Sunday, January 15, 2017
Planning (The Lean Way)
OK, so perhaps I have been brainwashed a little too much, but sometimes work techniques are useful at home. With our trip only 5 months away, our anxiety is growing. I found myself lying in bed listing off all the things we still have to do, and I needed to get it out of my head. The power of the post-it on display....
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Anyone want to make a fortune?
Start selling travel insurance!
An open ended travel adventure freaks out insurance companies. After an exhaustive effort trying to find travel insurance to cover our adventure, we found literally one company that is willing to insure a one year trip that did not have a clear end date, World Nomads. Every other travel insurance company limits their coverage to about 3 months, and wants to know your entire itinerary including your return flight information. Yeah, we can't do that. From all accounts of fellow world traveling nomads, World Nomads seems like a pretty legitimate option, but we'll see.... So, if you want to try your hand in catering to the nomadic insurance field, you'll have limited competition.
A note about travel insurance, for those interested. The plan is for:
1. Trip Cancellation (if you can't start your trip for family emergencies)
2. Trip Interruption (if you need to come home for family emergencies)
3. Emergency Evacuation (terrorism and other bad things)
4. Emergency Healthcare
5. Car Rental insurance (your domestic policy very likely doesn't cover international rentals)
6. Baggage (in case stolen or lost)
An open ended travel adventure freaks out insurance companies. After an exhaustive effort trying to find travel insurance to cover our adventure, we found literally one company that is willing to insure a one year trip that did not have a clear end date, World Nomads. Every other travel insurance company limits their coverage to about 3 months, and wants to know your entire itinerary including your return flight information. Yeah, we can't do that. From all accounts of fellow world traveling nomads, World Nomads seems like a pretty legitimate option, but we'll see.... So, if you want to try your hand in catering to the nomadic insurance field, you'll have limited competition.
A note about travel insurance, for those interested. The plan is for:
1. Trip Cancellation (if you can't start your trip for family emergencies)
2. Trip Interruption (if you need to come home for family emergencies)
3. Emergency Evacuation (terrorism and other bad things)
4. Emergency Healthcare
5. Car Rental insurance (your domestic policy very likely doesn't cover international rentals)
6. Baggage (in case stolen or lost)
Perfect Timing (and the nuts and bolts of planning)
When we first conceived of this adventure 5 long years ago, back in the stone ages of mobile technology, we had hoped that by the time we launched, technology would gives us all the tools we needed to make life easy. Guess what? It has!
While we are still finding our way and figuring out which sites and apps are best, after several months of daily research and planning, here is how we are all putting it together.
Blog Site: Blogger - Gotta put it all out there, right? After tooling around with several, we found the simplicity of Blogger and integration with Google was best for us. The app makes it super easy to add content.
Air Travel: Google Flights - Holy cow google has made finding the best flight a total breeze. Forget Expedia, Kayak, Priceline and all those other brokers, just go to the source. Google scans everything, including the source airlines and serves up every possible option in both a calendar view as well as on Google Maps. Given our complete flexibility in when and where we want to fly, Google Flights is giving us the ability to save huge dollars by telling us if it's better to fly the day before and from/to a different airport. In fact, we completely changed our flow through the United Kingdom because it turns out that it's cheapest to fly from Dublin to Tanzania, not from London as we originally assumed. Once we have found the right price, we go straight to the actual airline site and purchase flights there. Cuts out the middle man. BTW, we are doing way better on flights than if we did the around the world ticket from Star Alliance (lots of people ask us if we are doing that option).
What to Do: Tripadvisor - This site has such a huge community with comments and feedback on every place, service, tour, etc, etc you can think of. When a thought pops in our head, Tripadvisor is our first stop. Tripadvisor was indispensable for planning our African Safari. Nice app too.
What to Do - Part II: Google Maps - To confirm where we are staying and our access to everything that an area has to offer, google maps is brilliant. It is so loaded with pictures, links, distances, etc, etc. that we can ensure we're heading to the right place.
Deep Dive about a Country: Lonely Planet (on Kindle Unlimited) - If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you have access to the entire Lonely Planet collection of books for free. Lots of great insite on culture and things to do.
Accommodations: Airbnb - Definitely the best thing to happen in world travel in the past 5 years! When traveling with a family of five, standard hotels become extremely expensive. If it were just Nicole and I, we could easily get by on traditional hotel/motel single rooms. But we need an extra room, laundry, and a place to prepare some meals (don't want to eat out every meal to keep costs down). Renting a house or apartment is our only option, and Airbnb has made it a total breeze for both the renter and the landlord. Given the ease, there are Airbnb's everywhere. The app is totally awesome. As a backup, HomeAway.com (uses the VRBO database) is a secondary option.
Accommodations (standard hotels): Booking.com - Would seem that internationally, Booking.com has cornered the market on finding a standard place to stay, but also including some apartments and other types of lodging. If we can't find something on Airbnb, this is the next place to check.
Hardware: Chromebooks - The internet is everywhere now, and to keep up with schooling and planning for our next adventures, we need some light weight, compact, and frankly, super cheap hardware to get online. Chromebooks are the perfect solution. If all you need is to be on the web, they can't be beat.
Schooling: ???? - This is the next thing to figure out.....
While we are still finding our way and figuring out which sites and apps are best, after several months of daily research and planning, here is how we are all putting it together.
Blog Site: Blogger - Gotta put it all out there, right? After tooling around with several, we found the simplicity of Blogger and integration with Google was best for us. The app makes it super easy to add content.
Air Travel: Google Flights - Holy cow google has made finding the best flight a total breeze. Forget Expedia, Kayak, Priceline and all those other brokers, just go to the source. Google scans everything, including the source airlines and serves up every possible option in both a calendar view as well as on Google Maps. Given our complete flexibility in when and where we want to fly, Google Flights is giving us the ability to save huge dollars by telling us if it's better to fly the day before and from/to a different airport. In fact, we completely changed our flow through the United Kingdom because it turns out that it's cheapest to fly from Dublin to Tanzania, not from London as we originally assumed. Once we have found the right price, we go straight to the actual airline site and purchase flights there. Cuts out the middle man. BTW, we are doing way better on flights than if we did the around the world ticket from Star Alliance (lots of people ask us if we are doing that option).
What to Do: Tripadvisor - This site has such a huge community with comments and feedback on every place, service, tour, etc, etc you can think of. When a thought pops in our head, Tripadvisor is our first stop. Tripadvisor was indispensable for planning our African Safari. Nice app too.
What to Do - Part II: Google Maps - To confirm where we are staying and our access to everything that an area has to offer, google maps is brilliant. It is so loaded with pictures, links, distances, etc, etc. that we can ensure we're heading to the right place.
Deep Dive about a Country: Lonely Planet (on Kindle Unlimited) - If you have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you have access to the entire Lonely Planet collection of books for free. Lots of great insite on culture and things to do.
Accommodations: Airbnb - Definitely the best thing to happen in world travel in the past 5 years! When traveling with a family of five, standard hotels become extremely expensive. If it were just Nicole and I, we could easily get by on traditional hotel/motel single rooms. But we need an extra room, laundry, and a place to prepare some meals (don't want to eat out every meal to keep costs down). Renting a house or apartment is our only option, and Airbnb has made it a total breeze for both the renter and the landlord. Given the ease, there are Airbnb's everywhere. The app is totally awesome. As a backup, HomeAway.com (uses the VRBO database) is a secondary option.
Accommodations (standard hotels): Booking.com - Would seem that internationally, Booking.com has cornered the market on finding a standard place to stay, but also including some apartments and other types of lodging. If we can't find something on Airbnb, this is the next place to check.
Hardware: Chromebooks - The internet is everywhere now, and to keep up with schooling and planning for our next adventures, we need some light weight, compact, and frankly, super cheap hardware to get online. Chromebooks are the perfect solution. If all you need is to be on the web, they can't be beat.
Schooling: ???? - This is the next thing to figure out.....
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