An Ode to the Travel Planning Spreadsheet

(i apologize to those who were misled by the title into thinking this entry would be in the form of a poem.)

yesterday, Keri over at Heels First posted about getting the Kindle edition of Rick Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door for only $1.99. it’s a great deal and definitely a Kindle-worthy book at 856 physical pages — who’s got room in their carry-on for that?!

sidebar: some points about ebooks

• don’t forget you can read Kindle books on just about any smartphone, tablet, or computer, not just Kindle devices.
• see if your local library offers a program like Overdrive where you can borrow ebooks for free. i find that that’s perfect for travel guides since i usually just use them once anyways. of course, this is also true for physical books.
• UPDATE: thanks @kerplode for reminding me of this feature that i totally forgot about: “If you have a Kindle, it gets an email address. You can send PDFs you’ve created to it to view later w/o wifi. I always send a copy.”

  you can save a copy of any document on Google Drive/Docs (see below) as a PDF — and email that to yourself. easy-peasy way to keep a version safe and sound offline. here’s more information on Send to Kindle; this works with any Kindle device as well as their phone/tablet apps.

i’ve always thought of Rick Steves as targeting my parents’ demographic (indeed they probably have every single one of his books) and not necessarily for…erm, well, us. as i’ve discovered on my recent trip to Rome, though, he really does make things easy and lets you enjoy your trip more.

but i digress. as i was perusing a sample of the book, this particular page leapt out at me:

it looked just like the spreadsheets my mom has long used for planning travel! and now i know where she got the idea from! (i suppose she could have thought of it herself, but they look exactly like this.)

and you know what? they’re on to something. i picked up this technique from mom and have found it really helpful, especially if you’re going to be moving around a lot, since you can quickly see at a glance how much time you’re devoting to a certain location, what you’ll be seeing, and where you’ll be staying.

i’ve used it from relatively simple trips…

An early version that ultimately ended up changing slightly.

..to more complicated ones like this family trip where my brother and i were arriving and leaving before my parents, with only certain days overlapping.

I was able to easily see which cities we were exploring separately and together and rearrange the itinerary appropriately.

while i mostly use TripIt to “remember” my flight, hotel/airbnb, and rental car reservations, a simple spreadsheet can augment that as you continue to put your plans together. your spreadsheets can be as detailed or high-level as you want. for example, you could easily get into the nitty-gritty by having a separate sheet for each day. i used to put confirmation numbers in the spreadsheet but rely on TripIt for that now, but in cases where you’re dealing with reservations for multiple people, definitely put those in so you have an easy reference point for everything.

and thanks to twitter friends @chrisguizlo and @foofiter for corroborating how i feel about the beauty of Google Docs (now Google Drive?). i’ve always liked Google Docs (if you’re not familiar, it’s basically productivity applications that live in your web browser) because it’s easier than dealing with Excel and actual files (e.g., to share, you just send a link to your spreadsheet that always shows the latest version). as a bonus, you can easily view it on your phone.

if you have never tried using a spreadsheet to help you plan out your days, give it a shot. you’ll thank me, my mom, and Rick Steves!

to make things even easier, i’ve uploaded a template to Google Docs. just enter each date of your trip (the day of the week column will fill out by itself) and your travel plans. remember that it saves automatically, and to be clear, it’s completely private to you (unless you choose to share). Google Docs is being a PITA and taking forever for templates to show up. coming soon! for now, you can view it and save a copy to edit with Excel on your computer.

ok, fine, here’s a haiku for y’all:

brain cells dead, frazzled?
rows and columns: salvation
thanks mom as always