Hello everyone, it’s Hannah and I am back with another blog to talk to you guys about travel planning! Out of all the students in my program this semester, I have traveled to the most countries. Whoo! By the end of the semester, I will have been to 10 countries!
Each of these trips took varying amounts of planning. For my two weeks of travel in the UK and Ireland, I spent hours and hours looking for things to do and figuring out what the best priced and timed travel options were. Although it was a lot of work, I only had one hiccup throughout the whole two weeks. Therefore, my first tip is to put energy and time into the planning stage!
As for my trips during the semester, I had many different experiences. When you first get here, everyone is getting to know each other and finding friends, so it is easy to get swept into booking trips that are far into the semester with people you barely know. My second tip – wait a few weeks before making any decisions. I am very happy that I went this route. Instead of being in the huge 16-people group all trying to travel together, I kept it small, never having more than three people traveling with me. I would strongly suggest this because it is very hard to please everyone when there are so many ideas and different things people want to do. Many people in the program took solo trips including myself, even though it was only for a short two days.
I booked most of my trips at least two weeks in advance. However, there were two that were more spur-of-the-moment. One was with my family and we hadn’t figured out the logistics, which led me to book my flight back to Venice the night before I had to take it. (I do not recommend this.) Another time was when I decided on an impromptu trip to Zurich by myself. In my opinion, and as my third tip, I think a good general rule to follow is to book flights at least 2 weeks in advance before the prices start to go up. As for other trips that are just in Italy or a nearby country, you can wait until about 1 week before. Train tickets do not vary in price like flights do, so you can wait a little bit longer to book those.
My last tip for you is to plan travel week early in the semester. This gives you a long period of time to talk with other students about their plans and think about what you want to do.
Happy travelings!
Hannah