Trip planning essentials.

Our short guide on planning trips:

• Monitor flight tickets few months in advance through skyscanner.com and Google Flights and buy them 3-6 months prior to the trip.

• Curate our itinerary by scanning through travel blogs, Lonely Planet and social media. Just starting searching: "best things to do in..."

• Book our accommodation typically through booking.com , especially for short stays of 1-2 days. Benefits of using booking.com include Genius level discounts, credit card programs (ABN AMRO) and the ability to select free cancellation for selected accommodations. When booking through one website, it allows you to see your full trip itinerary per day which also helps you to check whether you have booked a place to stay for your whole trip or if you've missed anything.

• Book AirBnB airbnb.com for longer stays, when we travel with a group of friends and want to have the flexibility to cook and do our own laundry. In case you need to do laundry, most places we've visited have laundromats/laundry services. They also offer free cancellation on selected accommodations.

• Rent a car either with rentalcars.com (their customer service for many years has been amazing) or through booking.com , which we used in the last 2 trips because of the credit card program discounts. To get the best rates, we usually check whether it is better to have the same pick up and drop off point, usually it is cheaper to pick it up at the airport than in the city centre (also easier to find).

• Plan daily activities using our itinerary excel file (template may be shared later if requested) to see how occupied we are going to be and what our days look like from sightseeing perspective.

• Save places you are going to visit in Google maps by starring them and saving maps from there for offline use ("ok maps" + enter).

• Save hike routes through AllTrails.com for offline use (only available through Pro profile, which we highly recommend to purchase). If interested, here is Oleg's referral link: https://www.alltrails.com/invite/7WA5UN

• Monitor your flights and flights status through App in the air .

• Get your insurance (and never ever travel without one!). We have tried a number of travel insurance companies, but settled on a very simple and straight forward solution - SafetyWing Insurance.

• Often underrated but a few more checklist items include: country entry requirements, travel insurance and if you're planning on renting a car carrying an international driving license.

This list will be continuously updated, but if you have any valuable tips for others, please feel free to share them in the comments below!