Travel Resources

When Organising Transport

GoEuro

Great information for getting around Europe by bus, plane, train and car. A good starting point before going to more specific sites for better information and cheaper prices.

Rome2Rio

Another good site for getting the basic information about getting from point A to B

Skyscanner

Easily the best flight searching website on the internet. Easy to use and has alot of customising options.  When you don’t where in the country you want to go, you can just write in the country and it will tell the price for every airport. Even if you don’t know what country you want to go you can use the everywhere option and it will give you a list of cheap flights.

Momondo

Another great flight search engine that we like to double check skyscanners results against. They also have a nifty graphic option to see when the cheapest time is to fly to your destination. Lots of other cool features if you jump into the deep end as well.

Bla Bla Car

A ridesharing app/website that is the normally the cheapest way to get around, unless you start hitchhiking. The idea is that someone is already diving somewhere for some reason and they just sell the extra seats in their car. Great option as you get to meet locals and they will normally pick you up and drop you off to your door, or close enough for you to walk.

Planning Where To Go and What To Do

Travel Independent.info

Great online resource of information about almost every country. We use it a lot in our planning stage for things like;

• Itineraries
• Visas
• Safety
• Where to go in a country
• What to see

As you can see it’s a great resource for independent travellers.

Lonely Planet

The bible for most travellers and i can honestly say we still consult them for certain information. Mostly its information about how to get there and entry requirements to a country. They normally have sales on their PDF guides which can easily downloaded to your phone. Save you carrying around a massive guide book while you walk around.

Rough Guides

A good alternative to Lonely Planet. Has basically them same information, but a little more focused on budget travel.

Trip Advisor

Use this with a pinch of salt. There is a lot of companies that pay for good reviews and you need to read through them carefully to find out what is useful and what isn’t. We like to just do a quick things to do in XXX and then use other resources to find out more info. Or if you’re bored it’s a good laugh reading some of the reviews.

Wikivoyage

Basically the Wikipedia of travel guides, where anyone can go on the site and edit the information. Good for finding out about places to go and how to get there.

Planning Where To Stay

 Hostelworld

Basically the only website we use for booking hostel beds. If its not a busy time of year we usually use it to find out about hostels in the area and then book the bed in person as a walk in. This saves the booking fee that is put on your booking.

Airbnb

Great alternative to a hostel if you want your own personal space a little extra money. Airbnb is a roomsharing community that allows people locals to put their spare beds and bedrooms up for rent. So most of the time you get not only a cooler and cheaper place than a hotel, but also local information from the owner!

Couchsurfing

A great community of locals and travellers who put their couches/sparebeds/tent-space up for grabs for free! Well, kind of, it is free in the sense you don’t pay for the beds to sleep on, but there is an unwritten rule you should reciprocate their kindness with drinks or dinner. Great opportunity to meet like minded people and get to know a city with a local. We are BIG FANS of Couchsurfing and its philosophy.

Booking.com

If you want to go down the hotel room avenue, Booking.com is the best of the rest. They still allow smaller hotels on their site, unlike expedia and other big booking websites. This means you’ll still be able to find cheaper options in far flung places.

Agoda

The same as Booking.com, except more aimed at the asian market place.

How To Organise Volunteering

We are big fans of working as we travel. It saves us money and we get to know the place and the local people better than if we just stayed in hostels. This is a list of the companies we use to organise these opportunities:

Workaway

This is our go to site for volunteer work exchange. The idea is that you do a few hours of work and in exchange your host gives you food, accomodation and an opportunity to learn some new skills. It is our go to website and we highly encourage that if you want to work as you travel, that you sign up with them. For a couple it costs 30.00 Euros for a year and this allows you to contact any host around the world.

Check out our top tips about workaway if you’re planning on getting your hands dirty.

WWOOFing

The same idea as workaway, except WWOOfing is more aimed at farming. The downside to WWOOFing though, is that there is no central website that governs all of the different countries. You have to visit each countries individual site and pay for to sign up to each country. This can get costly if you are planning on visiting multiple countries.