travel research

Research - my personal definition: the biggest obstacle to opting for F&E!

You need to spend hours after hours of time on the internet booking airtickets, planning routes, choosing your accommodation, what attractions, advices from other travellers.

In such a big continent such as Europe, you really need to plan with care..

a) Airtickets are fairly easy to compare and book, costs are straightforward, you just need to check whether your preferred airline flys to your destination.

b) Travelling within Europe - Coach, Rail, Air, you name it, they have it. Europe has a very well connected train network which puts you right in the middle of the city, no arriving 2 hours before check-in, no waiting for your luggage.

I haven't had experience taking Eurail but i had the pleasure of using BritRail as one of my destination is UK. Shall elaborate more on this as i encountered a number of questions.

c) Planning routes, places to visit

This you would have to rely on the friendly internet. I relied heavily on travellers' portals such as VirtualTourist and TripAdvisor.

d) Accommodations

This presents the most headache of all because of the budget. Some accommodation site features very nice photos and you look forward to staying there.. so much so you dropped your luggages in horror at the place. Okay, that's exaggerating... But the photos can really be misleading, they either take pictures of the best room they have (none of the other rooms looks remotely similar!).

From the high end 5 stars hotel to the 8 bed dorms, you have a lot of choices. Except that, we often have a budget constraint that leaves us looking at 2 star hotels and below.

There are plenty of hotel booking sites around on the internet, but if you are looking at budget stay, i would recommend hostelworld.

Hope this post helps in your research!