How to Plan Your Vacation, part 2
Posted on June 24, 2015
Keep the Planning Going…
This post is part 2 of “How to Plan Your Vacation”. It may make more sense to read part 1 first and then come back to this post.
Plane tickets
We recommend you purchases your plane tickets directly from the airlines. Use a third party booking agent site, such as Kayak or Orbitz to find the best flight times for your trip, but then go directly to the specific airline to purchase your tickets. We plan a big destination trip every year and fly many shorter flights. At times, we have been on planes weekly. We have found that booking directly with the airline rather than a third party agent provides better costumer service, avoids hidden fees, and prevents you from ending up on circuitous hub-jumping flights that can turn a four-hour trip into a twelve-hour one. Discount aggregators are a good starting point for finding deals, but unless that deal is offered directly by the airline, it’s usually not the “best price” it pretends to be.
Passport
This is self-explanatory – you need a passport for international travel. But one thing to research while planning a trip is find out if the country you want to visit requires a travel visa and/or requires your passport be valid for x amount of months into the future in order for you to travel there. I once had to fly from San Francisco to Seattle, rent a car, and drive to and from SeaTac airport to Vancouver BC, to do an in person emergency-issue of my Canadian passport because Brazil requires travelers to have more than six months’ passport validity in order to obtain a visitor visa, and my passport would only be valid for another five. I already had purchased my plane ticket for Carnival (without first researching visa and passport requirements, so learn from me!) so the option was, lose the $1000 dollar plan ticket (I had also used a third party booking agent instead of directly booking from the airline, so again, learn from my mistakes!) and miss the life memories of Brazil, or get my passport renewed. It was a crazy and costly lesson to learn the hard way – but Carnival was GREAT!
And, it’s silly but it happens all the time, be sure to check that your passport is valid and will not expire during your trip, before you get to the check-in counter at the airport.
Pesos
If you have done some budgeting, you should know the local currency of your destination and be calculating your budget with the exchange rate. If you are not going to get currency before you leave, search online for images of the currency so you know what it looks like and what denominations it comes in. Then practice doing conversions between your home currency and the foreign one. An easy way to convert currencies is by units of ten. For example, I learn the exchange from 10USD to the local currency. I round down if the number is not directly divisible so my estimated conversion will be conservative. For example, the current exchange rate for 10USD to Croatian Kuna is 67.90 Kuna. So I tell myself that 10USD is 65Kuna, and then when I see the two person fish lunch with beer and dessert is advertised on the sandwich board at 65 Kuna, I know it’s about ten dollars, and that’s a great value. Converting in the tens unit also helps you do quick conversion to avoid getting hustled. Practice this kind of conversion before you are out trying to buy things.
When you don’t speak the language and are unfamiliar with the currency, you are vulnerable. While you may or may not get hustled, it feels good to be able to handle the money with confidence. You can use currency converting applications on your smart phone, but don’t get lazy. Do the math so you know how much things cost without an application. It’s good to have knowledge in your brain as well as your smart phone.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, please for the love of the world, get some local currency as soon as you get to your destination. Yes, you will probably pay a little more of a fee or have a slightly weaker exchange rate at the money changing booths or the ATMs in the airport/train station/dock but it is worth it for the respect and cultural appreciation you will demonstrate. The world economy may revolve around the euro and the dollar, but you are not buying a country, you are traveling in one. You will pay more for things the first time you do them when traveling – no matter what it is – whether it’s your first ATM withdrawal, your first cab ride, or your first meal at your destination. Accept this, move on, and save money elsewhere. You can rely on your credit card for merchants that accept cards, but for the rest of your purchases, have some local currency in your wallet and know how to count it out. You can lessen credit card and ATM fees by getting a global credit card like the Capitol One Venture™ card or banking at an institution that does not charge or has low foreign ATM fees.
(A side note: The 3 Ps – “plane ticket, passport, pesos”, is a family saying and something you can repeat to yourself as you make the last minute check to be sure you have these items before heading to the airport. Do you have “the 3 P’s?!)
Accommodations
Accommodations are another personal preference that can greatly impact your budget and your experience. We stay nearly exclusively in private rentals when we travel, limiting our nights in hotels for when it makes more logistical sense for our plans (i.e. Early morning flights, only staying one night in a certain city etc.)
Private rentals are generally cheaper than hotels, but the biggest savings is in food costs, since you can cook for yourself. You can have breakfast at the rental, go to the restaurants you researched for lunch (often a much cheaper meal than the same restaurant at dinner) cook a fabulous dinner at home, and purchase wine/beer/sparkling water for a fraction of what it would cost in the restaurant. Cooking on our vacations saves money and helps us not get fat while traveling (well, Popo anyway, Pepe can eat whatever the hell she wants).
Besides cooking, you can often stay in better, all around less-expensive local neighbourhoods when you stay in a private rental, and you will also save money on everything from coffee to souvenirs, just by being outside of the hotel-zone. For example, bags of paprika in Budapest’s Central Market were selling for 1000 forint (about $3.50), but the same bag at the market near our rented apartment was only 300 forint (just over one US dollar).
Do a Google search to find out the best neighbourhoods to stay in, check the forums in travel websites, where locals will often answer traveller questions, and supplement this with the old-fashioned method of asking the people you know!
We recommend VRBO.com for finding private accommodations. Keep in mind too, that you will not be catered too with housekeeping etc. at a private rental, so if you want your bed made every day and do not want to do small house tasks like take out the trash when you leave, then a hotel may suit your style better – in which case, you can still visit those other great neighborhoods!
Go And Grow
Get out there! If you are going somewhere and you do not speak the language, don’t let that intimidate you. A friend of ours who moved recently from Egypt to Spain (and now speaks four languages!) said it best – “language is about communication.” This sounds simple, but it’s something we forget when feeling daunted by unfamiliar pronunciations. Simply communicating with people is easier than you think, and you really only need a few words to get your point across. While you may have a hard time expressing your personality, your needs will be met and there will be small victories every day – especially if you learn the local words for coffee, beer, hello, please, and thank you.
Smile, be nice, say hello and please…
Most importantly, when you are tired and hungry, don’t shy away from stopping at that patio cafe. Smile, be nice, say hello and please, and then if you have to you can always gesture to pictures on the menu or to the food on another diner’s plate. A smile and a few hand movements can get you far! Sit down and let your plans go for the moment, take in where you are and how vast the world can be.