Travel Planning Links

The amazing Internet helps me with Travel Planning, as always. I’ve never used tour agents, and don’t think I ever will.

Great sites that I normally go to:

Lonely Planet (typically not as informative as their printed guides, but good for basic facts, especially if one is a quite the self-proclaimed travel-idiot of any country)

Expedia (I’ve found out in recent years, that they do great flight-hotel bundles. Fantastic for short breaks which only involve a single location to bed down)

Lonely Planet’s Thorntree Forum (A place for you to ask questions and more questions. They even have neatly separated folders and threads according to countries!)

Trip Advisor (Read the reviews about accommodation. Interesting to see the amount of information discrepancy the hotel websites give and the people who stayed there. Arse-saving, in my opinion.)

Frommers  (Unlike Lonely Planet, this one has a bit more meat to chomp on.)

Rick Steves’ Europe (A wise-cracking guy with questionable hair but sensible information, American-centric.)

Bootsnall (an all-in-one sort of site, aka the “Ultimate Resource for the Independent Traveller” as they put it.)

Train Tickets

Eurail
RailEurope
Die Bahn (Great for checking out European train schedules)
Hyperdia (For Japan train schedules)

Accommodation Booking links

Hostel-World
Hotel-Base
Hotels.com
Agoda
Hostels.com
Lodging-World
BnB World
Booking.com (prices are most competitive here, I think)

Now what have I missed out?