Trip Planning
Planning an entire year’s itinerary can be a daunting tasks, as many people take about a month just to plan a one-week vacation. Here are some high level steps to break down the planning process, and some planning tips and suggestions at the end based on our experience.
1. compile bucket list
Gather a comprehensive list of all the destinations you would like to visit. Talk to friends and do some research online to help gather ideas and prioritize destinations. Each family member should get to nominate their top choices. Decide how much time you want to spend at each location. We were aggressive at first, spending roughly one week at each location. This allowed us to cover more places, but it does get tiring after a few months. Some travelers spend a month at each location. It’s a personal choice. Incorporate this into your destination list so you know how many destinations you can realistically cover.
2. Group by geography & ideal seasons
First look at the globe and group the destinations by geographical proximity, then decide which groups you want to visit in what order. For example, you may want to visit Japan during cherry blossoms in March, avoid Dubai in the summer, or hit Africa safari during the migration. Plan out a rough sequence and duration for each geographical group, then map out a rough city-level schedule.
Tip: Prioritize on seasons over travel distance. Visiting during an ideal time of year will make a big difference in your travel experience and is worth a bit more travel time. Also, don’t be fooled by the distance on a map. Especially in Southeast Asia, two destinations may look close on a map, but the small airports could mean requiring two layovers between the two and flying across half the continent. Do your research on flight options before finalizing your itinerary.
3. build rough itinerary on spreadsheet
When building out a city-level schedule, build a template where you can list all the destinations and durations by sequence, and the full itinerary by date is auto-refreshed on another tab. You will undoubtedly go through numerous iterations before settling on a final one, and you don’t want to hand-calculate the dates at each destination every time. It is important to check the calculated dates against the “ideal season” from step 2 to make sure you are visiting all the places during ideal times. It’ll be impossible to hit all the ideal time slots, but go through iterations to find the best trade-off.
Once you have the high level itinerary built, it’s time to develop the daily activity schedule. It’s best to have a separate daily travel calendar spreadsheet where you can track this. The rule of thumb is to keep things flexible except in cases where availability is limited. For example, tickets to the Vatican Museum, tickets to the very top of Eiffel Tower, and airline tickets around Christmas time; these are all things you need to book well in advance. Knowing what’s on this list and making reservations in time is key to having a good trip. We’ve included a list of these items from our experience below.
4. Build detailed itinerary & make reservations
You will undoubtedly end up making tweaks to your initial itinerary. It may be due to ticket availability, uncontrollable circumstances (like COVID-19 in our case), or you may have just heard of amazing places from fellow travelers and want to add them to your itinerary. These are all good reasons to adjust your itinerary. Be flexible and make tweaks as you see fit. Many of our most amazing memories are on things that weren’t anywhere on our radar at the beginning of the trip.
5. Iterate & Adjust Itinerary
Places requiring advanced reservations (> 1 week)
Airfare during peak seasons
Iceland: All hotels
London, England: London Eye
Paris, France: Eiffel Tower (elevators to the very top requires a special reservation)
Dordogne Valley, France: Lascaux Cave
Plitvice National Park, Croatia: Entrance tickets
Venice, Italy: St. Mark’s Basilica and Clock Tower (separate reservations), Doge’s Palace
Florence, Italy: Duomo main entrance & rooftop climb (separate reservations), Uffizi Palace, Galleria dell'Accademia
Rome, Italy: Colosseum (Underground & 3rd Floor tour on official website), Vatican Museum
Egypt: River Nile cruises