A novice traveler on Reddit was nervous about planning their upcoming trip, and asking for general trip planning advice. I thought I came up with some good advice:

There’s no one way to do it. Everybody has their balance of how much they like to plan in advance and how much they want to be spontaneous. I think I’m more of a “planner” than most.

The #1 most helpful thing for me is a good guidebook. A good guidebook will help you plan where you want to go, what to see, and all kinds of details about transportation, weather, food and whatnot. Mark up the guidebook with post-it flags for the places that look interesting.

I book flights first. Then hotels usually shortly thereafter. I like to have a guaranteed place to stay every night. This requires having a general outline of where you’re going to be and how long. I don’t like to waste vacation time wandering around, looking for a room. It can be stressful to me. At the least, I’d say make sure you have weekends and holidays booked in advance, as those tend to be busiest.

Generally we’ll plan a rough outline of each day. There might be one thing planned for the day; or two, or three. Often a day is planned the night before, in the hotel.

The first day, you may have to allow for jetlag. We’ll usually schedule a museum or something else low-stress for the first day. Or a train ride to a different city, hoping to sleep on the train.

On a city trip, we’ll often plan a bicycle or walking tour for the 2nd day. Almost every major city has these. A good tour gives you an orientation to the city, and helps you plan where you might want to spend more time. You can also ask your tourguide questions to help you plan your trip.

A typical day might be: Tower of London in the morning, visit Tower Bridge museum, walk to the Tate Modern. Or: explore the Zitadelle in the morning, Spandau in the afternoon, and Reichstag for the 5pm tour and sunset.

We’ll typically stay in a city for several days or a week, and take day tours to outlying towns (ie, Salisbury from London). In big cities there are always tour companies that can take you on day trips.

We have a general rule that for attractions that are likely to be popular, we either book online or arrive as early as possible in the morning. You can often book museums the night before online, and skip waiting in line.

There are some attractions that need to be booked far in advance; for example, the Reichstag tour in Berlin. I knew this from the guidebook.

Some attractions are time-sensitive, or free at certain times/days. You have to plan around those.

My spouse likes to plan in advance restaurants in the area we’ll be in. Also, ice cream places. Apps like Yelp make this easier than in the past.

If your trip is a whole year out, I highly recommend you plan a short trip of 2 or 3 nights somewhere not too far from where you are, in the meantime. That will give you confidence and experience organizing a trip; what to pack, how to plan, etc. This is not essential, but should help give you confidence.

Hope this helps.