1 – Find your plane ticket first!

In week one, we talked about the importance of finding your flight tickets first. This alone will save you a bundle! By choosing your flight first, you’re leaving your location and dates flexible which gives you wiggle room for a great deal. Sometimes leaving just one day earlier or later can save you THOUSANDS or be the difference between finding a reward ticket and not!

2 – Do Your Research & Find Accommodations

We gave you the scoop on planning the meat of our trip in week two. Once you’ve chosen your location, it’s time to learn everything you need to about the area and start looking for great places to stay. What are the best areas to visit, sleep in, eat in, or stay away from? What is the currency, language, visa requirements, etc? The more information you are able to compile, the more comfortable you’ll be with your choices, and leave you the space to enjoy your trip once you’re there.

3 – How to Find Things to Do

It’s time to take all that research you did in week two and put it to work in week three. Let’s find things to do! Are you looking to hit all the popular tourist locations or are you trying to avoid all of that and find a nice country house where you can relax in peace? If you have places found where you really want to stay, what is there to do in the area? You don’t necessarily need to plan every aspect of your trip down to the minute, but having a list of options lets you go with the flow once you’re there.

4 – Finding Transportation

And finally, in week four we talked about connecting all the dots with transportation once you’ve reached your destination. Are you looking for more flights, catching the train or metro, hailing a taxi, or are you renting a car? Do you need an international driver’s license? Have you downloaded the most popular ride-share app for your new location? Maybe you need to purchase a Eurail ticket to give you flexible travel days/times. Make sure you know how you’re getting from point A to B so you aren’t stranded somewhere without knowing your options.

That’s it!

Once you have all your details lined up, book it! We like to wait to book until the very end so we know all the pieces fit together. Create a spreadsheet to hold all your information, use Trip Advisor to create an Itinerary, or if you’re me…keep 900 tabs open in Chrome for quick, easy reference.

Where are you headed off to next? We’d love to hear your ideas in the comments.

The post How to Plan a Trip the DeBode Way – The Quick Guide first appeared on The DeBode Way.

I told you last week we were going to talk about hotels, but not quite yet.

Research: Learn About Your Destinations

The next thing I do when planning a trip is to learn about the area we’re planning to go. Give it a good ole Google. What are the landscape and climate like? Are there historical and/or geological things we need to put on our to-do list? Where is the airport location, how far away are the train stations, and how do you get to them efficiently? Are there nearby car rental locations and how far are we going to have to lug our luggage? Honestly, this is the part that often takes me the longest. I spend days and sometimes weeks learning about a location before I ever get to the next step – picking places to stay.

Very rarely do we plan a trip with a particular accommodation in mind. In fact, the only time this is true is when we’re heading to a resort. In these cases we do some jiving back and forth between choosing a flight and a resort location, but that’s another story.

So, once you know a bit about where you’re going, and how to get there, choose your accommodation.

The Art of Booking Hotels

Typically, my first search is on Trip Advisor. When you type in your search location and dates, you’ll first see a list of results, but I like to use the map feature in the top left instead. Since I already know the lay of the land from my previous research, this feature is SUPER helpful for finding accommodations in proximity to major transportation hubs. As long as you know how to get around a place efficiently, you don’t have to stay in the most popular tourist locations, and that alone will save you a bundle.

Let’s take Paris, as they have a very good metro system. Staying within walking distance of a metro station (conveniently displayed on the map), you can typically get anywhere in the city quickly for a few euros. The alternative is to spend (lots) more each night to stay exactly where you want to spend your time sightseeing.

Example: I could stay in the 1^st, 7^th, 8^th, or 4^th Arrondissements, the most expensive and popular areas of Paris – home of the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and Arc de Triomphe right along the Seine. Or, I could stay a bit farther out, right next to a metro station in a calmer part of town for half the price or less. The latter option means you’ll experience more of true Parisian culture, get more peaceful sleep, and have more money in your pocket for something else.

How You Book Your Hotel Matters

Now, while I love to use Trip Advisor to find hotels, I never book through them. Almost 90% of the time I go directly to the hotel and book within their system so we have direct contact with them. If you happen to find a lower price elsewhere (on hotels.com or booking.com, for example), call or e-mail the hotel; many times they will match the lower price because they won’t have to pay a 3^rd party to do their bookings for them.

The other 10% of the time, I book through one of our credit card booking portals because we’re paying with points. You lose direct contact with the hotel when booking this way, so it’s good to email or call to make sure they have your reservation before you arrive. Also, make sure you know your credit card’s policy just in case your reservation gets lost.

However, I do use Trip Advisor’s “Create a Trip” feature to keep track of any hotels I like before booking them and any activities we might do along the way. It’s an easy way to keep your ideas in one place and have a sort of itinerary to share with others. Click the little heart with “Trip” at the top of the screen, then “Create A Trip” in the empty box. A pop up will ask you to name your trip and fill in your dates. Then head back to your search. Each page you look at will have a small heart in the top right you can click to add the hotel/thing to do/tour/etc. to your trip itinerary.

If I don’t find anything I love on Trip Advisor (they have a LOT of options, but not ALL the options), I take a trip over to Instagram. Yes, Instagram. This is where all those hashtags come in handy. I do a search for “Hotels in Paris” (or wherever you’re headed) and you’ll be bombarded with gorgeous photos of choices. This takes a little more work since there’s no map function to see where they are and you have to search various profiles to find websites, but I have found some AMAZING hidden locations that were well worth the extra effort.

Sometimes you can also find some hidden gem locations by again, giving it a good ole Google and reading other travel blogs like ours. This is how I found a BnB winery that we’re planning to stay at this summer in France.

Hotels.com is another option similar to Trip Advisor. I love that you get a free night with them after booking 10 nights. However, I typically only book through them if we are staying somewhere in the USA with a chain hotel where we don’t have status and aren’t working on earning status. This is because, again, they are 3^rd party (Expedia) and you lose that direct contact with the hotel.

Air BnB and VRBO are other options for finding larger, more unique, longer-stay accommodations. We’ve had good luck with them in Europe, but have recently been told scammers are focusing on both websites right now, so be careful and do your homework before booking. Be sure if you book with them to keep all communication and payments within the app and read all reviews.

Once you have all your hotels found (but not booked yet), it’s time for the next step – figuring out transportation within your destination. This should be pretty easy by this point because you’ve done your destination research already, right?

We’ll talk about that next week!

The post How to Plan a Trip, Part 2: Research & Accommodations first appeared on The DeBode Way.

Let me elaborate.

Last December and January at the very start of this blogging journey, you may recall that we took two trips to Mexico. One, to spend a week with Jason’s parents and grandparents in Cabo, and the second, a short trip to Akumal for Jason’s cousin’s wedding. Both were fabulous trips but that resort in Akumal, that’s all I’ve been able to think about since we got back when I imagine a beach somewhere. It was completely amazing, and we were spoiled rotten. Much to my dismay, when we tossed around the idea of going back for Christmas, well, the price…it’s insane. Like, my entire travel budget for the year type of insane, and since it would only be January…that’s a no. My how things have changed in a year. Yay inflation.

After spending two days staring at their brand website (for which we, unfortunately, have very minimal points), adjusting our dates, looking at other resorts in the collection (at this point, we just want to get away and don’t care where), considering JUNE (ha – jk, kinda), and checking for the best deals on plane tickets, I gave up. It’s just not in the cards this year. Christmas and the New Year are one of THE most expensive times of the year to travel and it just so happens, that’s when most people have the availability to do so. So unfair. No wonder so many people are missing out on the opportunity for an education in world culture. Sad.

So, I had a pity party and thoughts of just driving to the mountains and hiding in a cabin or at my uncle’s for a week. Truth be told, this option is still highly appealing to me. Snow softly falling, soaking in a hot tub, by a fire, reading my book. Mmmmm yes. We’ll revisit that.

Wait. Points…

Lightbulb moment – I’ve been hoarding Hilton points for two years and jumping on every promotion they advertised. Is there anything I can work with there? Enter the Hilton Resorts Collection – lo and behold an all-inclusive gem is discovered in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico! And guess what – we’re going for free! Cue the fiesta! Major bonus, I even have half of my points left over! Hello Spring Break week! Ok, probably not but a person can dream.

But, there are rules for this trip. No computers, no searching for wi-fi, no prepping for classes, no answering emails, no filling orders, no ordering inventory, no scheduling social media, no blog writing, no taking on new jobs…do you think we can do it? I have my doubts. We haven’t taken a day off since starting our third business 2 years ago. Owning your own business is a wild ride, never mind two or three. My vision for this trip is of beachside massages, ocean kayaking, strolls through the village, eating entirely too much, and ordering room service to accommodate a lazy morning after said activities…for free. Ok the massages aren’t free, but just let me have this one.

So now, we return to our annual argument about where we are spending Christmas and playing catchup from a life on the road this past year. We’ve truly enjoyed sharing our experiences with you and are preparing for another year of the same. But first, my tub needs to be scrubbed, I should probably do something about cleaning up the garden, I need to power wash the boutique rugs after months of heavy show traffic (yay!), make a store run to replace inventory from Black Friday and get the oil changed in my truck. Today. Endless…

Watch for a review of our highly anticipated (by me) Puerto Vallarta trip in February and Happy Holidays. We are truly thankful for you and love having someone to share our experiences with!

Cheers!

The post Searching for a Magical Holiday Travel Experience, sans Meltdown first appeared on The DeBode Way.