5 Essential steps to prepare your own trip

There are many ways to prepare your own trip, alone, with friends and/or family. You can contact and purchase a package with a travel agency and pay for a complete trip that in many of them include, the places where you are going to visit and eat in an specific time. In this option you have a strict schedule, and can lose many things because of the little flexibility. I want to show you 5 essential steps to prepare an enjoyable trip by your own. 

Step 1: Choose the country and cities you want to visit

• Search the city or cities of the country you want to visit browsing about the attractions and places to go.

• Browse some blogs of people that went to those cities and spend days in it, to look at their experiences.

• Search the day life and nightlife, the customs, and traditions of that city.

• Browse what are the best area to stay in the city for your commodity and security.

• Use Pinterest app to find tips and learn about the cities were going to visit. This app also have many other blog post to get different ways and options to prepare your trip.

• Search about the typical food, dishes of the city and the top restaurants and places to eat at a good price. 

Step 2: Track your flights

You can ask, why this is not the first step?

After select the country, the city or cities that you want to visit, track the flights and select the best deals. Keep in mind the hours of the flights, if they are non-stop, with one stop or more. Don’t go everytime with the cheapest flight deals, sometimes they have many stops, it could takes you spend more time traveling and maybe for an insignificant price. This essential step can make you spend less on your trip. 

– Google flights is my number 1 option in online flight booking service. It has a very extensive airlines flight search.

-Another way to search and track is with many apps in your smartphone.

-The best apps for me to book flights are:

• • skyscanner
  • orbitz
  • expedia
  • kayak

This apps also have a web pages. 

Step 3: Where to stay?

After search in Pinterest and other search engines the areas and zones of a city, is time to look where you can stay. There are many apps and web browsing where you can find where to stay with very low price, commodity accessibilities, luxuries or whatever you want to stay.

First know your budget and then search the best options where to stay.

• • Hostels– The lowest cost places to stay with a room that you share with other travelers. You can pay less than $10 USD for a night.
  • Airbnb’s– The newest way to rent an entire place like houses, apartments, buildings, or private rooms in a house that someone lives, with many options at low prices and luxury places. I found the most comfortable option with an entire place.
  • Hotels– The most popular and traditional way to stay in a city with lot of commodities, options of room services, bars, restaurants and discos in the same place. One of the good things of hotels are that many of them are in a great location in the cities.

The best 5 apps to book stays for your trip:

Airbnb – Houses, Apartments, cabins, beach houses and Private rooms rentals around the world. This app and website give you the flexibility and commodity of an entire place like your home.

Booking.com – One of the top Hotels, Houses and Hostels booking app and website with great deals.

Hotels.com – One of the top 2 app and website with top-rated hotles, from  cheap to luxury options. This app also have students deals and rewards for everyone.

HotelTonight – App and website for booking last minute hotel deals.

Hostelworld – Hostels stays around the world with low cost booking price and deals.

Dorms.com – Hostels and green village booking app and website with instant reservations and great deals.

Step 4: Transportation

• Search the best ways to move across the city or cities where you going to visit. Many countries have a lot of options like taxis, trains, public bus, uber, and other companies that bring transportation.
• Download Rome2rio app in your smartphone to see an average cost of different transportation option to a destination where you may move in the cities.
• The traditional option to move as a tourist is to take a taxi, but maybe are the most expensive option. From the recent years a better option is to take an Uber because you may find a low cost in the transportation and different options of cars and vans. 

If is available, you can choose between rides that can share with others, a luxury cars or vans, if you want that your driver talk or not and before you take the uber you know how much going to cost the ride.

• To take an Uber you have to download the app from your smartphone. Link > Uber
• If you stay in a city that have a great train transportation you can move in it, is going to cost you less than a taxi or an uber.

Step 5: Verify entrance, restrictions and cost of places you want to visit.

• The first of the fifth step is to verify if the country you want to visit you need a visa. Is very important to get with a lot of anticipation. 
• This is an important step because many places you visit in a city may be restrict and must buy entrance tickets and transportation before arriving to the place. This happened in places like Machu Picchu that have a daily maximum entrance of people and is the top attraction of Peru. Verify the places you want to go and search if need to buy a tour or entrance days or month before arriving.

• Search Travel Personal blogs to learn the experience of many travelers of what you need to do before arriving to an attraction you want to go.

This five essential steps, give you the opportunity to make easy your journey and to not be surprise for things you don’t know and been prepare for the adventure.