Planning hints

This site is no longer going to be updated. I have upgraded my site and the new location is:

http://worldgallivant.com

Whenever starting the planning stage of an excursion I go through a few steps. Of course these may not work for everyone, but they have worked for me so far.

1. Set a time period and destination 
• You cannot give justice to Europe in one week, so make them a little more realistic



My beginning part 2 of Asia map. How do you fit all of those
countries into one flowing trail without covering the same area?

• Leave enough wiggle room to allow for change of plans or additions to the travel
2. Go on to Google Maps or any other planning engine and draw up a hypothetical map
• Of course you don't have to stick to it, but it helps me solidify that I'm actually going and this is a potential route that could work to accomplish the basics
3. Start somewhere, pick a point: beginning, end, middle, country
• Start doing research, a few good resources I've found:
• nomadicmatt.com
• lonelyplanet.com
• Eyewitness Travel guide book
• Getting friends advice (oddly enough, mother got a tip from an e-bay customer, so you never know where that next idea will come from)
• Of course there are a whole lot more than this, but I've had the most success beginning with the Eyewitness Travel book (actually read the whole book on Japan, minus the Okinawa section because it wasn't in the budget). 
• Once I wrote down in the margins what would be most interesting I went to the country specific sites: JNTO and Japan-guide website for more information on those towns. Picking out more attractions. 
• After I felt I had enough of the obvious things I just started googling "Japan's hidden secrets", "most missed Japan" and other key words like that trying to get lists or ideas of less touristy attractions. Of course posting more of these online will sadly make them touristy, but hopefully not too much. 
4. Leave flexibility



Part of the word document I created so that we could
have our travel details close at hand and ideas brewing.

• Keep the things you are really excited about, water down the information
• I summarized into one sentence and maybe a picture everything I thought would be interesting
• Planned out how many days each city would take 
• Allowed for some down days: soaking up the sun in a park, chilling at the local cafe, doing as the locals do 
• Still have 9 days that have nothing, so in case someone mentions something that is a "can't miss" then we won't be scrounging for time, won't have to cut anything, and ultimately enjoy the time we have; if we get a hankering to take the ferry to China or Korea, we can :)
• Luckily we don't have anything that requires us to nail down dates, so we can spend as much or little time as we see fit. 

Hope these tips can help a little in the planning stages. If you have any additional comments or things you feel I may have left out, I would love to hear them.