Planning a trip

As I mentioned in my last post I have 2 main types of holidays the "Fly and Flop" and the "Big Trip"

This blog post is about the second type.

Planning a trip is so exciting but totally overwhelming.
Using a real life example here's what I do - hopefully some of you may find it useful.

Decide - roughly- where you want to go or what you want to do.
For example it's my birthday in December and it's a biggy. To celebrate I decided I wanted to achieve one of my life's ambitions and see the Northern Lights (NL).

First thing I did was google "where's best to see the Northern Lights?"

Turns out there's quite a few places you can see them- including our very own Scotland, there's also Norway and Iceland. There's a few ways of seeing them too including cruising and city breaks.

I then ordered some holiday brochures for each of the various places to see the sorts of things that were on offer, Travel companies have been arranging the sorts of tours I like to do for years. It's always worth checking out where they go, how they get there and the activities they can provide. You can always copy their itineries tweaking them for your own preferences. I also borrowed some travel books from the local library - yes I know it's old school but if you've seen my other blog posts you know I like books!

After poring over the books and brochures I decided on Iceland and as all my research indicated you have to be away from artificial lighting to have the best chance of seeing the NL I thought - Road Trip!

Further research showed a road trip in Iceland is not that difficult to plan as there is only one main road "The One".

Destination and type of trip decided on I then hit the internet to research things to do and places to stay. My go to website is always Trip Advisor www.tripadvisor.com but I've also found some really useful stuff from fellow bloggers so it's worth just doing a generic google search.

It's then basic internet stuff to search for flights, book car hire and hotels for the trip.
Given that I'm driving around Iceland in November/December and lots of places are closed I decided to book all the accommodation before I get there - I believe some things are best not left to chance. I intend to cover Hotel booking in another post.

To sum up....

1. Decide on destination and type of trip
2. Order some travel brochures for ideas 
3. Research using your preferred media method - but I'd recommend as many different types as you can - including the low tech but very useful - talk to people!
4. Book your flights
5. Book your transport (if needed)
6. Book your accommodation
7. Book/plan activities

I'm going to cover topics such as:

• Things I never go abroad without
• Booking accommodation
• Loyalty schemes I'm a member of
• Hand luggage essentials
• Foreign currency

If anyone has any other travel topics they'd like me to blog about - let me know.