Pre-Trip

5 Things You Should Know About Travel Insurance

Drowning in rate comparisons and travel insurance jargon? Amanda Kendle reveals the five things every traveler should know before signing on their policy’s dotted line.

8 Most Complicated Countries to Visit

Iran &copy ali reza_parsi The last thing a independent traveler wants holding up their adventures is a difficult visa process. Budget Travel has compiled a list of countries that—for Americans especially—can be complicated to secure a visa. The well known big players, China, Russia and Brazil are covered on the list. But surprisingly Kazakhstan and [...]

How to Plan a Trip Without Making Any Plans

Being spontaneous and free with where you go, what you see, and when, is great, but you need some broad brush strokes of ideas to actually get you there.

Pixar’s “Up” House Replica Draws Visitors to Utah

Up House © Cea. The city of Herriman, a suburban of Salt Lake City, has seen a surge in tourists since its replica of the house in the Pixar movie “Up” opened to the public. The multi-colored house is belongs to Beangerter Homes, and since it opened this summer, an estimated 27,000 visitors have come [...]

How to Stress Less Before and During Your Travels

If there’s a time to let go of your daily stresses, it’s certainly while traveling. Amanda Kendle reveals some important tips to help travelers do just that.

10 Retro Travel Experiences

Retro VW Camper © Tetsumo Flux capacitor not quite perfected? Take a trip back in time with these travel itineraries inspired by the past. From hobnobbing on transatlantic cruises to the hippie trail to Kathmandu, the past century is packed with iconic trips for every type of traveler. DeLorean optional. Get the full list at [...]

How to Plan a Round-the-World Travel Route That Makes Sense

Amanda Kendle discusses the five most important factors when planning a round-the-world travel route.

Another Trip?!? How to Explain the Travel Bug to Those Who Just Don’t Have It

Amanda Kendle explores a few ways to help your friends and family better understand why you’re planning yet another trip.

First Hand Travel Planning: Researching and Booking My New South Wales Trip

Amanda Kendle reveals her process for researching and booking her latest year end trip.

Practical Trip Planning (Part 4): Pre-Trip Travel Tips

Chris Cook reveals a few miscellaneous pre-trip travel tips to help everything run more smoothly, save you money and share your adventures with everyone back home.

4 Guidebook Alternatives for Frugal Travelers

Nora Dunn pinpoints four alternatives to help you ditch your traditional travel guidebooks and plan your entire trip online.

How Busy Should Your Trip Be?

Nora Dunn discusses the importance of striking a balance between setting an itinerary to best take advantage of your time, while still leaving yourself open to the “hum of possibility”.

6 Sensible (and Not-So-Sensible) Round-the-World Travel Itineraries

Amanda Kendle reviews six practical round-the-world itineraries to get your travel planning juices flowing.

Practical Trip Planning (Part 2): Creating Your Itinerary

Chris Cook continues his series on practical travel planning with a little advice on how to create your itinerary.

Practical Trip Planning (Part 1): How to Maximize Your Travel Budget

Chris Cook walks through his entire travel booking process to uncover a few tricks to best maximize your travel budget.

Confessions of a Seasoned Backpacker: Overcoming Your Pre-Trip Fears

In the past few years, my tendency to be afraid of my next trip has diminished to virtually zero. Here are my tips to help you feel the same.

Is Your “Stuff” Keeping You From Your Travel Dreams?

Tim Leffel regales us with a fantastic little blurb on how anyone can travel if they’re willing to stop accumulating unnecessary “stuff”: I just spent most of the day helping my sister move into her new house … A dozen of us took four hours to move it all. Does one person really need all [...]

A Bittersweet Song Punctuates A Perfect Weekend

K had the last six full days off; me – the last five. I’ve been working full steam ahead since I can remember and K’s been juggling two jobs and night school since October of last year. This weekend was the best time we’ve spent together in recent memory. I proudly shirked my blogging duties [...]

Why The Idea of “Growing Up” is Nonsense

I read BNT’s recent post The Hardest Part Of A Journey Is Coming Home by Brendan Moran and found myself quietly, emphatically nodding along. Especially to bits like this: Maybe I’m naive, but I was hoping for a “eureka!” moment on the trip where all of the sudden my life would make sense. I would [...]

The Big Goodbye Will Be Anything But “Good”

I’m a bit of a curmudgeon, I suppose. I’ve never liked surprise parties and big hoorahs put on in my honor. Truth is I can’t stand being the center of attention. To boot, I’ve always found it hard to thank friends and family in just the right way when they do throw me a big [...]

My Top 5 ‘Round the World “Must-Dos”

Over at RamblingTraveler.com, Stacy asks What Are Your Top 5 Travel Dreams?. Here are a few of mine, in no particular order: Visit Antarctica. Before I started really digging into the costs involved in a RTW trip, I thought traveling to Antarctica was only for the rich. I had this preconceived notion that a trip [...]

Don’t Hate Me Because I’m American

I’m not going to lie – traveling solo around the world scares the hell out of me. And when the U.S. State Department releases warnings every other day about how Armageddon is upon us in every corner of the globe, why shouldn’t it? So many questions, so many unknowns. Not the least of which is [...]

Consumed by Consumerism

As my RTW departure draws nigh I’ve put everything I do, buy, eat, and consume under a microscope. At first, it was a money-saving exercise. But it’s taught me one very valuable lesson: I don’t need to do, buy, eat, or consume even a quarter of the “stuff” that I used to. I don’t need [...]

Tim Cahill on Travel Dreams

Via WhyGo.com: A lot of us first aspired to far-ranging travel and exotic adventure early in our teens; these ambitions are, in fact, adolescent in nature, which I find an inspiring idea. … Thus, when we allow ourselves to imagine as we once did, we know, with a sudden jarring clarity, that if we don’t [...]

Why Travel Around the World?

For me, traveling around the world is the ultimate act of wanderlust.

Not Every Country Speaks English?

From the I never even thought about that department, Vagablogging points us to a free virtual keyboard that takes the guesswork out of having to type on foreign language keyboards. It’s a simple and painless concept: You visit the Gate2Home.com website Type your new e-mail, blog post, etc. with your mouse using the onscreen keyboard [...]

Reason #9,349 To Travel RTW: Moonlight in Rome

Over on the GoBackpacking.com blog, Dave is reminiscing about the moonlight in Rome: I’m reminded of my first night in Rome every time I take notice of the moon. Full moons, half moons, crescent moons – they all take me back to that moment in time when I felt as though I was the luckiest [...]

How to Convince Your Boss to Let You Work from Home

Over on the Productivity501 blog, Mark discusses how to convince your boss to let you work from home. It’s a worthwhile topic for anyone considering not just telecommuting and working in their underwear, but traveling the world as well. For the ADHD readers in the audience, I’ll condense it down: convince your boss why it’s [...]

Preparing For My RTW Trip by Forgetting About It

It’s proving to be a long, hard road toward preparing myself for my upcoming RTW journey. I’m trying to balance the daily mental weight of constantly dreaming of far-away places; saving like a … well … like someone who saves a lot; and living an average, work-a-day existence with all the trappings and responsibilities of [...]

Anti-social Hosteling

Over on the KillingBatteries.com blog, travel writer Leif Pettersen discusses the nuances and finer points of traveling in hostels: As always, hostel sleeping was a serious problem. I’m a light sleeper in the first place and when you have drunks staggering in until 2am and the early travelers getting up at 6am (and re-packing everything [...]

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