GUIDE TO PREPARE A TRIP FOR FREE STEP BY STEP

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There is no lack of reason for those who say that trips are lived three times: when we prepare it, when we live it and when we remember it. From the moment we start to dream of a trip until we arrive at the airport, there is a long road in which (we will not deny) there is always some moment of stress and above all emotion as the great moment of the travel.
Based on our experience we have made this guide to prepare a trip for free step by step, to enjoy the trip to the fullest without leaving anything to do or see or forget anything essential at home or in the inkwell.

1. See the days you have available

The first step of this guide to prepare a trip for free stop by taking a calendar and start to square it with the days you have available for the trip. Working for someone else will mean having less flexibility, just as if you have to take vacations in a certain period of time or if they give you natural or working days. The bridges and the parties are a good help when we have working days of vacations, being able to extend our trip quite a lot. In our case, many of the escapes we have made have been framed in these festivities in which we have gone on a trip up to 5 days, spending Only one of our vacations. It doesn't look bad, right?
Once you have studied the calendar and approved the holidays, you can start looking at the most suitable destinations on dates and by time.

2. Choose the travel destination

Entering your favorite travel library, ours is Altaïr in Barcelona, with thousands of travel guides and books that will surely help you choose the most suitable destination. Documentaries, travel programs, recommendations of friends, Instagram photos or Facebook, will make you have a first list of 3 or 4 destinations in mind that will limit the initial list of dream destinations.
The following steps in this guide will help you decide on one of the ones you have been considering.

3. Make travel budget

Depending on the duration of the trip, the way you travel and the destination, the budget will vary. Once you have chosen the destination you can know more or less the daily cost through guides, travel blogs, consulting prices of hotels, flights, restaurants, transport. Then you just have to multiply the daily budget for the days of travel, add some extra for unforeseen or purchases and you will have a fairly real approximation of the total cost of the trip.
Keep in mind that your way of traveling will also greatly modify the budget. It is not the same to stay in hostels, travel by public transport, eat in street stalls or supermarkets than sleep in hotels, take airplanes, taxis or private transport, and eat in restaurants.
It also depends on the destination, it is quite different to travel through European countries, the United States, Canada, Australia or Japan, which are quite expensive countries, than to do it for Southeast Asia or Latin American countries, except for Argentina and Chile that are not precisely economic .
This is one of the most important steps of the guide to prepare a trip for free step by step, since according to the result it can make you reject any of the destinations if it does not fall within your budget.

Travel Budget

Something to consider when making the budget is the actuality of it. We receive many emails asking us about travel budgets we have made. As we mentioned before, this depends a lot on the way you travel, so giving a budget is quite subjective. We believe that the best way to know if a destination fits your budget or not is to check the price of accommodation and flight, the most important items, at the moment. It's much easier than you might think: you just have to enter a flight search engine like Skyscanner and search for possible flights. Once you have it located, you will already have the budget of one of the big games of the trip. The following is the accommodation: it is not the same to travel in low season than in high season, so entering a Booking type search engine will allow you to see at the moment the prices that are shuffled for the type of accommodation you are looking for.
Once you have these two games the next most important one would be the food. In this case you can look at guides, travel blogs ... etc to get an idea of the daily budget you will need. Based on these three games, you can already get an idea if the destination you have thought of enters or not within your budget.

4. Find the best time to travel to the destination

Choosing the best time is also one of the things to keep in mind when preparing a travel for free. Traveling to certain countries in summer can become a nightmare because of its high temperatures and humidity, which in the end will only allow us to make visits during very few hours of the day. The same happens with the winter, being this time in general lines the moment in which the hours of visits are shortened by having fewer hours of light, in addition to the discomfort Because of the low temperatures. In addition to these very marked seasons, it is also advisable, especially in Southeast Asia, to try to avoid the monsoon season.
There are exceptions, for example if you want to see northern lights or snowy landscapes, having to travel in winter yes or yes.
Anyway, the weather is unpredictable, depending largely on the luck factor. In our case, for example, we traveled in the monsoon season to Sri Lanka and it only rained one afternoon.
That said, if you have a chance, the best thing is not to tempt fate too much since if this is not on our side, it can ruin a trip.
Another of the things that we have observed over time is that you don't have to pay much attention to the predictions of the web pages, in the medium and long term. In our case they have almost never been right, so now we only consult them very occasionally and at very specific times.

Easter Island

5. Book the flights

This step of the guide to prepare a trip for free Sometimes it sneaks in the first place and it is known that it will not be we who raise our hands, since it is something that usually happens to us. With the bargains and offers of flights that appear in blogs such as Best Flight, there are travelers who firstly book the flight and then follow the most natural steps in the preparing a trip for free.
These offers usually last very little and also get used to being on very specific dates, so taking one of these offers quickly and without thinking too much can mean a great saving and an increase in budget in other items, so it is convenient to be attentive and Sign up on these pages to receive in your email all the offers that are published.
If you have not launched for any offer, when you are clear about the destination, you can start searching and booking the flight. We always say that when you book the flight it is really the moment when you know for sure that you are going to make the trip, that moment in which there is no turning back. If your partner or friends accompany you on the trip and you see that they doubt about making the trip, take advantage of a good mood or the minimum opportunity to book it, surely they will thank you later.
For book the cheapest flight We use Skyscanner, a very intuitive search engine that allows you to search for months to know the exact dates on which the flight is cheaper.
Our recommendation is always to book with the maximum time in advance if you have fixed dates. Waiting for the offer of the year until the last days is not always useful (most of the time it never appears), it can make you pay much more and even discard the trip.

6. Prepare the itinerary

Once you have the flight booked, "alone"You have to plan the itinerary in which depending on the days you can travel more or less places in the country. In addition to the travel guides, we use Lonely Planet, you can consult travel blogs with itineraries to get an idea of the itineraries and places that you can visit during the trip in addition to being able to select a first route on the map with the places that attract us the most attention.

Prepare trip for free

7. Booking hotels, an important step in the guide preparing a trip for free

Once you have the travel route defined, the next step to prepare the trip for free It is to book the hotels.
We usually use Booking to book hotels or hostels, since their large number of positive and negative comments from customers are very useful when deciding on one accommodation or another. Here are also other services that we consider many times basic to choose the hotel as free wifi, breakfast included or not in the price, parking, reception hours or location.

Another of the best alternatives to book accommodation is Airbnb, a website through which you can book full apartments or private rooms, much cheaper than a hotel. It also has a comment system that will ensure that we do not have any problems before or after the reservation. In our case we have booked with them the New York apartment where we will stay in June and July.

And if you have not decided yet, if it is your first reservation with Airbnb, we will give you a BONUS of 30 EUROS.

8. Reserve the transport

Booking the means or means of transport that you will use to move around the country is also a very important part of the preparing a trip for free.
One of our favorite ways to travel is to do it by rental car. The car, motorcycle or motorhome allow you to stop where and when you want by adding a sense of freedom to the trip that at least for us, is a great added value.
If they are countries where driving is more complicated such as Southeast Asia or some countries in Africa you can always opt for a car with a driver and travel with more peace of mind if it enters your budget. We have used this option in some areas of the trip to India and for example in these cases it is not a big cost over the final budget, since they are very economical countries and in this also the prices are adjusted.
If the distances are longer you can opt for the bus, train and internal flights, with low cost companies such as Ryanair or Air Asia.
Depending on which countries, such as Japan or China, it is best to book transport in time, especially if you travel in high season or with a closed itinerary, since there is a good chance of running out of seats on the most demanded routes.

Book transportation, an important step in the guide prepare a trip for free

9. Reserve tickets.

Keep in mind that there are probably places that you will want to visit during the trip where it will be essential to take the entrance or a contracted tour. Running out of entrance in some mythical place such as Machu Picchu or to see a show on Broadway, after having the entire trip ready, can be disappointing. That is why it is important to read the information of each place you are going to visit, including schedules, times when it is closed and especially if you have to go with a reserved ticket.
Also in many cases in which although the entrance or the tour is not mandatory, taking it reserved will help you not to waste time searching between local agencies. And it is that on a trip, more than ever: time is money.
If you do not manage very well with English or want a guide that explains your visit better, a very good alternative is to hire a tour with Civitatis, a website that also has a very broad opinion system to check the quality of the service and Help you decide.

Book tickets New York Knicks

10. Check the documentation for the trip.

Another essential step before starting a travel for free is to review all the mandatory documentation that we must take to the country we are going to visit. In general, if you travel through the European Union with your ID and driving license, if you rent a car, it will be enough.
In the rest of the countries you must carry a passport and, above all, check that it is not expired and the regulations of the country of destination, as this may vary from one country to another.
In other cases more exceptional As on a trip to China, the United States or India you have to process a visa in advance, an authorization granted by the country and indicated in the same passport and that is mandatory to enter the country.
It should also be borne in mind that the maximum stay allowed in a country can vary between 30 and 90 days, having to check with the Embassy or Consulate for longer periods.
To ensure you the best is to find the information of the requirements on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Another important thing and that you must take into account are the requirements and rules for the international driving license, in case you want to rent a car at the destination.

In addition to all these recommendations we always recommend that you carry a copy of all the documentation on your mobile and / or in a cloud hosting service such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

Check travel documentation

11. Book a visit to International Health

Going to an International Vaccination Center is another of the essentials, if necessary, at the time of prepare a trip on your own. Before entering the visit with the doctor you will be filled in a form with personal, medical, travel information and the route you will take. The international health specialist will tell you if there are areas of risk in the destination you are going to and if you should take medication or get a vaccine, either for malaria, yellow fever, typhus, hepatitis A and B, or simply prescribe Edemox by altitude sickness
The vaccines that they put you will write them down in an International Certificate of Vaccination that is always useful to take along with the rest of the documentation.

In addition to this visit we always carry a small kit with all the basics that we might need as antibiotics, pain relievers ... etc and even syringes depending on the country we travel to.

As an annotation we would like to highlight the amount of emails and comments on the blog that we receive in which they ask us about the vaccines that must be put in order to travel to a certain country. Given this we will not get tired of saying that you should ALWAYS consult with a medical specialist since according to your medical history, the result can change. A travel blog can serve, in this case, as a help or as an orientation, but should never serve as a model to follow, since as we mentioned each person may have some needs, in addition to that we must be aware that at many times, in certain countries there are outbreaks, which only know in the Specialized Centers, so if you listen to a blog / web and think that you are already vaccinated of everything and you happen to do the medical visit, you can be risking your health.

Carry a small medicine cabinet

12. Hire good travel medical insurance

Something we would not recommend is never travel without medical insurance, trips to where you travel. Not only if your destination is to any country with health services of inferior quality such as in certain places in Africa, Asia or Latin America, as it is necessary to take into account that in countries like the United States, any accident or visit to the hospital can mortgage your life, so traveling with travel insurance is more than recommended .
We always travel insured with Mondo, with whom we carry a totally adequate insurance to the needs that we will have on the trip.
Hiring your insurance here with Mondo, just for being a Street Travelers reader, you have a 5% discount.

In European Union countries, the European health card will cover medical care, which you can order directly from the Social Security website. Although you must bear in mind that repatriation will not cover you, something that we must take into account and therefore it is also convenient to travel with travel insurance.

13. Prepare luggage

Another important factor at this point is the time it will do or that you can find at the destination. The luggage will change a lot if you have to take warm clothes, which bulges more, or summer clothes, as well as depending on the destination or preference you should assess whether to carry a backpack or suitcase.
The decision to carry a backpack depends largely on the type of transport you will use during the trip and how long you will carry the luggage on your shoulders. If the latter is not too long, we would always opt for the suitcase with wheels.
Although there are also many other factors when considering one type of luggage or another, whether you want to check or not, carrying a smaller backpack with the minimum luggage will avoid wasting time waiting at airports and lost luggage.

Travel luggage

14. Money

In this case there are several options if the trip is outside the European Union. The first alternative is to take all the money in cash by changing it directly in your bank. This would be the way more practice since you do not have to worry about changing at the destination although it has two major drawbacks: carrying too much money on top of it, something that in case of theft, would mean running out of nothing, and also the high commission and exchange rate very favorable to the banks.
Another option is to carry little cash and use the credit card to pay and withdraw money at ATMs. In this case it is convenient to control and / or negotiate the commission that will make us pay our bank every time we take money, since this can be quite significant depending on the country in which we are.
We recommend using the N26 card to pay and the Bnext and Revolut cards to get money at the ATMs. They are the ones we use, They are free and will save you a lot.
You can find more information in this article about the best cards to travel without commissions.

15. Review list and travel

And last but not least, it is very useful to make and review a list in which you have written down everything you have to take us throughout the process to prepare a trip for free step by step.
And it is that you should not only include luggage or documentation in the list. From taking a pair of spare glasses, remember that in some countries due to the weather you can evaporate the liquid from the lenses and run out of being able to use them to carry one or more adapters for the plugs if the country you are traveling to has another type of plug. Earplugs, sunscreen, memory cards, towels, mosquito repellent ... and a long etcetera that will depend on what each of us needs before hanging the backpack on his shoulder.

Once the entire list is checked, there is only one thing left ... TRAVEL!