This is not a sponsored post. All the brands mentioned in this post are personal recommendations from The City Next Door team.
While 2020 was not the best year to fulfil your travelling dreams, it’s important to remember that not everything is lost and things will slowly go back to normal with time. There are some small things we can still do to plan our future and keep that bucket list alive. We hope this post will give you a bit of inspiration and reignite your travelling dreams.
Create your own VIP bucket list
If you are a traveller, it can be overwhelming when you think about that long bucket list of yours, especially in 2020 when most of our trips were cancelled!
This is when editing and organising come to play. Make a list of maximum 3 destinations you would like to visit next year. Organise options in order of preference or distance, placing first that place you’re dying to go for (visualize!).
You can also have a bit of variety choosing a destination in different places of the world, some closer, easier to reach and another more distant option, maybe even in a different continent than yours. This will make the list even more exciting!
Creating this VIP Bucket List (we highly recommend including Abruzzo on your list!) will make your trips feel like a more attainable goal as well as also doing something towards making this happen. At the end of 2021 even if you manage to visit only one or two destinations of your lists, it will still feel like a victory for your travelling dreams!
Think big but try small
We all love to go to THE famous stunning big cities around the world, but sometimes these destinations while being awesome, can’t offer you a full real experience of the place you’re visiting.
A really good alternative is to look for smaller cities or regions within the country you want to travel. This also will have multiple positive benefits including you’ll be supporting the local community and small business; paying fair prices and not huge amounts just because it’s popular. Less crowded places will also be beneficial especially after the pandemic is over; and lastly but not less important it will offer you a real experience where you can get to know the place, their traditions and culture.
You don’t know where to start? We tell you how to do this
A) Decide your destination. We choose Italy of course, full of beautiful places like Abruzzo 😉
B) Think how far you are willing to travel by train, bus or car from your destination airport. Are you willing to travel far and for many hours? Or do you want something simple and quick just one or two hours away from the airport?
C) Open Google Maps, choose your destination (better already know which airport is in your destination) and check which regions or cities seem to be close. The website allows you to choose where you are coming from and where you want to go, providing an accurate estimation of how much it will take you using a car, train and even bike which is incredibly useful when planning.
D) Search on the internet your possible destination and choose according to what is your objective for this trip: just relax, maybe hike, visit some beaches, etc
After doing this research and taking into consideration your personal goals, you will have a new possible place to discover! You can apply this technique to any country you’d wish to go. This is also a fun and exciting way to discover new places you have never heard of and discover less-popular gems.
Plan even without having a date!
After choosing your destination/s sometimes we just wait until the last minute to start planning, and sometimes we don’t even do it! Good news is, planning will give you the possibility of mastering your trip, adding new places to go, new dishes to try and activities. We all love a bit of improvisation but always works better when you have some direction, especially when travelling to a new place and you don’t want to waste your precious time.
A good option is to create a new document on your Drive if you’re using Gmail (It’s free!), call it “Trip Planner – [City/Country 2021]” for example, and start creating your form! Divide this document into categories according to your goals or what do you wish to do ideally on a trip.
For example, we would add one called food because we are food lovers! Here we will start adding dishes we would like to try in the place we wish to travel. Then you can refine your list and look for the best places in town where this food is served. Add the name of the possible restaurants next to it. You can be as specific as you want!
Creating this masterplan will allow you to feel you are working towards a concrete goal and when the time comes you will be ready to go for it. Keep this list on your favourites or create a shortcut so it’s always present and easy to access. You can take even months nurturing this list slowly and perfecting it when you don’t even realise you will have your own guide!
If you would like to use our template, please leave a comment in our post, we will share it on our next newsletter 🙂
Start saving some coins!
Yes, saving is not an easy activity for most of us. But nowadays that we are spending more time inside our house, going out less and not travelling a lot, it’s a perfect opportunity to cut down a bit of your unnecessary Amazon shopping and start saving for your next trips! 🙂
Nowadays are some really good options to do that. Apps like Monzo allows you to connect your main account and create “pots” where you can set aside as much or little you want. You can create a pot called “Travelling 2021” and set aside an amount every payday. For example, 5% to 10% of your total monthly salary would be a really good option!
Another one worth trying is Plum. This app allows you to connect your account and set pots, but also you are able to configure your “brain” where you can configure how the app set money aside for you.
You can set automatic savings weekly based on your transactions, even choose if you are willing to save a lot (beast mode) or just a little bit (shy). There are many options to choose from. Apart from that, the app offers you a rounds up option which basically means every morning the app will round up all your transactions and set this money aside.
Both options are definitely worth to try, and you’ll have terrific savings without even realizing in no time!
We hope that this post gave you that bit of motivation needed to overcome the covid19 blues and start planning your trips for 2021! Please share with us your VIP Bucket List for 2021 in the comments section below, get Abruzzo on that list and drop us a line if you need tips and advice when planning your trip to the greenest part of Italy!