Planning vacation activities does not need to be difficult! Here are some tips on how to make researching your next trip super easy.
We usually book and plan our vacations by ourselves (although we do have an awesome travel agent that we’ve used for complicated destinations like Vietnam, New Zealand and Botswana). My husband Renato is generally in charge of booking flights and hotels, and I am responsible for planning activities. Here’s how I do it:
- I always work on my desktop when researching vacations. This is because I am old and everything is easier for me when I have an actual keyboard, a mouse and a large screen (sad but true!)
- The first thing I do when I begin to research a new destination is consult my Facebook groups for advice. I like the Families Who Travel page and Traveling With Kids Worldwide. I start by inputting the name of the city or country into the “search this group” tab.
- If I can’t find any good posts, I ask the group a specific question. For example: “We’re going to Atlanta for Columbus Day weekend with our 9 year old twins…what should we do there?”
- Once I start getting feedback, I open a Microsoft Word window on my desktop. There, I begin to create a list of recommended activities. I also note restaurants, ice cream shops, unique stores, day trips, etc.
- As I collect data, I highlight or bold those suggestions that are mentioned more than once, or places that are of high interest to me or my family.
- My next stop is Pinterest. There, I create a new board and name it after the city / country that I am researching.
- I usually search Pinterest for “(city / country name) with kids”. Almost always, at least a full page of leads appears. I pin any relevant blogs and save them to my new board.
- When I have time to read through what I have saved, I keep a split screen with Pinterest on one side and my Word file on the other. This lets me cut and paste information onto my Word document. I like to save descriptions of places, opening hours and sometimes phone numbers.
- Many Pinterest pages provide links to websites to further research a topic of interest, which is really helpful. If not, I can always google a theater or museum and cut and paste information deemed helpful.
- Finally, I put various points of interest into Google Maps. This helps me to cluster activities that are all in a single geographic area, so I can easily plan our days.