Great travel is all about unexpected adventure. I’ll gladly acknowledge that most of my favourite memories involve getting lost or taking detours, but I still love micro-planning every trip. Maybe there’s something to be said for having solid plans that allow you to relax and enjoy the unexpected; maybe I just can’t control my Type A personality.
Friends and family love picking my brain when organizing their own vacations and often request travel planning tips. So I thought I’d share a few of my tech tips for planning your next trip here.
Be forewarned: I often call into use a certain giant search engine. I can’t help it; I’m a child of the Google Generation. I promise I don’t work for them.
1. Map it out
Google Maps allows you to customize your own map of a destination.
There are two great ways to start. For a road trip, request directions from your starting point to the first place you’ll stay over. Click to ‘Add Destination’ for your next stop, and on and on until you reach the final destination. Click ‘Get directions’, and then scroll to the bottom of Google’s provided driving directions for the option to ‘Save To My Maps’. Now you can look at your route again next time you’re working on your plans.
Create your own map with as many destinations as you're planning for your trip.
Next, share a link to the map with your travel mates. Look over at the top of the ‘Directions’ side of the website; the ‘link’ icon looks like a paperclip and is right beside the little button with a printer on it. Click on it for a webpage link you can email to your friends. Clicking on the ‘print’ icon also gives you the option to save a PDF of the Google map with your route marked on it; mail it to your mother so she can post it on her fridge and follow along with your adventures.
If you’re spending a few days in a city and have a lot of sights to see, look up and save each destination on one Google Map to create a personalized guide. I love looking at my final map of a place I’m visiting to see which art galleries and bookshops that I want to visit are next to the coffee shops I’ve been dying to try. There’s something to be said for finding the most efficient way to maximize premium caffeine intake.
2. Crowd-source the coolest hangouts
Before you point your browser away from Google Maps, click on the tab that allows you to view images from Flickr that have been geo-tagged. To do this, click on the ‘Traffic’ button right below the ‘Satellite’ option in the right-hand corner of your browser. A pop-up menu will appear; click on ‘Photos’ so that a check appears.
Be sure to select "Photos" on Google Maps to see what everyone else has deemed shutter-worthy.
People who use online photo sharing sites often post their images with location tags to say where the photo was taken. These will show up as little dots on your Google map; a big cluster of dots is a good indication of something worth seeing in the vicinity. Hover your mouse over the dots to make the images appear. There’s no better way to find out which street corner is home to an awesome graffiti mural, to discover a neighbourhood’s favourite hot dog stand, or to point your compass to a spectacularly hideous collection of lawn ornaments. Don’t forget to save the destination to your own customized map!
3. Wiki All The Way
If your high school English teacher was dead set against using Wikipedia as a research tool then the chances are your travel agent feels even more threatened by Wikitravel. Look up the destinations you have in mind to see what others would suggest.
Don’t forget that, when you finish your trip, you can become a travel guide author too. Pay another visit to Wikitravel to add your own advice to future adventurers!
4. Share Your Plans
I’ve planned most of my trips with friends who live in different cities or on different continents. It’s tough to have a glass of wine and discuss which hotel to book when you’re more than a few blocks away, but Google Drive is a fantastic solution.
Set up a document or spreadsheet with all the information you’ll need: hotel options, flight schedules, booking confirmation numbers, and the address of the restaurant you won’t leave Tangiers without eating at. Share the document with your travel companions by inviting them or sending a link. If you’re working in a spreadsheet, you can add a column for hotel contact information, or for your travel budget.
These are a few of my own travel planning secrets; what are yours? Do you embrace your inner geek when dreaming up your next vacation, or do you turn it offline when you hit the road?
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