What’s your travel style? No, not clothing, but pre trip information. Do you like to buy {borrow} the travel guides and do lots of research before you go, or, do you just get on the plane and find your way when you get there?
There’s no problem guessing which one I do, as I seem to be on a quest to own every ‘Eyewitness Travel’ guide going, {not very frugal I know} I’m interested to know what other people do.
Giveaway Winner:
The winner, picked by Random.org, is Mize from My Country Home. Mize lives in Portugal and was the first blogger I met in person. We spent a fun afternoon together last summer in The Algarve. Her dream, which is similar to our own, is below.
I´d love to live in a small country home in Algarve (not too much isolated) with a small piece of land around it so I could plant my own vegetables and herbs.
Peace of mind, debt free and frugal living would be handy too. Mize
Thank you to everyone that entered the giveaway and I hope that you all achieve your dream.
{photo credit: domi-san}
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Unfortunately, I don’t travel. But, Mize said one thing perfectly, “debt free”. Its gong to continue taking my family alot of hard work to get there so that we can have our plot of land to grow veggies.
Least, we are all working on acheiving our dreams.
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Before going anywhere, I buy every travel guide going (nearly) as I like to do lots of pre reading and planning – taking them all with me is a problem though! I love Eyewitness Guide too and then add a Lonely Planet or Rough Guide for the actual trip.
RML’s last blog post..First Foray into Clothing Clutter
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you totally have to do research. how can you make the most of it, if you have no idea about where you want to go. I love maps. and I love seeing how the reality is, after dreaming of it.
mo’s last blog post..tuesday update
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having said that, if you are proper travelling, research is asking people where to go and what to do as you go along.
mo’s last blog post..tuesday update
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I always let other people do the planning. If everything went pear shaped I could completely disavow any responsibility!
j1mbo’s last blog post..Upcoming Event: The Unibet Open Algarve 2009 Poker Tournament
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Oooh are you off on hols soon?
How much research you need to do depends on what kind of travelling you like to do, though I rarely plan every last detail. For a weekend city break where you want to see the sights, I always have a hit-list or I’d run out of time and not see everything I’d wanted to. If I were there for a week I’d be more relaxed and wing it a bit more.
For longer, travelling holidays where you’d like to see more of a country for example (and therefore know you have to organise long train trips or even internal flights) I’d do just skeleton research to get an idea of (a) what places that tickle your fancy (b) what transportation options there are between towns/cities, roughly how much it’ll be and jot down the name/website of the operators.
With the internet I think guidebooks are pretty redundant these days, you end up carrying a whole book around and the reality is you’ll only usefully use 10% of it. There are trillions of good travel sites that will do the job for you, and you can just print out relevant pages, even as you go along travelling.
The best thing is to just ask the locals when you get somewhere, they’ll be the best source of info and you sometimes end up where the guidebooks won’t go. I also always head for the local tourist information office first off to grab a freebie map and a recommendation for dinner.
kat’s last blog post..Temple Tantrums
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Have a look at The Portugal News website (its the national newspaper in English) http://www.the-news.net/, it has lots of news and information which you may find helpful and informative. Beeing a weekly newspaper it is very up to date.
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I didn’t know much about India before going. I was scared from some of the things I had heard people say about their visits and figured that I might back out if I knew too much. It was a wonderful trip! I was traveling with people who spoke the language and that was helpful. I would have to say that it depends on where you are going and who may be traveling with you. Sometimes not knowing is great because you don’t have many expectations. I could be in the moment and learn about places as I arrived. I had so many questions to ask the local people that I had more interaction with them.
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I search the internet
Print all the tube maps etc and find out all the towns outside the place we go incase of spare time lol
I make sure i have it all written down and take it all with me,if we get lost i quite like it as sometimes when lost you find the nicest places
I never ever buy new travel books unless i find them in charity shop i always buy them just incase we ever go to wherever the book is about
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