Travel & Hotspots
THE HANDIEST TRAVEL WEBSITES YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT
Let's be honest, who hasn't slowly but surely started dreaming about the summer vacation? The time is now, girlfriends. And to make you extra happy, I'm sharing my favorite travel websites that are all oh so handy and that you probably don't know yet. Here we go.
Promise me you won't tell anyone about this, because this is the best site in the world, but we have to keep it a bit secret. There are insanely cheap tickets available, and if you're flexible with your dates and don't mind sometimes having to transfer twice, this site is your best friend for life. For example, I bought a round-trip ticket to Panama for €293,-. Ha!
This site indexes the price of travel in almost every country and city on earth. Very handy if you find a cheap ticket but aren't sure if the destination is also a bit budget-friendly. The site assumes you're a budget traveler who has no issues with hostels, but even if you prefer to sleep in hotels, there's a ton of useful price-related info here.
Generally, Google Flights is the best search engine to book a ticket, but Cleverlayover does something very handy that makes it worth a visit. Suppose you want to fly to San Francisco. The big search engines almost always spit out the major airlines, and they try to get you to San Fran as quickly as possible. That's nice, but if you have a bit more time and less money, a smart layover is often a very good idea. You might find out that it's cheaper to first fly to Reykjavik and then book a second ticket to San Fran from there. If you have time, you can also stay a few days in Iceland. The idea is that in some cases, it's cheaper to book two separate tickets than one. Sometimes it's not suitable, but just playing around and looking takes hardly any time and can yield a lot of peaks.
Sometimes you're stuck at an airport for hours against your will due to a delay or canceled flight. Or you already know in advance that you have a long layover. Then this site is handy; here you can get information about where to sleep at almost all airports in the world, what it costs, what the airport itself is like, what shops and restaurants are available, basically everything.
When you're going to a new place, it can be nice to base your route on those of previous travelers. That way, you won't make the same mistakes they did. Enter TripHobo, where thousands of travel itineraries from travelers in almost every place in the world are available. For example, you enter that you're going to Sri Lanka for 15 days, and then dozens if not hundreds of travel plans from those who went before you roll out. And what you can also do is create your own trip. This way, you know in advance exactly how long you need for each place. Seriously, spend some time playing with the options and possibilities; it's incredibly addictive.
