This is not a travel blog per se but because I always obsessively plan my trips down to literally minutiae, I might as well collate the various bits of knowledge I’ve gathered for newbies like me.
Firstly, for itineraries, I’ve found the following sites very useful as templates and I can adapt them for my own personal needs:
Among them, earthtrekkers is usually where I start off since it has a broad coverage for 10 day trips around the world. Then I would do separate Google searches for “x days in [City name]” and the other two often come up.
If you are traveling or plan to travel around European cities via the train, https://www.seat61.com/ is the go-to comprehensive guide on train travel around the world. For my upcoming trip across three European countries- Italy, Switzerland and France, I ended up buying my train tickets three different ways for each country despite there being two aggregate ticket resellers and here’s why:
- I was originally planning to buy Italian and French tickets all together through one resellers-RailEurope which only charges a flat fee of $8 Euro for a single cart of purchase which trumps Trainline which charges 3% of each single ticket bought through them. However, the Italian train companies only allow you to hold tickets for 10-15 minutes and when you also have to pick seats and choose between alternative times, I just found it an entirely hopeless endeavour to be able to buy 20 tickets all in one go through RailEurope.
- So change of plans: through research I found out that there are only two train operators in Italy: the state-owned Trenitalia which operates every single train line in Italy and the private company Italo that only runs lines between major cities. What I did was basically just open up the two train websites on different tabs and run a search on the day I want to travel. Personally, I think the Italo website is easier to use for English speakers (no surprise, apparently it’s operated by a US conglomerate) but the Trenitalia can be switched to English on the top right-side as well. The only caveat is that you have to know the station names in Italian but that’s easy because a part of my trip planning always leads to search for “from location x to location y” which takes me to Rome2Rio.com which will show you different methods of traveling between the two locations, the time it takes, how long and schedules etc. And there I can easily find out about station names in Italian or whatever local languages. This way, I was able to book my Italian tickets one by one without the short time limit hanging over my head. Also, instead of the black-box interaction on RailEurope where I always feel inclined to book the cheapest tickets available I can easily compare across different ticket categories in terms of conditions (whether you can change the time and day of the train you take, whether tickets are refundable etc.)
- I tried to replicate the same on the French side where there is only a single operator but then the SNCF site keeps freezing whenever I try to buy with my visa debit card. I tried to get in touch with them and the only means seemed to be through Facebook Messenger without any response. Then the GM of my gaming group told me of his experience in another European country which made me remember that I read somewhere that the French rail company’s website acted funny with foreign credit card purchases so back to RailEurope I went with all my French train tickets. This time around it works fine because the French side does allow you to hold a ticket for much longer. The shortest was 15 minutes for a trip between Paris and Versailles according to my recollections but most of the other tickets can be held for about 1 hour and above and there’s no need to select seats.
- On the Swiss side, all I did was buy a half fare card for a month (we are only staying in Switzerland for 9 days but it’s still a cheaper option compared to the 10 day Swiss pass, especially since we are not visiting any museums) and the Daily Saver Pass for one day where I knew I would be traveling intensively along the Interlaken-Lauterbrunnen-Murren-Stechelberg route. I’m not purchasing any other tickets online because it always takes a 3% foreign transaction fee on their website even though I’ve got a visa debit card that doesn’t charge the fee on my end. Plus, there is absolutely no need to reserve seats and there is no cost advantage to buying individual point to point tickets in advance.
As per usual, I use booking.com for hotels because their website is easy to use for a search. But remember to set currency to property currency so that they don’t take a cut out of you for currency conversion. I’m not taking so many day tours this time around as for my New Zealand trip (only one in Venice) and I’m sticking to Viator.com. And just one advice of caution on European day trips: always search out whether you can DIY the same itinerary as a Viator day trip on your own. Back when I first started my European trip planning, I was going to sign up to 5 or 6 day tours but in the end only the Venice one was left because the other ones were either too expensive or could be completely or partially replicated with train travel between cities. I kept with the Venice one just for the gondola ride because research says that otherwise you have to negotiate rates with the gondolier yourself and I find that a major hassle.
Moonlake's Fiction Space 