Summer vacation and dealing with the heat
Photos by FarsNews.
Hints on Planning The Perfect Travel: 6 months before you go - Choose Your Destination!
Now (or even sooner) is the time to choose your general destination. There are lots of
resources on the right to help you. Remember that while Europe is quite compact compared
to the US, the travel times between countries may be longer than you think. Once you've
chosen your primary destination, you'll be able to go on to the next things on the list.
Language
Let's say you've chosen France as your destination and you'd really like to get to know
the country and its people. Well, now is the time to start thinking of learning a bit of
the language. A single beginner's course in spoken French at your local community college
will teach you the basics cheaply enough. We also have extensive resources for learning
European languages here on the About network. Please, at least think about learning the
"politeness" words--natives will thank you for trying and will likely be more receptive
to your questions. See Languages for the Tourist on the right to find out how easy it is.
Guidebooks
Once you've figured out where you'd like to spend most of your time, it may be time to
pick out a guidebook. You can purchase guidebooks that cover all of Western Europe, just
a single country, or even a province or region like Tuscany.
3-4 months before you go - Start Checking Airfares
You can start checking sooner--although we've found searching 3-4 months before your
flight is a pretty good bet; the airlines are starting to discount in order to reward
early bookers and yet there's still time to wait if prices aren't to your liking. The
airline computers are constantly revising the pricing based on the latest demand, so
the cheapest prices might turn up anytime--but you might not want to wait that long.
