As I demonstrated in part one of this topic (Planning Your Overwhelming Trip Overseas), when it comes to trip planning, Effie Trinket has nothing on me. I charted a course for my best friend and myself through Paris, Rome, Florence, and Venice, scheduling in every sight we wanted to see and restaurant we wanted to eat at. In two weeks. On a student budget.

Since my first installment was an overview on how to approach planning a trip abroad, I wanted to follow up with a deep dive on how I budgeted the trip. It can be tricky knowing where to splurge and where to pinch! Again, this article comes from my personal knowledge traveling France and Italy, but these tips can definitely be of use when planning any trip.

When you start budgeting your whirlwind trip overseas, break down your choices and approach them step-by-step as you estimate and add up prices. Naturally, every traveler will have personal preferences on where they want to save money and where they want to go a bit crazy. My friend might have rolled her eyes at me when I laid down 40 euros to make a necklace of hand-blown Murano glass beads in Venice, but I maintain that maybe she didn’t need a ¼ liter of wine at every meal, either! It was no big deal, though, as neither of us expected the other to pay for something huge unless we both wanted to. Make sure to plan what you want to spend the most on, and consult with your travel partner(s) so no one is taken by surprise.

1. Airfare – This will likely be the biggest price tag, with round trip plane tickets overseas easily going into the thousands of dollars. You can save a lot here by planning ahead! Studies have suggested that the optimal time to buy plane tickets is either weeks in advance and that tickets are pricier in the morning (when business people are typically booking on the company dime) than in the afternoon (when future vacationers come home from work and plan their own trips). Websites like Kayak, Expedia, and TripAdvisor can also help you find cheap airfare by allowing you to plug in numbers and play around with different airports in nearby cities and compare prices from many different airlines. These sites even let you set up notifications for certain flights, so the site emails you if one of your saved flights lowers in price.

2. Accommodations – Depending on your comfort and safety preferences, the cost of your accommodations can vary greatly. If, like many young backpackers, you are planning on hitting up the local hostels, you still have a wide range of options. Websites like HostelWorld and HostleBookers can be hugely helpful in finding accommodations that fit your preferences and budget. These sites have listings for tons of places and come with reviews, photos, lists of amenities, rates, availability, and maps to show where you’ll be in the city and where public transit is located—everything you need to plan your trip.

When I was sorting through this wealth of information and options, I considered price and location first and foremost. Often, the cheapest accommodations are distant from the main attractions and events the city has to offer. Do some research into the city’s public transit: is there an easy way for you to get where you want to go, and does the transit run as early/late as you’ll need? Also, keep in mind that staying out all day without a stop at “home base” can be draining. My friend and I went abroad during July and were often hot and exhausted after lunch. Finding a park to nap in became a frequent routine that was critical to our enjoyment of the rest of the day. If that doesn’t jive with you, make sure you’ll be able to head back to the hostel fairly easily when and if you need to.

Aside from price and location, it is also important to consider the atmosphere of your accommodation. In Italy, we stayed in a vastly different hostel in each city. A Venice Fish was a communal, hippy-ish house full of excitable, partying Australians. After Venice, we stayed in PLUS Florence, one of a chain of hostels under the PLUS name. Though we were worried that it would feel distant and corporate, it turned out to be an awesome experience and it was very geared towards ease of the traveler, with everything from a money exchange at the front desk to preplanned daytrip offers for the guests. In Rome, we stayed in these cabins outside the city. About half of them seemed to be populated with other travelers, while Roman citizens rented the other half to temporarily escape the hustle and bustle of the city. This seemed like it would be a really relaxing stop at the end of our trip, but since the cabins were sorted by type of occupants, we ended up in one end of a duplex shared by five or six enormous bros who drank and listened to dubstep until approximately 4 o’clock each morning. In short, even though you will never know exactly what a place will be like until you get there, you are going to be spending a significant amount of time at your accommodations, and it is worthwhile to scour reviews and photos to find a good match for your personality and preferences.

3. Travel within City/Country/Continent – This item varies a lot depending on where you are going. In some places I’ve been to, like West Africa, one could take daytrips from a central location very cheaply and easily, but traveling from country to country took either a good deal of time (a few days) or much more money (flights around Africa are nearly as much as flights from North America to Africa!). However, traveling around Europe was (relatively) cheap and, because it is such a frequent destination for people in their 20s taking a modern-day Grand Tour, there are many discounts available to young travelers. RailEurope is an excellent tool to plan and book tickets, as you can layout your trip and get price quotes for each leg or find special offers that help guide your planning. Another benefit is that you can buy passes that will work on any one of a number of given days. That means if you decide to stay an extra day or leave early from a city, all you have to do is look up when the next train comes and hop on!

Once you’re inside your chosen city for a few days, you’ll want to get around to all the sights. You can certainly take taxis everywhere, but most of us just don’t have that kind of money, or we would rather spend it on awesome stuff instead of a yellow car that smells like cigarettes. Getting familiar with the city’s subway or bus system is a must. The bonus to this is that you can spot the deals ahead of time and get the most ride time for your money. Our lack of foresight in this aspect of our trip was what ultimately led to our ferry ticket in Venice, as we were trying to make it back to a station large enough to have 5-day passes for sale without having to purchase another one-way pass. C’est la vie! But it is a fate you can now avoid.

4. Food Budget – I am a huge foodie, make no mistake. A big part of traveling for me is trying the weird things they like to eat there and the classic foods for which they’re famous. That being said, I revolved my Italy/France trip around art, not around food. Still, I was able to find a plethora of tasty food options all over every city. For me, the Rick Steve’s guide to Europe was invaluable. It (and other travel guides like it) collects the tastiest and most interesting food options and sorts them by neighborhood and price. With short descriptions of the restaurant’s atmosphere and fare and a little pricing scale, we had no trouble choosing a restaurant just a short walk from wherever we were.

When planning ahead for a budget, it’s extremely helpful to use these guides and the benefit of your home Internet to plan ahead a bit and check out the online menus and price lists of the type of restaurants where you plan on dining. Though there is, of course, no need to commit to a specific restaurant tour just yet, this will help you estimate costs and allow you and your travel partner(s) to consider where to save and where to splurge.

5. Attractions and Shopping Budget – This part is very broad and very dependent on your interests, budgets, and need to bring home cheesy souvenirs for your loved ones. Keep in mind that you will possibly be paying for things like entry fees for museums, covers for bars, tasty bottles of wine, key chains that say “I ♥ NY,” and other things that spark your interest. Consider your buying habits and maybe even make a list of what kinds of things you plan to purchase while on vacation, so you can more easily budget your money for those items and not buy the first 20 euro Eiffel Tower paperweight you come across.

As for attractions, the Internet is the perfect resource for discovering that admission to the British Museum is free but a ride on the London Eye costs 26 pounds. You can also often find similar tourist deals as you did for transit—for example, the Paris Museum Pass gives you free entry, with skip-the-line privileges, to over sixty Paris museums and monuments. That is something I wish I had researched before spending two hours outside the Musee d’Orsay.

In closing, plan your budget, stick to it when you can, and most importantly, have fun!

When the Venice ferry stopped at the Rialto station and several Italian men in serious-looking uniforms boarded and started checking people’s tickets, I thought, “Man, I coulda planned this better.” My best friend and I did not have a ticket for that particular ferry, and we were promptly and sternly written a 70 euro ticket (each!) and deposited—red-faced and stammering excuses—at the next stop, a 45 minute walk from our hostel.

When traveling abroad, it can sound fun to go with little to no plan. It sounds very romantic and exciting to frolic about Europe (or wherever you’re headed) with every intention of going wherever the winds of adventure take you and departing whenever these winds happen to blow. That might work out really well for some people. For most of us, though, that might lead to being stranded in Milan with no money, no place to sleep, no plane ticket home, and numerous bags of expensive Italian dresses.

I consider myself a fairly thorough trip planner and, aside from the misstep with the ferry police, my 3-week trip to Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome was amazing and filled with safe, clean hostels, cleverly-purchased transit tickets, top-notch food, and a plethora of art and activities for the student budget. How did I plan it, you ask? That’s what I’m here to tell you! Though this article comes from my personal knowledge traveling France and Italy, these tips can definitely be of use when planning any trip!

Step 1:

Make a “Places to go, Things to see” list. If you are going with a friend or group of friends, it is important to consult with them early about this. Maybe the biggest problem you’ll face is that your friend digs architecture while you want more paintings. Maybe, though, your friend wants to hit up every DVNO nightclub he can find, while you expect him to get up for your 6 am snorkel appointment. Even if you are good friends, it’s important that you discuss styles of vacationing (I’m a big “main attractions” and “foodie spots” girl; others are into nightlife, outdoor adventure, leisurely relaxation, etc.), as well as pace of vacationing (squeeze in 3 museums, 1 monument, 2 long meals, and a play every day or slow it down some?).

Step 2:

Narrow down that list to fit in to your budget (both time and money). Again, pace of the vacation plays a big role here. If you want to fill each of your days to the brim, go for it! Just be wary of wearing out. Also keep in mind the locations of all these “must sees.” If your budget allows you to hit up every European capital and then go to Greece before heading home, that’s awesome! But most of us can’t make that happen. Remember that it costs both time and money to move around a country or continent, and it might ultimately be worth it to you to skip out on Madrid in order to spend two more days in Barcelona.

As you research, you will probably have to do steps 1 and 2 several times, but that’s okay. Better to go to wherever you’re going with a practical sense of what you’ll be able to do, rather than be there and either spend your time running around like crazy or leave fuming about missing the second, smaller Jewish History Museum in NYC.

Step 3:

In order to do step 2 more effectively (and you’ve probably already done this), it’s now time to start making choices and estimating and adding up prices.

1. Airfare – Use sites like Kayak and TripAdvisor to find the cheapest airfare. You can even set up alerts for your chosen trips!
2. Accommodations – Hostels are the way to go for the discerning, frugal traveler. Websites like HostelWorld and HostleBookers can help you out with reviews and amenities of tons of places.
3. Travel within City/Country/Continent – Look for youth and student discounts for trains. Also, most city subways and bus systems have a week long traveler pass for a discount.
4. Food Budget – If you want to splurge on food, plan on it and save! Also, use Yelp or travel books to figure out how much your average meals will cost to budget.
5. Attractions and Shopping Budget – This will be very different for different types of travelers, but planning it out will help you stick to a budget.

I’ll share more on these next week in my article about Budgeting for your Overwhelming Trip Overseas.

Step 4:

Chart out your course. Now that you have brochures, maps, bookmarked webpages, some sort of budget, and hopefully a travel guide (believe me, I used mine everyday!), you are ready to set out an itinerary. “But,” you protest, “I don’t want to plan out every millisecond of my trip! I want to play some things by ear, check out the local scene, have some freedom!” Of course you do—this is your vacation after all. However, planning ahead, even with a vague sketch of a plan, can save you a lot of money and can help ensure that you make the most of your time abroad, so you never have to say, “Man, I wish I knew that electro K-pop festival was coming to Berlin before I left for Moscow.” Which is a thing I am sure countless disappointed electro K-pop fans have said.

When charting your course, your finalized list of necessary stops and cities is invaluable. You want to amp up the research at this stage, looking into the goings-on of these cities. Are there festivals or events or holidays you really want to be there for? Are there any of these that you want to avoid? I was in San Francisco for Pride a few weeks ago and, let me tell you, I did not envy the clueless tourists trying to navigate BART to get to the airport with 80 pounds of luggage. You definitely want to avoid experiences like that—though enjoying Pride in the city on foot with nowhere to get to except for your hostel that night would be awesome.

Of course, you also want to use logical proximity to chart your course. Keep in mind the general order of your destinations. Also, decide if you want to do a circular route so you can fly in and out for the same city (cheaper) or a straight route from, say, London to Budapest (no backtracking, but pricier airfare). Like I said above, you can often tweak your plans for hopping from city to city and country to country, especially with an open rain pass. That way, all you need is the general timeline of your trip and you can change the rest to suit your whims.

Some people (me, for instance), are a bit more diehard in the planning department. I know that my traveling style is squeezing every last drop out of cities, and with that trait comes a bit of a micromanaging vacation planning style. In a three-day trip to London, I managed to get in more than my travel partner would have done in a week on his own. If this sounds like you, then you will be doing even more research. Which night is 80s night at that club? Pencil it in. That antique store closes on Mondays? We’ll do the zoo that day instead. The tactic I found most useful for my short London trip was to jot down the times each of my necessary attractions was open and pin those times to a tourist map. Then, I used iCal (no Google Calendar yet, but that would have been perfect) to set aside times to do each item on my long list. I moved everything around based on open times and location until I had a strict 9:00 am – 8:00 pm schedule for each day, squeezing in Harrods, Buckingham Palace, Parliament and Big Ben, the London Eye, the Tower, Westminster Abbey (my favorite!), the British Museum, Saint Paul’s, the Globe (play included), Covent Garden, and Hampton Court Palace. Probably you fall somewhere between that (my highest level of dedication to trip planning) and complete laissez-faire (homelessness in Europe, basically). Do the level of charting that seems appropriate to you to make sure you feel comfortable and confident but not overwhelmed.

Step 5:

Get out of here! You’ve set a plan for your adventure, you’ve got your tickets, your passport is burning a hole in your pocket—it’s time to go! But, before you do, remember: not everything will go according to plan. The Eiffel Tower might be closed for maintenance, the Great Wall might have crumbled a little bit, Venice might sink! Your superb planning cannot account for every little thing, so it’s important that you roll with the punches and stay flexible.

That can get tough sometimes, but remembering that you’re on vacation and it is your job to have fun (or at least be relaxed) can often help. Even if things don’t “go wrong,” don’t be afraid to change your plans. You can have an amazing, unexpected adventure that way! One of my favorite days in Rome was one when we were too tired to navigate the city on our own and signed up for a bus tour of a vineyard with our hostel. Totally unplanned, totally amazing.

Stay sensible, stay safe, and most importantly, have fun!