If someone asked me to plan a trip to Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, I could give them a large list of things to do and places to visit without thinking. It’s where I live and work. But what about a country that you’ve never visited? What do you do? Where do you start? What if you don’t speak the language? Fortunately, there are innumerable tools available to help you plan an amazing trip outside the United States.
For me, a big part of the joy of the trip is planning the trip. You discover each place and what it has to offer. There are so many options that you can choose from. There is so much research that can be done online. I loved spending weeks studying the various places in Scotland that we could visit and then finding hotels, discovering the sites, and seeing the places, all online.
I planned an entire two week trip to Scotland. We were going to go around the island, visiting the Isle of Skye, various ancestral castles, Edinburgh, and the rest. Every time I think about planning that trip, it makes me happy. I felt like I understood the island much better for doing so. For example, during the planning process, I met a guy from Scotland. He told me that he was from Dundee. I knew where that was because of my research. I understood the world a little bit better, even without going.
Planning the trip to Egypt was totally different. We found a company called Memphis Tours (for Memphis, Egypt not Memphis, Tennessee). They had several itineraries, but they could change them to fit your priorities. A representative would work with a prospective traveler to adjust their trip. I highly recommend them. They do things a little bit differently than an American company might, but they get the job done and really care for their travelers. The first itinerary I considered was a trip to Turkey and Egypt. Both were open to American travelers in the winter of 2021. I thought it would be truly epic to visit both those countries. The problem was lining up all the flights for the right days. We could not make it work in the time frame that we had. So, we decided to do a grand tour of Egypt, which was actually quite epic anyway.
Flights were perhaps the most important part of the planning process. Once you get there, you can do things. But you have to get there. They are also the most expensive single item. You can save money on flights, or you can spend a lot of money on them. This will determine what you can do and how many trips you can take, unless, of course, you are very rich.
I am not very rich, so I looked for cheap flights. There were several factors that enabled me to find cheaper flights. First, I was generally somewhat flexible in the time I would travel and the place to which I would travel. Second, I used a service called Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) that would alert me to when cheap flights were available. That way, I did not have to keep checking all the time. Third, I looked not only at my local regional airport but all the international airports within four hours of me: Atlanta, Charlotte, Cincinnati, and Nashville. Sometimes, a 3 or 4 hour drive would be worth it. Often, you did not even lose time. You would have to fly to one of those airports and wait around anyway, so why not drive? The economics of this were important. If I was traveling by myself, and there was only $100 difference in the tickets between Knoxville and Charlotte, it made sense to fly out of Knoxville. If it was a $300 or $400 difference, that was worth considering. In the case of my second trip to Egypt, four of us were going. The difference in the tickets was greater than $400. That was a nearly $1500 difference when you factor in parking and gas.
After that, you have to determine where you want to go when you arrive. Do you travel around? Do you stay primarily in one city? Or at the beach? Once you decide this, then you need to book your hotel. You could also stay in an Airbnb. One interesting thing about international travel is that the Airbnb and hotel costs are quite different than those of the United States. In the U.S., I have found that Airbnbs generally cost more than hotels. In other countries, this is not the case. I stayed in Madrid for a week for less than $50 a night in a small Airbnb apartment with its own bathroom. The hotels were generally $100 or more. I prefer to stay in hotels when I can because I like being able to talk to the staff and the people that are staying there. For example, I stayed in a hotel near the Bogota airport by myself. I felt a little lonely. I went down to get a snack and a drink. I met an American couple who was living in Mexico but had come to Bogota to do a tour during the hotter months of Baja California. It was a great conversation, and I was happy to have some company. But not everybody likes to do this sort of thing.
One phenomenon that you find in other countries that is available in the U.S. but very expensive here is the all inclusive hotel. I knew one couple that was looking at paying $9,000 for one week at an all-inclusive in Florida. You can pay a fraction of that in other Caribbean countries. At the all-inclusive, you pay one price and you get all your meals, all your drinks, all your entertainment, and all your snacks. I am not sure that you actually save money by doing it this way, unless you drink a lot, which many guests at these hotels do. But the all inclusive is fun and easy. I have enjoyed my stay at each one of them. One key thing is to make sure that you get your agreement that all is included in writing before you go. Otherwise, they may try to charge you when you get there.
One thing you also have to do is to plan how you will get around. The American idea would be to take the obvious approach: rent a car. This was my plan for Scotland. I would rent a manual car and drive on the wrong side of the road throughout Scotland. There are generally cheaper ways to get from place to place that are comfortable and easier. One thing to note is that in many countries you can fly from city to city much more cheaply than you can in America. I bought 17 plane tickets for traveling around Colombia that cost me about $500 total. This is exceptionally cheap, but the same thing was true in Spain and other parts of Europe. There were often cheap flights. In Europe, you can take the train. It is often actually cheaper to fly, but it is a bigger hassle, the price difference is not great, and you can enjoy seeing the countryside. I have had few better traveling experiences than traveling in the Ave train in Spain. You can get from Madrid to Seville, at least a 5 hour trip driving, in about 2 hours! In Latin America, you can take buses. We had a very nice trip in a bus from Puerto Plata to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. They often have different options for buses than we have in the United States. There are many more stations than you might find for the Greyhound in the U.S. where they often simply drop you off on the side of the road.
Within the city, there are usually several options for traveling around. You can take a bus, metro, taxi, or Uber. Figuring this out should be part of your planning. For example, in Madrid, there is an extensive metro and bus system that you can ride very cheaply. Tourists can get a tourist ticket. They cost $40 or so per week, and you can ride the metro and the buses an unlimited number of times for a week. You can also purchase the tourist ticket for 1-6 days with a lower cost. This is true in many cities.
Some of my local friends did not recommend that I take some of the public transportation or taxis in various places outside of Europe. They may have been overly cautious. However, what they did recommend was Uber. They said it was much safer. It is also cheap by American standards. I saw $1 and $2 charges on my credit card for my rides in Bogota. A side benefit of Uber, if you speak the language of the driver, is that you often find an interesting person who likes to talk and knows quite a bit about the local situation.
What do you do when you get there? One great resource that I have found is Viator. Viator.com is a web site that will give you an idea of what is available in the area. Even if you don’t use that specific service, it is a great guide that will give you a sample of what is available. This includes traditional things like trips to an island, tours of the pyramids, or tours of a city as well as other experiences such as a tapas tour, salsa lessons, or cooking classes. From this vantage point, you can either reserve your activities or check into other options for the things that you are interested in.
I have had experiences of planning nothing, planning everything, and having everything planned for me. All of these were wonderful experiences. They all have their advantages. In this day and age, don’t think that you need to have someone else do your planning. You can do a lot of it on your own. You may even find that this type of research is fun. . . or you may not. My oldest daughter hates to plan. I love to. This makes for a very good traveling relationship. I put together a plan, have her check it, and then execute it on our trips. Maybe you can find someone like that and bring them along on your next trip.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. If you like it, please consider sharing it on social media or subscribing to the blog in the box below. Do you have anything you would add to this post? Share it in the comments below. I hope to see you here again or traveling around the world.