another great site for finding deals on airfare.
- www.fodors.com/forums – experienced travelers share tips with those of us who are totally confused. Just do a search under the Europe forum to find relevant posts.
- Random Google searches for reviews of places you’re thinking of. It’s amazing what you can find out before you go.
And of course, if all of this work sounds too much for you, you may be the perfect candidate for a guided tour of Europe (more expensive than going independently) or a cruise. Or, you can contact a trip planner to do the work for you.
