A Simple Way to Create a Great Itinerary on your Own!
Create a great itinerary all on your own! I hear a lot of people talk about not traveling because they don’t know where to begin to start planning a trip. Although it can be a bit time-consuming, it really can be simple!
We have created nearly all of our itineraries with only a handful (😜) of hiccups. The perk of creating your own itinerary: you have the freedom to do what you want when you want.
Below is our process of creating an itinerary based on our Costa Rica trip, and it is easily recreated for all trips!
1. Research
Our first step in creating an itinerary is to start researching everything there is to do where we are going.
My #1 go-to place is Pinterest. A lot of people have gone where you are going! AND, a lot of people have wrote about their favorite parts and recommendations on what to do. Take advantage of it!
Start by making a random, unorganized list of all of the things you have seen in blog posts or on Instagram that you would like to do and see.
For example, when planning our trip to Costa Rica, I hopped on Pinterest and Instagram to search for things to do in Costa Rica. Seeing the Arenal Volcano, soak in hot springs, see a cloud forest, white water raft, zip line, etc.
We made a jumbled list of all the things we may possibly want to do in Costa Rica.
2. Organize based on location
Organizing “things to do” based on location helps you in the next step of planning your trip.
After we researched all the things we would like to see in Costa Rica, we organized them by locations such as Arenal area, Manuel Antonio area, the Caribbean coast, etc.
This helps have a better idea of how much time/how many days you may need in each specific area.
This can be different areas/cities of one country or of multiple countries (Arenal vs Manual Antonio in Costa Rica or Paris vs London!)
During this phase, we realized a lot of the things we wanted to do in Costa Rica were in the Arenal/La Fortuna area, so we knew we would spend a good amount of our week there!
3. Map out the itinerary
Once the activities are a little more organized based upon location, you will get a better idea of the direction of the itinerary based upon where each destination falls on the map.
This step helps to determine where you should start/end your trip. Sometimes you start and end in the same place- we flew in/out of San Jose this time.
Other times we fly into one airport and out of another so we need to decide which way to go first.
It also helps to determine travel time between each location. This is KEY! Don’t accidentally cram your day/week too full because you underestimated travel time!
During this step on our Costa Rica trip we:
- Realized we could benefit from at least one extra day once we started looking at travel time between destinations. A lot of jungle= longer travel time!
- Decided to take out the places we wanted to see on the Caribbean coast. This was due to us only having 7 days and the amount of travel time it would take to drive cross-country. We decided our time would be better utilized staying on the Pacific coast and getting to do more exploring and less driving
A great way to do this is by creating your own Google Map; I do this for nearly every trip now so we can have a good visualization of the itinerary!
Example of our Costa Rica Google Map👇🏻
4. Organize your info into a table
Put all of the information into a table with day, activities for the day, travel time between locations and housing (including links) and booking confirmations.
Organizing what you want to do in a table by each day lets you more easily see if you have too much planned with too little time in certain areas. Then you can adjust the itinerary accordingly
Once I laid out our Costa Rica itinerary in the table, we adjusted one more time to exclude Uvita from our itinerary to allow more time in Manuel Antonio National Park.
We like to see a much as we can on a trip, but sometimes you have to weigh the pros/cons of less time in more places.
Most importantly, the table is also a nice, organized place to go to while you are ON your trip. Its a good place to see what you planned to do, keep times of trains/flights/etc and easily access links to activities or accommodations.
5. Once the itinerary is set, book accommodations
This isn’t really part of creating the itinerary, but
Book your accommodations wherever they are cheapest!
For Costa Rica, a couple of places were booked through Expedia, a couple through booking.com, a couple of AirBnBs. Your best option for accommodations will vary depending on your destination, amount of nights, how many travelers, etc
If it is offseason for travel, you don’t necessarily have to have accommodations booked ahead of time. You can likely just roll up to a place and grab a room. However, on more than one occasion we have had trouble booking housing close to travel time due to accommodations filling up and/or getting expensive due to demand
How to book affordable accommodations!
Ready to create a great itinerary?
I honestly get excitement out of planning our itineraries! Although it normally doesn’t come without a certain amount of stress, there is fun in choosing what you want to do, what you want to see, when you want to see it and how you want to get there.
I hope these tips help you create a great itinerary with a little less stress! And remember, an itinerary isn’t set in stone and if things change, just go with it and enjoy the trip!
