What kind of person are you before you travel? Do you plan meticulously and thoroughly before going out, or do you aspire to a “go-go trip” where you don’t prepare too much and then go on a new and exciting journey when you get there?
I am definitely the former. I always feel insecure when I go out without planning, so I have to check my homework before I travel to understand the local attractions, features, customs and culture, and be well prepared to see more places I want to go in a limited time, and not easily step on potholes, or leave too much regret.
This time, the country that I wanted to visit for a long time finally opened its visa application, so I decided to move without hesitation and prepared to take advantage of this opportunity to visit several countries. After I got the visa, I started to prepare the itinerary for the cross-country trip.
I had used a variety of software to make the itinerary, including but not limited to document software, spreadsheet software, Apple’s own calendar, and even a timeline. But while they were good enough for a few days, they were not so good for long trips that spanned different time zones and used multiple touring methods, so I tried Notion at @Lincoln’s suggestion and found it to be very close to what I wanted.
Here’s how I used Notion to plan my trip, and the final product can be found here.
Why Notion?
I did use Notion for note-taking, scheduling, writing, and trying to come up with an all-in-one worksheet that worked for me during the time when Notion was just catching on. However, I finally gave up on it because of its all-in-one feature – I don’t like jumping around within pages. For example, if I’m in the middle of writing a note and suddenly I think of something to do, I can just open the schedule app instead of finding my schedule page, waiting for the jump, taking notes, and then jumping back to continue my notes. Therefore, I still split up each function of Notion in a different App and abandoned it completely.
I don’t use Notion to manage my life anymore, but the “travel” scenario is slightly different. Every trip is a one-off act, and the things that need to be taken care of in the process can be completely separated from everyday life. But travel is still a part of daily life, and what you do every day during the trip is no different from what you need to do at home: daily to-do, journaling, and writing, so you can carry the daily template over to use.
Notion also has a richer presentation mode than the document and table apps, and Notion’s tables and kanban boards can be switched and dragged around freely, and have enough free presentation dimensions to help me better organize the timing and order of each activity. It can also enter text, embed various widgets, and even insert files, images …… all kinds of data forms can find the right place, enough to take care of all aspects of a trip. Notion is also friendly to cross-country, cross-time zone, and multi-currency travel, you can choose different time zones when entering time, and the cost form is also You can select different time zones when entering time, and you can calculate the exchange rate in the cost table through automation, so you don’t have to calculate the time difference and exchange rate manually.
In addition, the Notion page is very easy to share with others, so you can send the link to the collection page directly to your friends and family, and they can see any subsequent changes directly. There is also a section of the trip where you travel with other people, so you don’t have to be limited by time and space to do the trip together, which is very convenient.
Make a travel plan
My travel planning process is usually divided into two steps: (1) gathering information and (2) organizing the trip. If you are traveling with others, there is also a step of (3) discussing the itinerary.
Step 1: Gathering Information
I’ve been doing this “gathering travel destinations” thing off and on. When I see a great photo or interesting location on social media, my first thought is not to “bookmark” it in the app, but to add a marker to the location on Google Maps, and over the years I’ve accumulated quite a few destinations. By doing so, I can visually see the distribution of different spots on the map, and I don’t have to be bothered by the broken search system inside various apps, not to mention losing all my favorites because the original author or myself got pinned or bombed.
After I decided on a few destinations for the trip, I created a new page for each city in Notion and added a table with a list of alternative destinations for the trip. Most of the time was spent on Google Maps and reading travelogues and travel tips.
When you open Google Maps, which is filled with starred locations, the next step is to figure out: what do I want to do in this city?
There are a variety of places to collect, including food, cultural venues, outdoor activities, places to go, and pilgrimage destinations, some of which are only visible for a certain period of time and some of which require special transportation, so it’s not convenient to mix them together. This time also does not need to have too strong purpose, as long as the mind has a general direction is enough. Determine the style of travel, the next step is to filter from the collection of locations to a few destinations suitable for the trip, first put them into the Kanban board.
It’s not enough to choose destinations from the collection, so you usually have to go elsewhere to collect interesting destinations. Some of the sites I use include Lonely Planet, Hornet’s Nest, Tripadvisor; Douban, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, and Public Review; and the official websites of local tourism bureaus. If you have friends who live in the area or have traveled there, you can also ask them for advice – friends who share a common interest may know more about what places appeal to you.
While you can often get a traveler’s perspective from other people’s travelogues, you can sometimes find different surprises when you see what local residents have to share about their lives in sites like Douban and VW Review. I also slowly learned how to analyze from others’ words whether the destination was to my liking, such as whether it was a theme I was interested in, whether the tour was in a format I liked, whether it would be too physically demanding for me, whether my chosen mode of transportation would be safe to arrive, and so on.
After reading a lot, I always filtered out some destinations of interest, and I marked them on Google Maps to make it easier to arrange my next trip.
These locations are also added to the destination table in Notion, and I add various descriptions based on what I’ve read from each place. Destinations that must be visited and cannot be compromised are marked with a 🌟. If you find a good angle for a photo shoot, a nearby food, or a spot to go or not to go, you put it in the document below and decide when you’re ready.
I also add different tags (properties) to each of these destinations to make it easier to organize my schedule. The most common ones are: type, closing date, estimated visit time, opening hours, and whether reservations are required. Depending on the activity at the destination, I also add: whether it is an extreme sport, whether there is a dress code, whether it is out of town, contact information for the venue, etc.
Step 2: Arrange the itinerary
Once I had a rough idea of where I wanted to go, the next step was to arrange a specific itinerary for each day.
My habit when traveling is to try not to change hotels on the way, and to try to visit a certain area as close as possible each day to reduce the commuting time from my place of residence. Therefore, the first step in organizing your trip is to sort your destinations by region.
I did this by creating a new multi select, finding several areas in Google Maps where the destinations are clustered, naming each option the name of each area, and then placing the destinations under the area they belong to. Each “region” will be transformed into a destination that you plan to visit “someday” during your trip.
Create a new “Kanban” view and set the grouping as “Region”, Notion will automatically generate a page like this.
The chart shows five dimensions of information: name, opening hours, whether reservations are required, and estimated time of visit.
The next step is to arrange the daily itinerary according to the closing date and estimated visit time. Since you only play one area per day, you can simply change the “area name” option to “date + day of the week” and convert the nearby area attractions directly into a daily itinerary, simply by adjusting the order according to the distance. If you have a good sense of space and remember the distribution of destinations on the map, you can set the multiple options to dates directly, so you don’t have to change the names so much.
Displaying “Closing Days” directly on the Kanban board means taking into account the date and the opening hours of the venue when scheduling. Most museums are closed on Mondays, but there is no shortage of restaurants and attractions that are closed on other days of the week or on weekends, and this information can usually be found on the official website, so you don’t have to worry about missing out if you prepare in advance. If the original schedule conflicts with opening times, it’s easy to just drag and drop the destination to the desired location.
Another factor to consider is physical distribution. I don’t usually include more than 5 hours in a day. Longer tours are very physically demanding, so I prefer to leave out sites that I don’t have to visit, or simply split them into two days. The opening time of the destination will also be taken into consideration. If you go out at 9 o’clock, the last venue will be closed by the time you arrive, and you will have to keep rushing beforehand, which will greatly reduce the touring experience, so it is better to give yourself more time to relax.
Close to the date of physical strength will also be taken into account, imagine, if the first two days of the trip are retirement trip, the next three days in a row is a driving tour up and down the mountain, the average person will not be able to eat. So to a day tight, a day loose so arranged, more friendly to physical recovery.
My personal preference is also to schedule the most tiring trip in the penultimate day of the trip, this is because after the first few days of refinement, the body has become accustomed to higher physical exertion than usual, to a higher intensity can still cope. And the next day to go home, will not consume too much energy, the return trip on the road can also take the opportunity to rest.
After this scheduling, you can add other non-destination itineraries, such as hotel check-in and check-out, more than an hour’s commute, and time set aside to meet with friends and family. Thus, the daily itinerary in the city is basically complete.
Step 3: If traveling with others
The question of whether to travel with other people has been discussed for I don’t know how many hundreds of times. The advantages of traveling alone are obvious: there is a great deal of freedom, and you can dictate your time and destination exactly as you wish. But the safety of going out alone is a concern (especially for young women), as is the inability to share the price of accommodation and transportation, and eating in restaurants where you always have to wrestle with the “I want to order three dishes but I can’t eat alone” problem. Traveling with a companion not only avoids these problems, but often allows me to visit destinations that I am not as interested in and experience new things because of the wishes of my fellow travelers.
I planned this trip so that I would be traveling alone for the most part, with only one of the countries requiring travel with others. During the planning phase, we used Notion’s collaboration feature to organize the trip.
By clicking “Share” in the top right corner of the trip page and entering the other person’s email address, you can send them an invitation link and control their access to the page.
We agreed on a date in advance to discuss the itinerary, and before then we were free to add the places we wanted to visit to the form. The process was similar to when I was preparing alone, but in addition to providing the necessary information about each place (mainly the area, closing days, and estimated time of visit), we also wrote “whether it is a must-see” and wrote our ideas for the itinerary on the page for each destination.
When the agreed date comes, get together and discuss the specific itinerary, assigning daily itineraries according to how much you want to go and the estimated time of your visit, trying to get everyone to the places you particularly want to visit, and leaving the rest up to whether you have enough free time. If you both want to go to the same place, but have different ideas about the itinerary, discuss whether you want to visit together, or go back and forth together, but have your own fun at the destination. Settle on a general itinerary. If there are any changes to be made later, it is not too late to discuss whether to change it.
The more people there are, the more factors there are to consider, so perhaps one person should take the lead and the rest should just follow the TA, otherwise the pages and discussions are likely to become very confusing and inefficient.
Another thing to keep in mind before a multi-person trip is that it is best to clarify the consensus of the trip at the planning stage, such as budget allocation, work and rest time, touring preferences and travel habits, so as to have a (relatively) comfortable trip. It is best to find complementary travel companions, one who is happy to worry more, the other does not mind spending more money; emergencies do not have to cry together, but someone to calmly arrange the next trip; one of them is worried about not seeing all the sights and rushing to the next site, but also someone to slow down to enjoy the journey, not to be fully occupied by anxiety.
Add-on info
As I mentioned above, the main reason I chose to use Notion for planning is that it has a rich display mode and the ability to add pages such as budget and schedule to make it truly all-in-one, but after the above setup, it is only a prototype of a “daily plan”, which is far from aggregating all the information needed for travel.
Therefore, in addition to the board I made for trip planning, I also added a number of sections to the page to make the information more intuitive.
At the top of each city’s individual page is information that is very important and that I want to be able to check at all times: the new local crown entry policy. I added the official link to the government website to the entry city page, and checked for updates three days before my trip to make sure I could successfully enter the country.
The next information that needs to be checked and updated frequently while traveling: bookkeeping, and local weather.
Considering the need to enter multiple times a day, the most commonly used bookkeeping page was placed at the top of the document. In my attempts, I found that whether I used Embed, or added it as a link to the Properties of the page like the new Crown policy, it would not jump directly within the App, but would open in the browser. Therefore, we finally added it directly by “Add Page” or “Link To Page”. Although I was going to different cities this time, I did not intend to keep separate accounts, so I only created a list of purchases. If you are going to different cities separately, it might be more convenient to create a separate page for each city.
The weather only needs to be scanned before going out, so there is no need to do too much, so I just put a weather widget on the right side to show the temperature and weather.
Two small panels are placed below the weather. At the top are things related to the city that I have to do, such as buying a local phone card, registering for immigration, buying local tickets, etc. For those with specific deadlines, you can enter @ and select a specific date to have Notion send a reminder so you don’t miss it.
At the bottom is a bucket list, which refers to activities that can be done anywhere, anytime, without any specific time or place restrictions. For example, on this trip, one of my ambitions was to “talk to the locals every day,” which is a good place to add it. There are also some trips that I want to go to, but haven’t set down, so I’ve put them together here as well.
At the bottom of the page is a backup of important documents. If you lose something during your trip, it’s not only a hassle to replace it, but it can also interfere with the rest of your trip, so it’s always a good idea to have plenty of backups. However, I was a bit worried about the privacy protection of my scanned passport if I put it in Notion in such a big way. Therefore, I only put the necessary visa information, vaccination records, travel insurance, and air and wine itineraries. I kept a copy of the password for myself and shared it with my friends and family who knew the itinerary, so that if they needed to access these files, they could download and open them from Notion, while protecting their privacy to a certain extent.
In the summary page of this year’s trip, the center of the page shows the cities to be visited on the trip, in order of arrival dates. The default display here is for upcoming trips in the future. After the tour, change the single option “Status” from “Upcoming” to “Completed” and it will not be displayed on the default home page, but will appear under the “Past” view. All past and future trips will appear in the “All Trips” view.
The top of the city page is divided into three columns. On the left side is what to do next, a simple to-do list of things that are relevant to this entire trip and that I must do, like various materials that need to be copied wherever I go. I tend to put all the things I have to do before I leave home here, and those that I can do in time on the way will be put in a separate page for each city.
In the middle are the pages that need to be quoted from the separate pages for all cities: bookkeeping, packing list, and vaccination and travel insurance information. This location is within easy reach, making it easier to modify and manage.
On the far right are ideas for future trips, not yet determined, only in the idea stage. The Japan and Thailand sky lantern festivals put here are known to me to be a better experience when I go over at certain times of the year, so I put them together so I don’t miss them when I’m making plans.
Below the collection of itineraries for each city, I’ve embedded a Google Map to mark the locations I passed on this trip. Just create your own map in Google Maps and embed it in this location. This map widget can mark a location individually, but it can also draw a self-driving route or even a train route, which is perfect for showing travel experiences.
Conclusion
The above is the template I made for this trip using Notion. The link is here, feel free to visit. One template is not enough for everyone, but for this trip, I think this template is enough for my needs.
Back to the question posed at the beginning of the article: Do you have to make a plan when you go on a trip?
I don’t think so.
In all my past trips, I have never followed a travel plan to the letter, and each time I deviated from my original vision to a greater or lesser extent. The existence of a plan is to help me show where I want to go when I’m lost, so that I don’t waste 30 minutes searching for local features every morning before I know where I’m going today, and I don’t end up at the door of the exhibition I want to see with a “sold out today” sign.
But when I count the vivid memories I have from my travels, it’s often the undesigned chance encounters. Having a plan as a base, but not being tied to it, always being open and looking forward to the next surprise, is perhaps the key to making a trip enjoyable.