Ultimate European Travel Planning Resource List
Travel planning can be overwhelming, to say the least. It takes a great deal of mental juggling to pin down details for lodging, entertainment, transportation, and beyond, ESPECIALLY when you’ve never been to the place you’re about to visit.
In the time that I’ve lived in Europe so far, I compiled a list of the resources that have helped me plan my trips across the continent. The rest of these resources and apps have been suggested and recommended to me from fellow travelers in an online community here in Germany, and without them, this article wouldn’t be half as valuable to other travelers looking to make travel planning less stressful. Thank you to all the people who offered their favorite tools and resources to make this article possible!
Some of these resources overlap in their capabilities but have been included because everyone has different preferences, so I invite you to try whichever option resonates best with you and the way that you plan!
Overall Trip Planning
Keeping the minutiae of your trip straight is half the battle in planning a trip. I am a big-time list maker, but I’ve come around to using apps and websites to help me sort out the details of a trip and stay organized. Below I’ve mentioned some tools to help you select a destination, plan according to weather, create an itinerary, plan a budget, and share the plan with your friends and family.
Stippl is an all-in-one travel planning app. You can plan your itinerary, plan your budget, create your packing list, view your travel map, share plans, collaborate with the travelers in your group, and add to your travel profile to share with the Stippl travel community. I’m currently using this app to plan a trip, and as a visual person, I loved having this app open during planning calls with my travel buddy.
Like Stippl, this app is a catchall for everything travel planning, and which one you choose is purely up to your preference. TripIt captures all of your trip confirmation emails, sets up a comprehensive itinerary, syncs plans with your calendar, shows neighborhood safety scores, uploads three documents per trip (in the free version), allows you to share plans with your fellow travel buddies, and more.
Where and When is a great resource to plan your trip according to budget or temperature. This site uses a high-performance algorithm to analyze destination norms, climates, cost of living, and flight prices to objectively determine your best trip according to your desired parameters without the bias of commercial interest.
Use AI for itinerary ideas. Be sure to include any parameters for those traveling with you, such as a need for family oriented activities or wheelchair accessible activities! Example prompt: “Create a three-day itinerary for my family trip in Florence, Italy and include child-friendly activities on two of the days.” The more specific you can be in your prompting, the less groundwork you’ll have to do planning!
Google Maps Trip Planning Folder
This feature of Google Maps is new to me, and this useful little feature is AMAZING. You can create a list of locations within a folder for your upcoming vacation and share it with all the travelers in your group! Having all your addresses saved is especially advantageous for efficiency’s sake. It will make getting around faster and easier when you have your proverbial ducks in a row.
The setup process is fairly simple:
Type in your desired location > select the “Save” button located menu options > add to “Travel Plans” folder > repeat these steps until you have all your locations saved > click “Save” button on your main menu to find your Travel Plans list > hit send to invite collaborators.
Flights & Transportation
Finding inexpensive flights is always the first step in trip budgeting for me, so the first item on this flights and transportations section is very important! It also came highly recommended by fellow travelers and remains a staple in my initial stages of planning a trip. The advantage to traveling in Europe is that you usually can get away without renting a car, so having a way to plan for your destination's public transportation system is key. Below the recommended websites is a list of public transportation apps that I’ve used for various cities so far in my travels. I recommend downloading the app relevant to your destination and setting up your account so you’re not stuck in a bind looking for wifi to do so during your travels.
You can use Skyscanner to find cheap flights, hotels, or cars for hire, but admittedly, I’ve only ever used it to search for flights at great prices. This is one of the first resources that was recommended to me ENDLESSLY upon my arrival here in Germany. It is a staple of budget-traveling and definitely a tool to keep in your arsenal of travel planning hacks.
This site was a new recommendation to me for transportation planning, and it is a great route (pardon the transportation pun) to take when figuring out whether to use a plane, train, or automobile to get from point A to B during your trip. Their site can plan routes from any city, landmark, attraction, or address with “multi-modal” routes, so less apps and less worry. Woo hoo!
Kayak is another great site to use when looking for cheap flights, hotel deals, rental cars, and travel tips. HOWEVER, this site was recommended to me for one feature in particular: the Kayak worldwide flight tracker. This feature keeps you up to date on the latest updates or changes on arrival or departure times, cancellations, and gate information. This is a great tool when you’ve booked with smaller airlines that don’t offer text or email updates.
Getting Around with Public Transportation
Germany
Nice, France
Split, Croatia
Austria
Excursions & Tours
In my conversations with other travelers, I found that it is really convenient to book through some of the third-party sites mentioned below, BUT as often as possible (depending on your capacity and time-crunch in your planning process) try to book directly through the provider offering the service for a chance to save money! This is not a necessity, just something to consider as I’ve had great luck at finding fairly priced excursions and tours on sites like Get Your Guide.
Get Your Guide is the first site I search for guided activities or hard-to-book attractions. Many of their tickets include an option to “skip the line,” which is well worth it in my mind because time is limited when you’re on vacation. You can find activities in the categories of culture, food, nature, or sports by searching your location in the search bar. Easy peasy! I’ve had great experiences using Get Your Guide for excursions like a walking pub tour in Prague, a five island speedboat tour in Split, and a snorkeling tour in Capri.
Viator is a Tripadvisor company, so they have a great catalog of guided activities including day trips, historical walking tours, bus tours, wine tastings, helicopter tours, and more. With more than 300,000 options on their site, you’re sure to find something fun to do during your next trip.
Big Bus Tours are a fun, low pressure way to see a city. In my experience, I bought my ticket and chose the stop on the tour route nearest my hotel, and hopped on to listen to the guided tour broadcasted through the headphones (given to you upon entry to the bus). If there is a spot you’d like to hop off the bus, you are welcome to explore at your leisure and hop on the bus again at any of the stops listed on your map in the app. In Europe, the Big Bus Tours are offered in Vienna, Prague, Madrid, London, Paris, Budapest, Rome, Dublin, Berlin, and Munich.
With Locals is another great site to find activities and experiences based on your interests. With options like walking tours, food tours, bike tours, night tours, day trips, and family friendly excursions, this company strives to support authentic travel experiences and sustainable livelihoods by hiring local hosts, micro-entrepreneurs, and local small businesses.
This site offers a grand variety of unique, small-group experiences offered by a global community of locals experts. From trips to foods to attractions to courses, you will find options here beyond those normally suggested.
Accommodations
I like to check more than one avenue when making my travel plans to find the best price and available options. As mentioned above in the section about excursions, you may be able to find the most competitive or lowest price from the hotel offering the accommodations, but as with most things in life there are exceptions to this “rule.” Many third-party sites have incredible deals and are worth checking when you are planning your next trip.
Use this site for flights, hotels, attractions, cruises, rental cars, and airport taxis. Although, when I think of booking.com, I associate the site with my search for hotels. This is just my personal experience so far, I’d love to hear if you’ve used booking.com for other services. This site offers a travel planner feature with which you can select a theme for your upcoming trip to get travel ideas tailored to your trip goals.
Personally, I’m just a google girl. It’s familiar and you can enter in all your filters and parameters. I usually check this avenue first when looking for hotels to see if I can book directly with a hotel for a better price than the third-party sites!
I use Tripadvisor so often. From reviews to recommendations on hotels, restaurants, excursions, and more – Tripadvisor is so useful. Honestly, I even use Tripadvisor when looking for restaurants in the town where I live. I planned the cutest birthday dinner at a spot that wasn’t even mentioned on Google Maps because of a review I found on Tripadvisor!
Use this site to find and book both restaurants and hotels selected for the Michelin Guide. Fancy shmancy, eh? This is a perfect resource for a romantic getaway, food-centric vacation, or anniversary trip! I recommend getting some trip inspo from their Magazine tab (be sure to search your trip location when searching the Michelin Magazine articles).
I’m certain everyone is familiar with Airbnb, but just in case you’ve never tried it out, it’s definitely a good option to consider. With Airbnb you can rent houses and apartments from hosts to get a really cozy or luxurious experience. Some things to consider beforehand are the host cleaning policies and meet up instructions. Some hosts expect you to strip beds or take out the garbage. I’ve also had a miscommunication with a host in which the instructions to hand off the apartment key were unclear and there was a bit of frustration on his end. You can search “Super Hosts” when booking Airbnbs, and these hosts have usually worked out the kinks in the booking process. I recommend adding that to your search criteria if you choose to use Airbnb for your trip accommodations.
Miscellaneous Helpful Apps
Beyond transportation and accommodation, there’s so many small things that make travel easier. This miscellaneous list is my compilation of apps that I’ve used and had recommended to me to make trips (and living abroad) run more smoothly, including two toilet finder apps because locating a restroom here in Europe is sometimes more of a struggle than it should be!
Perfect for when you need to know what you’re spending on a random souvenir or market find and how many dollars to Venmo your friend for that bill that came in Euros. I’ve used this app in every country I’ve visited so far because I am a word-person, not a mathematician.
or
For my fellow walnut-sized bladder people (woo!).
I use this DAILY. The microphone function is not only helpful when trying to communicate with someone verbally but also incredibly helpful to pull up to translate loud-speaker announcements on public transportation. I also use the camera feature to translate labels at the grocery store and to translate menus at restaurants.
This cool app keeps track of both the places you’ve traveled to AND the percent of the world you have visited.
This article is intended to be updated often as I discover new tools and resources to offer the Aja Moon Writes audience. If you have any ideas or recommendations you think should be added to the list, please email me at contact@ajamoonwrites.com with “Travel Resources” in the subject line. Alternatively, you can use the contact form to submit your ideas as well.
Looking forward to growing this list with all of you.
Until next time,
Aja