Retirement Travel School: How to Plan World Travel | Tips and Tricks for Planning a Long Trip

we get a lot of questions about how we plan our travels how we choose locations you know what websites we use in our planning the list goes on and on So today we're going to explain our process we're going to share with you the shortcuts that we use and talk to you about how we plan each leg of our journey we're John and Bev and we are the retirement Travelers if you're just finding us we are full-time senior Travelers we get so many questions about the logistics of travel that we wanted to create a series called travel school now this is a free series to help you learn how to be Savvy World Travelers we are placing all of these videos on our website retirement travelers.com so check out our site you can sign up for our newsletter there also and if you're wondering where in the world we are as we travel you can follow us on Instagram we keep it updated to our current location so follow along with us there and we also do lots of stories so you can see exactly what we're doing on a daily basis in our first video of travel school we shared with you the Cornerstone of our travel planning a colorful spreadsheet system designed by monday.com now in this video we explained how we set up our travel planning spreadsheet to help us stay organized now for us we need a system that we both like you know because it takes two of us to plan a whole Year's worth of travel you know we generally take about two big trips a year and we end up booking the flights hotels and excursions for each week of our travel now without a good system we end up repeating tasks we lose information we occasionally double book and make a huge mess of the whole process we've made every mistake in the book it was out of necessity that we were forced to look for a system that we could customize to fit our needs we sit down twice a year to do our planning because we have no time to do it as we travel in our first year of traveling abroad we tried to be more spontaneous and make decisions on where to go on the fly but it was very difficult because we are active Travelers the best way for us to travel is to plan during downtime and know the plan when we are traveling in the end we happened up on monday.com and it fit our needs and it came with a phone app that we can keep all of our details at our fingertips you know as we went through airports and train stations if you haven't watched that video please please go back and check it out Bev will walk you through the setup and explain this system it's awesome and we are thrilled with the program our second video in the series talks about how to estimate your budget when you're planning a long trip in this video we share our budget goals we really try to help you estimate what a long journey will cost you in 2024 last week's video was how we NAB bargain business class tickets now if you're like us you're kind of past the days of being cramped up in economy and especially on those long haul flights so check it out we hope it gives you a few tips on how you too can NAB these tickets so let's talk about our travel plan when we started to travel we took a look at the world map and divided it into regions this helped us to make a comprehensive long-term travel plan our first five years would be our active travel years we're on our third year abroad and we expect to visit most of these locations by the end of 2025 most of our travels these days are four months long you know give or take a little like we said in last week's video we start with finding the best business class ticket to one city in the region once we have this we start building a trip around it so four months is a nice length for us and we like to stay about one week in each location the first thing we do is research and for that it begins with researching the weather now we don't want to travel in cold weather and we really just don't like to be too hot so timing is everything we consider the rainy season and we know now to consider the Burning Season in Asia when Farmers burn their fields we use a site called weather and climate.com now this site has the best weather information by month once we figure out if it's a good time to visit weather-wise we start making a list of our favorite places and we put it on monday.com you know we add and subtract places as the plan comes together but our wish list goes up now now as far as how we choose the places you know we love to read other blogs uh we use suggestions from other Travelers really just anything that suits us you know we examine maps and we look for areas and research them in this case Google is our friend before we start finalizing our plans we research festivals and national holidays now we travel on Wednesdays for two reasons but the most important is that festivals and special events often fall on the weekend we like taking part in these because we get vested food great music and happy people to interact with the other reason that we like Wednesdays is it's a low travel day you know on the weekends you get the local Travelers and at the beginning and the end of the week you get the business traveler so if you're in a country say you got to cross the border or drive across the border midweek is always better you know the traffic is lighter and the lines are usually shorter so in also Wednesdays are probably the cheapest uh for flights as well the next step in our travel planning is to see if we can string these locations together now the website we work with in this phase is Romeo rio.com this is a website that you can add your destinations and explore different modes of transportation to get you between the two points so let's say you're traveling from Vilas Lithuania to Warsaw Poland Rome to Rio gives you the option of a flight a train a bus or a car now in this case they say the flight is 4 hours the train is 8 and 1 half hours the bus is 8 hours and the car is 5 and 1 half hours if you click on each option it will show you what flights are available or what train is available now we consider romear Rio to be a great resource but it is not 100% accurate now when we started our trip planning we thought it was but it's it's really not okay Our advice is to use it as kind of an overall cheat sheet but research before making a firm plan you know in our trip through the Balkans we assumed that we could take some trains that actually didn't cross the borders so be careful with the information you know overall it's a really good planning site but we never book on this site and we use it as a starting point for our trip planning now if we're looking for trains in a country that we're not familiar with we often refer to a site called seat61 now this is a site that gives great overviews of different train Journeys if the gentleman that writes this Blog has been on the route he will post information on it now if he's not been on the route he will post other Travelers accounts now if he tells you that a ride is great you can trust him he's very active on the site and he keeps the information current this guy rocks now once we have this overview of a route we start to nail down the schedule you know you must remember just because Rome D Rio says there's a flight or train it doesn't mean it's necessarily so you know often times planes and trains only run on certain days of the week you know depending on the country so once we have a route we start with the first city and we work in order you that's very important the last thing we want to do is book a hotel and then can't get there in time so beginning with the first city we book our transportation first now we might look at the hotel and know whether or not they have a vacancy but we book the transportation so that if we need to adjust the number of days we can after we book our route we book the hotel sometimes a train reservation won't be available when we start planning remember we're 6 to 12 months out many times you know some train routes only open up about 90 days before the date of departure so we use a site called rail ninja and who wouldn't want to use a site called rail ninja I mean what a cool name you know what this site does is it takes your information in your desired booking and when the train company opens up this route rail ninja automatically sends a reservation request to the train company and they book your ticket you'll receive an email you know when your ticket is confirmed we're really bad at setting reminders to book a train so we use rail ninja and we don't have to worry about getting the booking you can request a seat with a table and a window and we usually get what we want the company books Global trains so you can rest assured that you're getting a good service speaking of rail we're often asked if we buy your rail passes now we have bought them in the past but we found that unless you're going to make a lot of long trips that are very costly you're probably better off just to buy point-to-point tickets you know it's easier than having to worry about making reservations once you get to Europe plus to make this work you need to stop in many locations over the course of of a fairly short time so even with our quick Pace it's just not worth it to us when we traveled in Europe last year we took fairies even an overnight Ferry we rented a car a couple of times we hired a couple of drivers we took trains buses flights and even cruise ships now we say this to encourage you to try lots of different modes of Transport when we first started traveling we didn't consider buses but once we took the first one we realized that this was a method we should embrace now our favorite is trains and if there is a train route we'd rather take a train than a bus because the the rail line has a better better view than the highway when we book fairies we like direct fairies now for drivers we use a site called my day trip.com and for buses we usually use flick bus now each of these plus the different train companies in Europe they all have apps so when you book on a site download the app and make a folder for it on your phone so you can keep all of these things organized and if you're planning a long journey set up monday.com to track everything and add these confirmation codes to your spreadsheet we get a lot of questions about how we find hotels now we like booking.com for several reasons but the most important is probably that you can see at a glance what the star rating is by category from other Travelers this is probably the most important part for us all the fees are included and we know the price up front they have hotels and long-term rentals so all the cleaning fees are included and there's no hidden cost we also are at the top tier of their loyalty program so we like getting that discount um when we book six months ahead we don't have to pay in advance like we did on Airbnb now one thing we take advantage of is the free cancellation now we do pay a slightly higher rate but we have the ability to make changes with our plan you know this gives us added confidence that if we do want to make a change we can we noticed when we check into many hotels where we've received a room on booking.com that they often have a sign at the check-in desk that ask people to book directly with them so we often look up the price on booking and then we do a Google search to see what the cost is if we book direct now many times the price is better so we book direct when we can our favorite travel hack is still the world of Hyatt hack we just love it now if we can use uh credit card points at a Hyatt property we book them first you know right now we're in India and we are loving the Hiatt properties that we' stayed at here the breakfasts are the best in the world you know it is nice to stay in a luxurious hotel for free especially when the streets can be a little chaotic just a little bit when we book hotels we look for locations that are near public transportation while we may use business class tickets for Long Haul flights we pair those with Subways and metros now we're not afraid of hopping on these every chance we get we've taken Subways almost every place we've traveled to even New Delhi India and it turned out to be a great one oh it was a great experience and the people were so nice on on the Metro there in Delhi I mean they refused to let beev stand up they would get up and let her have a seat so they were they were super sweet so now when you know public transportation is not available we would rather take Uber over a taxi mainly because we can pay on the app and we don't have to exchange money you know it's also very clear what the charges are for you know but the big method of getting around for us is to to walk you know we love to walk it's great exercise you know our family calls this forced marching and sometimes we agree but we do get a lot of exercise you know honestly it's one of our favorite things about travel is just you know wandering around a city you know it's one of the favorite things we do we just walk talk and and enjoy each other's company if you're planning a trip be sure to check out our website retirement travelers.com for our travel blogs now we try to write guide for each City that we visit our goal is to give you a finely curated experience that combines well-known information with subtle facts now we include everything from Michelin star restaurants to local Dives that are special to Hawker stands that the locals have directed us to our goal is to give you a great travel experience and we firmly believe that if you follow our God you'll have a great visit to each City at least that's our goal it is our goal you know when we want to hire a local guide we often use tours by locals and for excursions we like get your guide when it comes to excursions we don't always book these early you know we research them but we generally book once we get there we just like the flexibility you know of being able to change our minds once we arrive in a city our big caveat is popular tourist attractions during High season be sure you pre-order your museum tickets like the Lou or the DOR before you arrive getting a ticket to the catacombs in Paris is difficult over Christmas and we learned our lesson when we were there last time so book those early and skip the lines when you're planning a big trip be sure to pay attention to visa requirements many countries have e visas these days but you need to apply for them ahead of time now we keep a colum on monday.com to remind us of what the Visa situation is for each country we plan to visit this is good to note when you're in the planning stages now there are still a few countries that require a Visa before you leave home so know that when you are in your planning and make a note of that one more bit of advice we register with the US Department of State safe traveler program to let them know that we're in a foreign country you know in the event of a National Emergency we want the government to know our whereabouts to assist us if we need to be evacuated you know earthquakes tsunamis and War can happen without warning and we think it makes good sense to have a backup plan in next week's video we're going to go over packing again uh We've made a few changes to our system and we want to talk through a few of these updates and also respond to the many questions we've gotten since our last video let us know if you have any questions about how we trip plan and we'll see you next week be sure to hit subscribe and follow along on our retirement Journey around the world

Channel: Retirement Travelers

Views: 22,030

Keywords: how to plan world travel, planning trips abroad, retirement travelers, travel school, retirement travel, how to plan travel, travel planning, world travel planning, how to plan world travel 2024, tips and tricks for planning travel, how to plan a long trip, how to plan a trip, trip planning shortcuts, how to plan travel tips and tricks, planning travel tips, how to trip plan, trip plan for world travel, tips for planning a world travel adventure, john and bev martin

Id: ZH5Zw5VZrCE

Length: 15min 58sec (958 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024