Perfect! Put aside the re-opening of Europe airports just a week before our flight to London and re-closing of London airports few days after our flight back to where I’m now, due to the Iceland’s volcanic ash, all my hard works in planning for my Europe trip have been paid off perfectly!

All planned and booked domestic air and train travels were as scheduled. Conditions of all pre-booked accommodations were as expected and safe. No single one of us (a group of 5) experienced any theft and loss of important travel documents. Not a single one of us fell sick during the period. No one from us gonna break the bank from this trip. What could I say! I shall call this an immaculate Europe sight-seeing self-travel trip! Hooray!!

Why planning was so important to ‘this trip‘ to central Europe? Off course, many backpackers may prefer to travel as they go, to plan as they travel. This is great when you have plenty of time and travel by yourself or with your couple. You can take your sweet time to relax and plan for your next stop. But not in our case. I had only 14 days and I’m bringing a group who haven’t been there, couldn’t speak English very well and hadn’t got enough self-travelling experience. For them, visiting as many travel sites as they could during these 14 days was their priority objectives. What could I do? I had to plan everything well ahead so we would not waste much time in sourcing cheap accommodations and transportation.

What’s more? We had limited budget. Planning ahead saved us lots of monies especially where London hotels are generally expensive especially in the city centre. Out of my expectation, this happened to domestic train and air tickets as well. The earlier you book them online, the cheaper you can get the tickets!

Furthermore, pick-pockets are getting more serious in Europe travel destinations and in public transports. Planning ahead means we were well prepared to take care of our belongings especially our travel documents. Less acting like tourists asking around for help made us less ‘attractive‘ to be others ‘target‘!

Lastly, because I planned for our complete travel itineraries, I had planned such a way that we always stayed where were convenient for our next stop. We stayed nearby St. Pancras International train station as we took Eurostar to Paris. I chose one of those Paris hotels near the Gard Du Nord train station so we didn’t have to carry our heavy luggage and walked too far to catch our next train to Amsterdam.

These planning was essential for such a tight travel schedule. We traveled to central Europe as scheduled and most things, if not all, turned out perfectly, except some of those little hiccup and unpleasant experiences….err… what…  SHHH. Subscribe to this blog feed via RSS or Email to receive upcoming stories on my Europe travel. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog