Tips for Putting a Last-Minute International Itinerary Together

Stepping Off a Plane In Another Country Is Exciting, But What Comes Next?

Recently, I traveled to Dublin, Amsterdam, and several cities in Belgium. It was the most last-minute international trip I’ve ever taken, and I put it all together in less than two weeks. Maybe three weeks at most. Not only did I book flights in and out of two different countries, but I booked several activities, bought several train tickets, and booked all the hotels in advance, too. Let me share how I did it.

Often, the most costly and important part of booking your international itinerary is making sure you get the right plane tickets, and things like prices, flight times, and airport locations can make things pretty complicated. Flying in and out of the same airport in your destination country is usually the easiest way to start and end your itinerary, but it’s not always the most efficient or budget-friendly.

When I put together an international itinerary, I seem to juggle all of the different elements simultaneously, and certain plans may change slightly as I start to cement everything into place. My trips often start with nothing more than a country or region and then expand with details on the number of days I want to travel, the mode of transportation, and the activities I’ll book while traveling.

If you want to keep things simple, by all means, booking a single flight in and out of the same airport is often easily done, and it’s occasionally cheaper, too, depending on how extensively you’re traveling within your destination country. But you have so many opportunities to make your itinerary just a little bit more exciting by challenging yourself with your timeline, even if you only have two weeks to prepare.

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First Things First: The Timeline and Plane Tickets

The most important facet of planning a trip for me is knowing how many days I have to travel. Once I have those parameters, I can fit all the other details neatly into place within my departure date and return date. If I’m at all unsure about those dates, it makes it really tough to finalize itinerary plans, especially when you don’t know exactly when you’ll return.

Obviously, it’s always the most fun to extend your vacation as long as you can, but my timelines are often guided by external forces, which means I choose my dates based on things like work and other people’s schedules. In the case of this last-minute Europe trip, I based my schedule on the dates of some friends, so I knew the dates just about at the start of when I started planning.

After some discussion, we decided that our destinations would include Dublin, Ireland for the first stop, Amsterdam, Netherlands for the second stop, and a few towns throughout Belgium for the third stop (or phase, really). My traveling partner was the one to choose the Netherlands and Belgium, but I eagerly agreed to visit these countries, having not really explored them before.

So, now that I had the number of days and the locations, I started looking at plane tickets and the logistics of getting around. At first, I considered flying in and out of Dublin, but I realized that we’d spend a fair amount of time getting back to Dublin to fly back after visiting the mainland, so I started researching tickets with a different return city. I ended up finding that the ticket price was the same for a flight from LAX to Dublin paired with a return ticket that went from Brussels back to LAX.

Filling In the Schedule With Hotels and Travel

With the major plane tickets settled upon (bear in mind that I didn’t purchase the tickets to Europe until I had most of the rest of the itinerary planned out), I started juggling the days around so that they’d make sense for the amount of time we had. We spent a few days in each location and ended up flying a small plane from Dublin to Amsterdam and taking the trains the rest of the time.

In all, we also stayed in three different hotels. So in addition to the main flights in and out of Europe that I booked, I also booked one-way flights for us to fly from Dublin to Amsterdam, as well as individual train tickets (I bought them ahead rather than at the stations) to go from Amsterdam to Brussels and then to a few different towns in Belgium.

Yes, I did investigate the Eurail pass, but it would have cost me more than double for a single pass than I paid for every single one of our train tickets. I bought a total of 10 train tickets for about $240 (that’s five tickets for each of us), but buying a Eurail pass for the same number of days would have been $337 for just a single pass or $674 for the both of us. (yes, always look at the individual ticket prices versus the Eurail pass!)

I settled on the hotels fairly quickly after figuring out when we’d be staying in each city, which I was able to do by reading the reviews on the website where I book my hotels. I always read the hotel reviews, and I usually read the reviews on different websites, too. Other travelers are often the best source of juicy info about any location, especially when it comes to getting a good night’s sleep.

Arranging Tours, Activities, Food, and Alternatives

While I did take a look at some tours before I booked all of the train tickets and hotels, the tours were the last things I finalized when booking all of my activities. I like to go over the activities I’ve planned with my traveling partner, just to make sure he’s interested in all the things I’ve found. Sometimes he has ideas about other activities or makes suggestions.

Since I plan my itineraries down to almost every minute (or every hour), I generally have time blocked out for food. If there isn’t enough time for food, I always mention bringing a snack or a protein bar or something when we’re going somewhere. For times when I know we’ll have enough time to go out and eat, I always have a list of three local restaurants within walking distance so we can just choose the one that suits the day.

Yes, I realize that not all vacations take place in big towns and that you won’t always have access to restaurants, but I do plan for those instances, too. If I’m in a remote area – such as when I went on a road trip in Iceland – I still planned out our food stops, whether it was at a restaurant at the hotel where we were staying or some snacks we brought along for the ride.

Another thing I do is I always have some alternatives for certain types of travel. Usually buses and public transport. You never know when the bus is going to be 20 minutes late and make you miss your train. This actually happened to us in Brugge (Bruges) when we needed to take the bus to reach the train, which would take us to Brussels for our flight.

The bus was a whopping 20 minutes behind schedule, which would have made it a little rough catching the train we needed to reach the airport on time. I mean, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world to get a later train, but it would have involved an extra stopover and a switch, which would have been a hassle. As a backup, I researched alternatives to the bus system and knew that Uber was available, so we just decided to ride-share our way to the train station rather than risk missing the train.

The General Order of Events for International Itinerary Planning

When you plan an international itinerary, it can become quite complicated, especially when you’re visiting multiple towns, booking different activities, and trying to schedule everything down to the last taxi ride, restaurant location, and train stop, but if you approach things the way I do, you’ll find that everything sort of falls into place naturally.

Even if you have a few ideas about how you want to spend your time in a particular city or town in your destination country, you can just keep those thoughts at the back of your mind – or even write them down on your phone – so you can come back to them when the time comes to insert them into your itinerary.

So, for your edification, here’s the general order of research when I plan an itinerary, especially when it’s an international itinerary:

• Destination(s) – Choose your main destination or region
• Timeframe – Decide on the number of days you’ll travel
• Major Flights – Look at flights to and from your destination
• Locations at Destination – Map out where you’ll visit during your vacation
• Smaller Flights, Trains, & Taxis – Confirm time-tables and prices for intra/inter-country travel
• Hotels – Find hotels in each of the towns you plan to visit
• Activities – Decide whether to book tours or explore on your own
• Food – Use Google Maps to find well-reviewed restaurants
• Alternatives – List some alternatives for things like restaurants and activities

Keep in mind that sometimes I’ll book the main parts of the itinerary before I’ve got absolutely everything planned. Like, if I’m nervous about catching a sale on plane tickets, I’ll just go ahead and book them, as long as I’m set on the dates. I may even book some activities ahead of time, especially when they offer the option pay later, so I can secure a spot.

Think about having some back up plans, too, beyond alternative restaurants and the like. Back-up travel options can save you a lot of time and worry when your bus is late and you have to take a taxi. Make sure you always have some knowledge of things like food, transportation, and weather about the places you plan to visit. The knowledge will serve you well, especially when you’ve put together everything at the last minute.

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