How to organize our trip without a travel agency?
- nadezhda3010
- Feb 14
- 11 min read
January is the time when I feel cold and for this reason I spend more time watching movies at home and I gradually start planning trips for spring and summer, as I don't like traveling in the cold. Is that the case for you too?
If for you, the cold months are the time when you plan at least one trip for the time when it gets warmer outside. This is the publication that will help you organize it more easily without using the expensive services of travel agencies, but to arrange your program according to your requirements.
I don't deny that travel agencies provide great convenience. Thanks to their services, you choose a program and dates, pay the required amount, and from there they walk you around the chosen destination like a suitcase and you don't even have to think about anything during the trip. But the truth is that this method also has its drawbacks. However, I know that everyone has different ideas about how to spend a trip. Some like to organize and find interesting places to visit themselves. For others, it is more comfortable to trust professionals and not have to worry about all the details of compiling a travel program, as well as rummaging through search engines with thousands of hotels.
This post is for those of you who are used to the comfort of organized excursions, but want to embark on self-organizing your next trip to save money and also to try something new and untried.
For me, the most significant difference between a trip organized by a tour operator and one you do yourself is the final price. My experience with travel has repeatedly proven that self-organization is much more budget-friendly than visiting the same destination in the same class of hotel with a travel agency.
And here we are talking about excursions, not about the cases when we are on vacation and looking for a comfortable hotel. This is a very important clarification! The fact is that many tour operators have contracts with various hotels in the country and abroad and for this reason they receive much better prices for the same. As an example, I can give the holidays on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts of Turkey. Our agencies guarantee the visits of many Bulgarian vacationers to Turkish All Inclusive hotels and due to the long-standing partnerships they have established, they receive much more favorable prices for their clients. I can share that last year I got a room for three people in an excellent hotel in Fethiye for 6 nights for the amount of 2,800 leva, while on booking the same room for the same period again for three people was being sold for over 4,000 leva.
But when we talk about excursions, the picture is completely different. The prices at which travel agencies charge for daily and half-day excursions to a given destination are often doubled, and sometimes even tripled. If a ticket to a museum is, for example, 20 euros and you can get there and back by public transport for another 5 euros, then many travel agencies offer organized transport to the specific attraction and together with the entrance ticket they charge us 50 euros. Yes, it's convenient not to have to look on the map how to get from point A to point B in a city unknown to us, but with our smartphone and access to the internet and Google Maps, we can figure out in seconds where to catch public transport and which stop to get off at to get to a specific attraction.
Let's get to the point and my advice to beginners in self-organization! I'll cover the main points that concern the organization of a trip:
How will we get to our chosen destination?
For Bulgarians, the most commonly used options for moving around Europe are car and plane. For Europeans, one of the most popular methods of reaching a given destination is the train, but many European countries have an extremely well-developed railway network and offer modern and comfortable trains. Something that is still a mirage in Bulgaria. Here, trains are probably used because they are very affordable, not because they are comfortable and offer quality service. But let's not deviate from our topic. Even neighboring Serbia launched a modern and high-speed train from Belgrade to Novi Sad a few years ago. Yes, the distance is short, but for the Balkans it is a big step.
Traveling by plane around Europe is the most convenient and fastest way to travel. If you don't have fixed dates and are flexible, you can find great deals on cheap flights, especially if you book months in advance. If you're not afraid of flying, the main inconvenience is if there are delays and cancellations, but the speed and the ability to find a low price are the main reasons why many people prefer traveling by plane over driving.
I have a special blog post on how to choose cheap airline tickets, you can read it if you are about to buy one. -->
Traveling by car is naturally only suitable for Europe, and not everyone likes to drive so much as to get to Paris, for example. Up to a maximum of 8-10-12 hours of constant driving are destinations such as Kusadasi, Turkey; Athens, Greece; Zagreb, Croatia, Ljubljana, Slovenia; Trieste, Italy; Budapest, Hungary; Vienna, Austria and many more, but these are the main ones that I can think of. To travel further, it is necessary to cover the distances with overnight stays, which further increases the cost of the trip, but if you have 2-3 weeks available, it is worth going further into Europe, you will be able to see quite a few places.
In reality, the fact that we are in Schengen as of this year makes it easier for us to travel to Romania and Greece via land borders. But unfortunately, the other countries that Bulgaria borders are not in the EU and Schengen and will not affect us in any way, and the queues, especially during the "Guest Workers" holiday season, await us again in a few months.
The main disadvantage of traveling by car around Europe is that it is much more expensive compared to traveling by plane due to expensive fuel and the presence of road taxes or vignettes for each country. I have made comparisons and in many cases even traveling with standard airlines, rather than low-cost ones, is much more profitable than traveling to the same destination by private car. But the feeling of being independent of schedules and moving at your own pace and desire is incomparably attractive to many avid travelers. However, we can never be sure at what point in our journey we may want to extend our stay.
When you have chosen your destination and are sure that the trip will be made by car, you should research the following:
What are the fuel prices in each country you will visit, or through which you will simply pass. The most convenient is through the site http://fuelo.net . It updates the current fuel prices by country every day. In this regard, if you know that you will only cross a country with cheaper fuel than your final destination, it is economically advantageous to fill up your car before leaving the specific country. My advice is not to leave this for the last gas station, because there are countries where at the first or last gas station before or after the border, the prices are inflated. I can give Serbia as an example. There are countries with huge differences in prices. For example, in the fall, while the prices of 95 gasoline in Bulgaria were around 2.80 leva, in Greece they were around 4 leva. Not to mention that in our southern neighbor on the islands, fuel is 50-60 stotinki more expensive, and yet they are the most beautiful and therefore the most visited places in Greece.
Are there any tolls or vignettes in the countries you will be passing through and how can you get them? The easiest way is to type "toll taxes in" into Google and write the name of the country in English. The first results are usually the official websites through which you can purchase a vignette for the specific country or explain how to pay the tolls. An option to buy online is almost always offered, which is certainly much more convenient, since you don't have to look for special places selling stickers and waste time in this regard. For example, I can give you an example of our unplanned visit to Graz in Austria during our stay in Ljubljana, Slovenia. One day, without thinking about it, we decided to take a walk to Graz, as we saw that it was very close. While we were traveling, we went online and found out that there is a vignette for using the roads in Austria. We quickly looked at the options and immediately purchased an online vignette that suited our trip. The vignette was active from the moment of its purchase. For example, in Turkey, stickers are loaded with an amount of your choice and the corresponding amount is charged at each barrier. I recommend that these stickers are also "topped up" online, as the other possible way is through the Post Office, but if you leave this for the counters immediately after the border, you may have to stand in a queue that will "eat" your travel time.
2. Will we wander aimlessly or will we make a tight schedule of hours to visit tourist sites/cultural events/eat, etc.? How do we choose what to do?
Every tourist has their own interpretation of how they see a trip going and how they imagine it, whether leisurely or with a very strict and "compressed" program that will allow them to visit and experience as many sights as possible.
Of course, when choosing places to visit, I also choose and recommend the most common methods for obtaining one:
Blog posts and guides that I find on Google - each publication and each story are convenient and easily accessible readings with which to inform yourself about the possibilities for walking in a specific place and by reading a little more about each, you will choose precisely those that will be interesting for you to visit.
Facebook travel advice pages - there are countless such pages, especially in English. But even in Bulgarian there are many destinations like Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt with separate Facebook pages, where everything related to visiting them is discussed. There are also some large pages, where questions are asked and more information is shared about destinations from all over the world. My favorites are "I love to travel!" and "How to travel more, more profitably and more happily". If you don't feel like digging around, just type your destination into the group's search engine and you will gather a lot of information and impressions from people who have already visited it.
Travel videos of vloggers - this will certainly seem childish to many people, but I find it interesting and extremely useful. Of course, there are extremely lazy young people who do nothing but hang out and go to bars, but there are also valuable people who, like me, embrace travel from the heart and with great desire film and tell about their experiences.
The offered excursions for the specific destination on the websites of travel agencies - there you can see how the visits to the sights are structured. The plus is that people who know the given places have developed a plan for visiting attractions according to their location on the map, which will make it much easier for you, unless you like to spend hours drawing routes on your own map.
If you are one of those who like a strict pre-planned program, you should keep in mind that many museums, palaces and the like offer the opportunity to purchase tickets in advance for a visit on a specific day and time, which is in many cases advisable, since famous tourist sites such as the Vatican in Rome, Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna or the Louvre in Paris are crowded with tourists and tickets sell out in advance and it is not even possible to buy a ticket on site for a visit within the same day. It is also a good idea to pay attention to the holidays of each landmark and how they coincide with our time at the specific destination, as some museums often work on Saturdays and Sundays, because that is when there are the most tourists, but for example Mondays and Tuesdays are non-working days for them. There are many tourists who also insist on eating at the most famous restaurants, and for many of them a prior reservation is also required, made even a month in advance.
3.How to choose a place to stay?
Before you proceed to choose a place or places to stay, you will have already answered whether:
You want to rest, enjoy the place without rushing and prefer leisurely aimless walks and more time in cafes and cozy restaurants without visiting every single landmark at all costs.
If you have made a strict or at least indicative program that includes visiting other cities by public transport.
In the first case, it is a good idea to look for accommodation in the central area of the city, so that you do not have to use public transport frequently and waste time. But if you are interested in a low price, simply look for a place with quick and easy access to public transport stops, preferably the metro, so that you can easily find your way around and quickly get to the central area, where the sights in each city are usually located.
In the second case, the same applies as in the first, but if you still plan to use, for example, trains to get to nearby settlements, it is advisable to choose accommodation in the area of the city's Central Station. In most cases, central stations are located in the central areas of cities and are convenient, both for walks to popular places in the city, and as a starting point from where to take a train or bus and travel to nearby settlements. Before I went to Rome, I had read so much information about how disgusting, disgusting, dirty and depressing it was around the central station and how you shouldn't stay in a hotel in that area. I didn't see anything different in person from the other areas of Rome... so if you're going to read reviews, it's best to trust them blindly, because everyone has different requirements and experiences a given place in their own way.
! It is also important to keep in mind that when planning a trip by private car, it is necessary to look for either accommodation that offers parking spaces, or to find in advance a suitable public parking lot where you think it is safe to leave your car when not in use. In many large European cities, parking in central areas is paid and has a limited time, and this fact should certainly be taken into account for the specific destination. In addition, more and more European cities are introducing a ban on entry for cars with a lower environmental category as a measure to tackle the problem of dirty air. These issues are worth researching in advance so that you are not unpleasantly surprised when you arrive at a wonderful hotel on the most central street of your dream destination, but it turns out that there is nowhere to park your car safely and securely.
Regarding the choice of a hotel or a private apartment, everyone can do it according to their own preferences. For example, I prefer hotels because there is always someone at the reception to whom I can turn if I have a problem or question, there is daily cleaning, I can have breakfast before going out without wondering if there is anywhere nearby to buy food. But I see that accommodation in private apartments is preferred by many people.
Personally, when choosing a place to stay, I always use booking. On the platform, you mark your criteria and look at accommodation options that meet them. I usually choose places to stay with a rating of over 8/10, I look for a good price, as well as a good location. I am not one of those people who insist on the hotel having a spa, being 5 star, etc. But everyone according to their preferences and possibilities.
Let me know if you found this post helpful and if you would like to read more travel tips, or would you be more interested in me writing stories only about my travels? Your feedback will be helpful in making the blog more interesting!
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