Part 4 - Planning Your Itinerary in a Mindful way

Planning your itinerary

Stay true to your objective and your new mantra

My travel objective is: “A mindful and courageous journey to confidence”

My mantra is to: “Visit slowly, sit quietly, reflect and see”

Now I need an itinerary to deliver my objective in the way I have chosen to approach my travel.

Traditionally there has been two ways to approach planning and itinerary:

Book your flights, your first night of accommodation and then wing it. I simply wouldn’t survive this approach. I’d be stressed to the eyeballs!
Research endlessly, stress about getting the best deals. Probably what I would have done if I hadn’t given some thought about how to approach my journey.

Let me show you another way.

Start your journey long before your leave. Absorb yourself in the planning. Enjoy the research, the reading, the discussion with friends, the search for things to do and places to stay on your terms and within your budget. Planning is an enjoyable part of the journey. Let it be enjoyable. I’ve learnt that now.

Start you journey before you leave.

Step One – Pick a country to explore of course!

Step Two – Find a good travel guide book.

Find a good travel guide book. I like to use Rick Steve’s travel books – especially for Europe. They’re easy to read, no rubbish flowery writing, just the facts, some suggested itineraries, things to look out for some maps, some tours, how to get around. Rick helps you put a bit of a framework around what you could/might do. Get’s you thinking.

I’ve also used Lonely Planet travel books and DK travel guides. I like to use these guides for when I’m travelling to Asia. They both have great information but written like reference books (which might be what you prefer).

Rick’s books feel like I’m having a good chat to someone. Here’s a selection that I have in my Kindle library for Europe.

Step Three – Find some good fiction and travel writing books to read.

Reading books other than guides is a fabulous way to get some perspectives on the culture, traditions, what to see. Some of the books I read before I travelled to Italy are below. I also like to by a short Kindle book about the next place I’m visiting on my journey to read while I’m travelling on a train to the destination. I call this my focus reading. Set the scene. Get ready to jump off the train and become immersed in the place (after I’ve found a taxi and my accommodation of course!).

Step Four – Buy a fold out map of the country(s) you plan to visit, a cork board and some pins.

Pin your map to the cork board. Put some pins into the places you must see and put other pins in when you come across other interesting places you come across through your reading. This little tip will visually help you see what you ‘must see’, what interesting things sit around your ‘must see’ places that could be easy day trips, what it is possible to see and what is not possible to see in the time or budget you have.

Remember my travel mantra? Visit slowly, sit quietly, reflect and see. To stay true to my mantra I would need to cull the number pins I place – but not just yet. We are in the fun ideas stage! A couple of maps from my collection are below.

Step Five – Download the Booking.com app.

The next step in my planning process is to download the Booking.com app to all of my devices. You could select other accommodation options but I like Booking.com which is why I promote it on my site. I use it all the time. (just to be up front, I get a bit of commission if you click through to Booking.com from my site).

One of my biggest travel tips is to book all of your accommodation via one supplier. Mostly they offer similar prices but the biggest advantage of using one supplier is that if something goes wrong on the road, you only need to remember one supplier if you find yourself outside an apartment with not greeting party while you are busy juggling your luggage and your phone in the rain! This has happened to me on a number of occasions and within minutes of a call to Booking.com, the situation is usually solved.

Anyway, so you have the app. Create and account. Now put in your search criteria and get ready to save potential places by clicking on the little heart to put them in your wish list. Click on as many as you like, you’ll cull them later and end up with the perfect list.

The most important criteria for me is the district of the city you are visiting, the price and the style of accommodation you would like. Play with the site. Save accommodation when you are sitting around on the couch, on the bus to work or in your lunch time. Eventually you’ll settle on what type of accommodation you want that is within your budget and the culling process will begin.

Booking.com

Step Six – Download the SkyScanner app.

One of the easiest apps to use that will allow you to look across all of the airlines in the world to find the best price. You’ll just need an estimate for now to plug into your budget. The prices will go up and down but you just need an idea for now. It’s also use it to check how many stops you’ll need to make and the time you need to factor in. Trust me, this is a major deal for anyone travelling from Australia – my last flight to Rome took me 30 hours!

Step Seven – Pull it all together – have fun…relax.

You’ve consulted your travel guides, read a bit of travel book or two, contemplated your map and pinned your destinations, picked your accommodation and you’ve researched your flights. Your planned itinerary will allow you to travel according to your mantra and will allow you time enough to meeting your travel objective.

Time now to plot it all of a spread sheet that will accompany you all the way on your travels. I have crafted, redrafted, modified and edited a spreadsheet that meets my needs exactly. Have a look at the template below and click on the link for your very own excel spreadsheet that you can fill in to your hearts content.