How to Travel the World? Let’s Break it Down

Eight years after we first met in Stavanger, Norway, to travel around Europe, we’re still exploring the world. It’s hard to believe we’ve been to nearly 85 countries across six continents in those years! After all this time, we consider ourselves well-traveled for two thirty-somethings but still learn something new daily.

It wasn’t always like that.

I was young, nervous, and naive on my first solo trip to Iceland. I made many travel mistakes then, but I got a lot right. Travel, it turns out, is not so difficult. After all this travel, several crucial elements remain the same. This is how we travel the world and what you can learn from it.

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How to Travel the World

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Set Up the Finances

The first step to getting yourself traveling the world is to set up your finances. Many claim they don’t have money to travel, but we’re hard-pressed to believe that is true for everyone. With easy saving strategies, you can save money for your next trip.

Once you’ve secured the funds, ensure you’re set up to travel abroad. We suggest picking up a good travel credit card, a low-fee bank card, and a travel wallet to carry your passport and ensure your cash is secure. You can read more about our travel banking tips.

If you understand the basic principles of finance while traveling, you can save your hard-earned dollars. Which, in turn, can lead to more travel. This way, you’re not stuck wondering about the best travel credit card or how to exchange foreign currencies and avoid ATM fees. It’s all an endless cycle of intelligent financial decisions that lead to more travel.

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Decide and Book Travel

If I don’t know exactly where I want to travel globally, I start with a general region of interest. Since we work for ourselves full-time, we have a lot of flexibility in selecting dates. Flexibility is the key to finding a good deal. The high season typically results in high prices.

You can find a great deal with an open flight search using Skyscanner’s Everywhere feature or Google Flights’ map feature. They’re easy to use and have taken us to many places on a whim, like Latvia, India, South Africa, Bali, and Peru.

To use the feature on Skyscanner, type in your departure city in the “from” field and then hover over the “to” portion until you receive a popup that says, “Can’t Decide Where? Search Everywhere.”  Select the specific date you want to travel or put in “full month” so that it will find you the best deals on the best dates of the month. The world is your oyster with an endless selection of possibilities.

Google Flights has a similar feature that we find ourselves using more often. Once on their homepage, you can easily select your departure city and leave the “Where to” section blank. Select “flexible dates” and see what you get!

After searching multiple times and finding a good route for you, it’s best to clear your cookies. These browsers can save your search features and then raise the price when they know you are interested in a particular flight about to book.

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Plan an Itinerary

Once you book flights and decide on the country you want to visit, it’s time to start working on an itinerary. I’m certain you don’t want to stay in the city you flew into the entire time. This is when I started researching online and on travel blogs to determine a good itinerary.

We like to use fellow bloggers’ itineraries and travel information, as these days, they are among the best online resources for travel information. We avoid anything AI like the plague as it’s not the human experience of opinion. Once we get a general idea of where we want to go, we begin with booking accommodation. We start with the first night, an accessible hotel room close to the airport, unless our flight arrives early.

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Decide on Accommodation

When you are wondering how to travel the world, you should note what kind of traveler you are. Depending on your type of traveler, now may be the time to book accommodation. We do a mix of planning and taking it daily, but we always book our first night before arriving.

If you would like to have all aspects of your trip sorted before you arrive, check the various platforms, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, and Agoda, to get an idea of availability and pricing. This ensures you often get the best price and place to stay. However, planning and booking in advance also mean you have to adhere to a schedule, and if you don’t like a place much, it’s tough to change plans if there is no free cancellation.

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Score a Place for the First Night

It’s okay if you want to wing your trip. We do it quite a bit, even at the expense of less appealing accommodation options. If you decide to wing your journey, I recommend booking accommodation for the first day of your arrival.

No one wants to arrive at a foreign destination after a miserable long-haul flight and have no place to rest. No matter when you get to your destination, book at least your first night to settle, relax, and recollect your thoughts. Trust me; it will make the rest of your trip much more enjoyable. It also helps with immigration as it’s often the first question they ask.

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Pick Your Means of Transportation

During the planning process, we must decide how to get around the destination. In some places, the public transport, train, or bus system is excellent, that includes most of Europe and Asia. If you don’t have your own means of transport, your travel will be severely limited to other destinations (hello, North America, Australia, and Africa). In Asia, you can get by with public transport for large destinations and then a cheap motorbike to get around regions or cities.

That doesn’t mean you can’t get around via public transport, but you should consider the access to the places of interest. That goes for parts of Europe, too! Many European destinations can be reached with public transport, but they are best visited with a car rental, like in Scotland or Ireland. Generally, the sooner you book a car rental, the more you save. However, make sure you book at least 24 hours in advance, as booking systems will significantly raise the price with less notice.

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Bring the Right Luggage

We like to pick the right luggage for the right destination. That often falls between the choice of a backpack or a suitcase. The choice depends on the destination,  pace, activities, and season. We always prefer to take an Osprey Farpoint for an open adventure in developing countries where we will take public transport and move a lot. The backpack allows you to be flexible, save on airline baggage costs, and move on and off public transport.

If we are staying in one place for a while, on a business trip, or want our belongings to stay organized, we choose a rolling suitcase over a backpack. Typically, a suitcase is my go-to luggage choice if traveling in Europe or throughout North America. It is better suited for short distances from cabs to the hotel room and protects nice clothes. Our last option would be a duffel bag, which is great for more rugged adventures.

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Pack for Your Trip

Typically, a month before a major trip, I think about what I need for the destination. That usually includes travel adaptors, travel towels, a new piece of luggage, a down jacket, or even a new wardrobe. Check the weather in all the locations where you plan to spend time.

Just because you’re heading to one country doesn’t mean the weather will be the same throughout. Take Peru, for example; it’s one of the most diverse countries in the world, with nearly every biome on the planet. I suggest doing a mock pack at least a week before any long trip so you can ensure you have everything you need.

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Purchase Travel Insurance

We don’t travel without travel insurance, and neither should you. You never know what can happen while traveling, so it’s best to be prepared. If you can’t afford travel insurance, you don’t have enough to travel yet. Of course, I wish you well and hope you have a fantastic trip, but we all know accidents can happen. It’s a brilliant idea and a good precaution to prepare for an accident or unforeseen issues. Thankfully, we’ve never had to make any claims, but they offer competitive rates and good plans.

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Download an Offline Map

Before we board the plane to our destination, we have an offline map on our new city/town/country phones. You can download an offline map from Google Maps, but sometimes, it takes quite a bit of memory and can take a while to download.

So, I suggest you ensure you have it on your phone before you arrive at the airport. Offline maps are our saving grace for navigating a new country when we know we may not be connected to the internet. They’re a fantastic tool, great for walking around a city or for turn-by-turn driving directions.

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Know the Exchange Rate

Another thing I like to do when I travel the world is to make sure I know the exchange rate. XE Currency is my favorite app because it gives me up-to-date currency conversion. You’ll need to be connected to the internet the first time you put a new currency on your phone, so make sure you do this before arriving at a new destination. We paid $46 for coffee and oatmeal in the Dubai Airport because we didn’t know the local currency and figured it couldn’t be that bad.

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Deal with Flights

The day is finally here – the day you leave for another fabulous trip! But first, you have to deal with a long-haul flight. If the flight crosses oceans, book with a carrier you love. Emirates, Qatar, Turkish Airlines, and Cathay Pacific are just a few of my favorites.

A great airline can make or break a flight experience and set your whole trip up for a good time. I try to avoid budget carriers at all costs, but sometimes it is the only route, and there is no choice. There are also instances when the money savings are too significant to avoid.

A few things that help me have a more enjoyable flight are:

• A jacket, as it’s often very cold on planes.
• Preorder a vegetarian meal, as special meals are served first.
• Invest in TSA Precheck if you travel around America. (You can get reimbursed with many travel credit cards nowadays)
• Bring headphones that are better than the crappy plane ones. I have these noise-canceling headphones.
• Pick the right seat, even if that means paying for seat selection. It’s worth it to be comfortable. Aisle seats are my preferred choice.
• Consider getting a Priority Pass or some form of lounge access.

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Grab a SIM Card

Yay! I Landed in a new country or destination. You’re likely groggy, jet-lagged, and feeling dirty. I know all you want to do is get to your hotel to shower and rest, but first, I recommend picking up a SIM card to stay connected when traveling. Because of our jobs, we like to stay online when we can, plus we find 4G often works a lot better than hotel WiFi networks.

The airport is the most accessible place to pick up a SIM card. Even though it’s usually more expensive at the airport, it saves us the hassle of dealing with locating and navigating our way through a new city to save a few dollars.

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Get Cash to Travel the World

The main things you need to know when researching how to travel the world are about money, finances, and cold hard cash. Before you leave the airport, strap yourself with some cash. Many developing nations operate on a cash basis, and you could struggle to use your credit card. Even if you’re traveling in Western Europe, you should always have some cash in case of emergencies.

We don’t recommend using exchange offices, especially at the airport. They often have hidden fees and terrible exchange rates. Instead, we use the ATM, which usually provides the most up-to-date market rate. Do not accept their exchange rate either, instead allow your bank to convert.

If the airport ATMs are not working, you’ll want to at least have some backup cash on you. USD or Euro is the currency of choice and the most valuable. It’s also helpful to have in the event of emergencies. It’s not often that airport ATMs are inoperable, but it can happen in developing nations or small airports. It’s helpful to cover

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Collect Yourself

You’ve landed, you have your cash, you are connected to the internet, and alive! Take a second to collect yourself and your things. Sometimes I like to sit, have an overpriced coffee, and chill at the Starbucks for twenty minutes. It’s our moment to ensure we’re leaving the airport with all our belongings and directions to our place.

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Grab a Ride to Your First Place

Now it’s finally time to get to your first hotel from the airport. You’re almost there – you can rest, chill, and do what you came to do – travel the world! Many airports have buses or trains that take you to the city center. If we are coming off a long-haul flight and don’t feel like dealing with anything else, we will pay for an taxi cab to take us to the hotel. I’ve realized throughout my travels that sometimes it’s worth it to pay!

If you’ve rented a car from the airport, now is the time to pick it up. Always check for damages, take photos, and look for hidden charges before you drive off. We like to pick up and drop off rental cars from the airport. Even if there is a surcharge, it will save money on a taxi to and from the airport and create less hassle for us on already stressful travel days.

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Explore, Don’t Buy Souvenirs, Research

Now that you are in your fantastic travel destination, it’s time to relax, research what you want to do, read a few articles, and enjoy your travels. I often like to take my first day to explore the area, hop into a cafe or restaurant, and get a feel for the environment.

And unless I have to have something, I don’t buy souvenirs until the last few days of my trip. This gives me a general idea of pricing and allows me to pick what I like best – plus, I don’t have to lug everything around during my whole trip. Oh, and don’t ever buy the first thing you see!