Travel Tips: Before You Go

Next up in the travel tips series, I take a look at practical tips for a stress-free holiday. Anyone who knows me will know that this doesn’t come naturally to me. It took me years of traipsing across the globe to learn these things the hard way, which is why I’m so well placed to hand over some travel tip nuggets now.

To be fair, I never did stress much when I travelled/moved house/got around to doing my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve… because a part of me thrived on the adrenaline and the stress just washed all over me.

Things Change

However. With age, comes responsibility. Colleagues, partners, friends. Most of whom don’t appreciate such a “it’ll be alright on the night” approach.

So, to prevent yourself from needing a holiday to recover from a holiday, I bring you these seven fail-safe strategies.

Let’s go!

7 Travel Tips For A Stress Free Holiday

1 – Choose the right bag for the job

The last few years of careering around the globe have transformed me from the world’s worst packer into a lean, mean travel machine. It’s taken time to find the right bags for the professional travel lifestyle and to finally realise that it’s worth getting the right kit in order to avoid wrecking either your body or your business prospects. The kind of bag you need when flying is very different to the best kind of bag for being out and about on the ground. A travel tip that needs special attention, take a look at how to choose the best bag for your travels .

2 – “Lost Luggage” proof your packing

No matter how bright and sunny a disposition you usually have, losing your luggage is an immense irritation. You can have all the perspective in the world, knowing full well that millions of others have worse things going on in their lives, but it’s still an event that carries a high PIA factor. Travel far enough and long enough and it will happen to you. Some airlines even advise you to prepare for it.

Here’s how you can.

3 – Download the best travel apps

These days, we have technology. Let’s use it! Here is my list of what I believe to be the best travel apps . Few on my list are travel apps in the niche sense but they’re all fantastic and I use them when I travel all the time. And, as a bonus point, even though there are seven of them, they fit onto a single phone.

4 – Change your money in advance

When you’re travelling, extra charges on your credit and debit card can be frustrating and a hassle. To get around this problem, pre-order your cash before you travel. As an example, if you use The Money Shop *, they offer foreign exchange with over 50 different currencies, with some of the best prices online and on the high street, and at 0% commission.

5 – Check your passport

Yes, OK, so you’ve probably realised you have to have one. But have you checked the visa situation? Expiry date? Number of blank pages? Some countries require a certain number of blank pages, or passport validity for up to six months or more and I’ve seen people turned away at check-in as a result of these very points. Leave yourself plenty of time to check the visa situation, too. Some embassies require in person visits and can hold your passport for weeks at a time for processing. India, for example, requires a different shape “passport photo” than everywhere else. Read the small print, fill in the forms meticulously, and don’t stress about actually having the passport photo taken.

6 – Adapt Your Packing For Your Trip

One of the best tips I pinched from someone else, was to sketch out your itinerary and note down an outfit for each occasion. You don’t have to stick to this rigid way of wearing, but it does help you think about what you’ll need and when. Think logically about what you will realistically wear and what is going to be practical. If you’re doing anything “new” for you, such as heading on a cycling or walking holiday or dipping down below minus 27 degrees, it helps to check out a specialist list first.

Only this year, I learned that sunscreen itself freezes. A handy tip for daylight excursions in the blisteringly cold Arctic Circle.

7 – Focus on What Matters

At the end of it all, there was something to be said for my former approach to travel: the focus on the reason you’re actually going.

That feeling you get the night before tomorrow, when it is too late to plan and too late to pack.

It’s feeling restless. Distracted. Drinking far too many cups of tea. It’s knowing that it all could go wrong, yet hoping for something to blaze into life. Hoping for something wonderful. It’s the start of a new adventure. And it’s finding, after all these years, that there still is adventure to be found. Travel gives us freedom. The permission to rest and to breathe and to think – at least for some of the time. And that time, of course, is precious : we can’t know how much we will have.

Safe travels, everyone!

** Disclosure : this post was sponsored by The Money Shop. As ever, as always, we kept the right to write about what we like around here. Otherwise, there’s just no point. Thank you for supporting the companies that support Inside the Travel Lab. Happy travels!