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Road trips
Road trips are without doubt my favourite kind of trip, sure, cities are fun to explore but there is nothing better than hitting the open road and seeing where you end up.
When I decide to do a roadtrip I like to do what I call a chameleon plan which is basically a route with ideas and places to visit along the way but I call it a chameleon plan because it can change at any point and become a completely different plan.
Below is the process I follow when booking and planning a road trip.
Choosing where to go
When looking for my next trip I don't at this stage know if it is going to be a road trip or a single location/public transport trip, the first thing I do is head to Skyscanner to find some flights.
When planning a trip you would just assume that I choose a place that I would like to visit however what I actually do is check Skyscanner for flights first. The reason I do this is because I want to find the cheapest flights possible and this usually leads me to places that I wouldn't usually consider or think about going.
After a recent search to find some flights I stumbled across a place called Sibiu that I had never heard of, the flight was only £20 and after looking into where Sibiu was. I discovered it was in a region of Romania called Transylvania and I had only heard of Translyvania because of Dracula.
I had never craved to go to Romania and it wasn't even on my hitlist of places to visit in the future but after seeing the flight price I did some digging and realised there was some truly beautiful places to look at and so I booked the flights!
Take a look at the flight page to see how best to use Skyscanner to find those cheap flights.
So for this example on road trips I am going to talk you through the planning for my trip to Translyvania.
Finding a flight
The first thing of planning a new trip is finding a flight, so I head to Skyscanner and search some flights, check out the flights page for more info on how to do this.
Car hire
When I have done my research and decided that a roadtrip is the way forward I will then look into booking a hire car, for the last few trips I have used a company called Carjet the prices are always very competetive and the website is quick and easy to use and they seem to have good coverage all over the world.
Once I have made sure I can hire a car I then start my chameleon route plan... google maps is your new best friend!
Google maps, your new best friend
I get asked all the time how I plan my road trips and is there a website I use to find out what to see and do and the honest answer is... google maps!
I can't stress how useful google maps is when organising a road trip, I will literally bounce from google maps to google constantly.
The first thing I put into maps is my destination airport, I will then zoom out and look for places nearby that look interesting, I will then google things such as 'beautiful places near sibiu' or 'places to visit in Tranylvania' and then I will start to piece together a plan.
Once I have a skeleton plan then I am good to go!
I don't really like back tracking, my idea of a perfect road trip is one that goes in a big circle so that I can see as much as possible without having to go on ground I have already covered.
With my trip to Romania, I knew a couple of the places I wanted to go to so I just needed to build around that.
I use google maps because I like to zoom around the map and find places of interest, I then google somethign that stands out and if I like the sound of it then I add it into my itinerary.
My itinerary is always super flexible however, I don't book hotels in advance just in case something takes my fancy and I want to go and explore further.
The thing to remember when planning a road trip is that the unplannd days are usually the best days so don't overplan, have a skeleton but don't be afraid to unfollow it.