We’re headed off soon on another #sistertrip and wanted to share some of our favorite travel advice. If we’re being completely honest, for one of us the planning is almost as fun as the traveling (so maybe it’s no surprise we got into the wedding planning business).
If Google knows anything about us it's how much we love to organize.
We really like using Google Drive for everything - if there’s anything we need to organize together (parties, menus, vacations and definitely everything for weddings) it’s the easiest way to keep it all in one place. Mostly we use the spreadsheets for vacations and have a series of tabs:
Calendar: this gets filled out with important activities/travel times (planes, trains, reservations etc.) and then sometimes suggestions for things we might want to do (especially things that only happen at certain days/times)
Activities: list of anything we come across that we might be interested in and can easily peruse during the trip if we’re looking for something to do (organized by location if there are several)
Transportation & Accommodation: helps keep track of reservation codes, dates/times, addresses and contact information
Packing: this tab gets copied for every trip, no matter how big or small, and then modified, that way it already has all the basics listed. It's basically the compromise between packing 2 weeks in advance (which you do mentally) and packing the night before (which you can then do with ease)!
Even more organizing with Google, but make it maps.
In addition to all those documents, Google My Maps is another really helpful tool, not to be confused with regular Google Maps. It has a lot of features that make it really easy to save places you want to visit. We first got the idea from Katie and she has some great blog posts on travel.
Custom city maps: each place you visit can have its own map
Create custom icons: you can create categories for the places you save like important addresses, sites, food, activities, shopping
Save directions between places on your map: this is especially important if you need to…
Work offline: the maps can be saved and used without data if you’re traveling internationally (shout-out to T-Mobile though, which has a pretty great international plan)
Sharing: this is great if you’re going with someone else and want to both edit/access the maps. Plus if you have a friend going later who wants advice, you can easily make a copy to share with them too!
And if there’s anything we like more than organizing, it’s getting a good deal on flights.
Sometimes it’s the thrill of getting a good deal (love thrift shopping and sale hunting), but sometimes it’s knowing you now have extra money to spend on a fancy dinner :) There are a lot of websites out there to help and we’d love to hear what tools you use! Here are two of our favorites:
Scott’s Cheap Flights (either the free or paid versions) has been great and we have definitely been alerted to price drops that let us get good deals. There are a few of these services out there and they really do work.
We promise this post is not sponsored by Google, but we do really like Google Flights and would give them the award for “best functionality” for searching flight prices. In addition to being intuitive, it also lets you easily see how modifying your dates/trip length would change the price. You can also set up alerts for price changes, which is helpful if you have something specific in mind.
We hope you found this post helpful - we like to visit other places and have come up with lots of ways we think make the process fun and maybe a little easier since it can sometimes be overwhelming. Let us know what you think! We have other ideas for travel posts so we might be back with more…
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