7 Tips for Planning a Vacation

In my family, I’m the one who ends up working out the details for our trips abroad, and I wanted to share some tips for how I go about doing the trip planning.

1. Determine your arrival and departure destinations

We look for flights when the airlines are having sales. When we were planning, we knew we wanted to go to Europe but had no particular city in mind and booked the most economical flight to get us there. It’s better if you do have a destination in mind and can plan your flights accordingly. This will save you money and time (more on that below). For our trip to Europe in 2019, we booked our tickets to the United Kingdom in January for July travel dates.

2. Decide which other countries you want to visit, if any

The next thing we did once our arrival and departure dates to London were set, was decide which countries and cities we wanted to visit. The countries on our list were France, Italy, Germany, and Austria. Since we weren’t going to rent a car and were going to rely on trains we looked at train schedules and also flights we would need to take to return to London for our flights home. This took some research to figure out and in the end because of the train schedules, the flight length and cost to return to London, we narrowed our list of countries to France and Italy.

3. Decide on the cities and the number of days to spend at each location

We studied train schedules and look at maps of France and Italy and chose Paris, Venice, Florence, Rome and Naples as our cities to visit.

This next step of how many days to spend at each city requires research. I relied on online searches, travel sites, and travel books to create a list of sites we could visit at each city. I found blog posts on what to do in a city if you’re only there for a few days very helpful.

Once I figured out the number of days to spend in each city and I got agreement from the rest of the travel party, it was time to book train tickets. There are several trains that go from London to Paris each day so this leg of our trip was easy to book.

One option we chose was to book an overnight train from Paris to Venice. We got to see the countryside while relaxing on the train and took advantage of traveling during the hours we would have spent sleeping.

Note: At the time of this post, it appears that overnight trains between Paris and Italy are not available. But Midnight Trains is set to begin overnight service in 2025. https://www.euronews.com/travel/2023/04/13/paris-to-venice-by-train-take-the-slow-route-between-europes-two-most-romantic-cities

4. Buy timed tickets to popular sites

The lines to popular locations like the Louvre and Versailles in France, and the Colosseum in Rome have long lines to enter, especially during the summer. Buying timed tickets can save you time and also guarantees you entry.

Note: When possible, buy tickets from the official website. Sometimes when searching for tickets online, the top results will be third party vendors and these can be more expensive than buying direct. On a few occasions, I ended up buying tickets with a third party vendor because I was unable to buy tickets directly from the official site.

5. Create a spreadsheet or use a trip planner to track the details

I use a spreadsheet to track details of the trip and create the itinerary. It provides an overview of what we’re doing each day and makes it easy to share with everyone traveling. I also capture details like check in and check out times, whether there is free luggage storage, locations to store luggage if needed, and lists of other places we may want to visit if we end up with some free time.

6. Beware of over-planning

I over-planned one day in Florence where I booked timed tickets to the Duomo, the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, and the Uffizi Gallery. This was too much to do in one day and is something I keep in mind when I have planned other trips.

7. Be flexible

The unexpected can happen which will require adjusting plans. While we were in London, we were notified that our overnight train from Paris to Venice was canceled. Our options were to take a 16 hour bus ride or book a train leaving a day earlier. We opted to get tickets for the earlier train which then required finding a place to stay for an additional night in Venice and losing a night’s stay in Paris.

Do you have any additional travel tips? Please share them in the comments below.