How Can I Make My Travelling Dreams A Reality?
[ 20 September 2007 ]
“For the past year I’ve had my heart set on going to the UK and travelling for a few months, and I was meant to be saving up all year, but so far I haven’t got one cent to my name, it’s so depressing! I want this to happen so bad, and yet I feel like it is so unattainable, how can I realise my dream?”
Travelling is so much fun! It’s one of my favourite things to do. I love love LOVE the thrill of deciding on a location, doing a whole lot of research, booking hotels & finding good deals, making lists of places to go, packing my suitcase, boarding the plane & the wonder of walking off at the other end!
An idea without a plan is just a dream, & will probably never happen. Picture your journey to England as a bunch of stones across a pool. You need to hop from one to the other, & take steps across to get to the other side. You also need to know how to get from each stone to the next.
In my experience, usually we put off doing things (or they don’t rank highly on our priority list) because we’re not really that excited about whatever it is. Maybe you have some kind of underlying fear about going there — like that you can’t afford it or perhaps you’ve never travelled alone. Put these thoughts out of your mind (use EFT!) & start moving forward! It’s time to start believing you can make it happen. Seriously, I think about 80% of achieving a goal is in knowing you can do it! Millions of people visit the United Kingdom every year, & there is nothing to say you can’t be one of them!
You need to get really enthusiastic about going to the UK. There are about a billion ways you can do this. Rent movies set in Britain, search Flickr for photos of the places you hope to go, make a journal full of ideas of things to do, start talking to people in Britain online, ask your friends who have been about their travels, read travel books & start discussing your plans with someone who is excited for you! Cut out pictures from magazines or travel brochures of the places that appeal to you, & stick them where you’ll see them all the time — at your desk, above your bed or opposite the shower. The more you see these images, the more fired-up you will get! It will also help to focus your intentions & remind you of what you want to do.
The next thing to do is start pricing the trip. Since I am under 26, I almost always use STA Travel for my air travel. I get major discounts because of my age, & I am cool with that! That link will take you to the American site, but there are branches all over the world. Have a look at their deals & get an approximate cost of what a return flight will cost you. The price will change depending on what time of the year you want to go, so take that into consideration. You’ll also need to check out hotels to see what their rates are like. Try Wotif for discounted rooms & Virtual Tourist for hotel reviews!
Flights & accomodation are your major costs, so you should have some idea of a ballpark figure. Then you need to work out how much money you’ll need for food, sight-seeing, buses or trains or taxis, taxes, travel insurance, etc. Of course, the more you budget for, the better, since it means you don’t have to be super-careful about what you spend & don’t have to subsist on noodles or dry chicken sandwiches for the length of your trip!
Okay, once you have those numbers written down, you can start to make a plan. How much money do you have left over at the end of the week, after you’ve paid rent & bills & been to the supermarket? Work out how much of that you could feasibly put into saving for your trip. If you put every spare cent towards your trip, you might start to go a bit nutty, so try not to make a budget you can’t stick to (or that will make you miserable). Then, divide your total estimated travel costs by this number. Your result is how many weeks it will take you to obtain the money needed.
Open a savings account (if you don’t have one already) & organise for an automatic payment to go in there the day after you receive your pay. Then sit back & watch the money build up. When you’re well on your way, start to make your travel arrangements. Don’t dip into your savings unless there is an absolute emergency! Trust me!
Read up on where you want to go (check out books like Wallpaper City Guide: London 2008, You Go Girl London: A Travel Guide Just For The Girls, Time Out London & Frommer’s Irreverent Guide to London). Set a photo of London as the wallpaper on your computer at work. Develop a taste for cornish pasties, bangers & mash & black pudding (just kidding about the black pudding). Collect your friends’ addresses so you can send them postcards of Prince Charles’ head. Work out how to get to Harrods & promise yourself that you will eat at Ladurée (on the ground floor). Read Old London Town, Putting The ‘Rave’ In Travel Since 1983! & How To Pack A Suitcase, all by yours truly! Read Barbelith’s suggestions for fun in London. Look at London in film. You get the idea!
Finally, remember to take some postcards, & have a jolly good time, old chap!
Super-love & cupcakes,
Gala 
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Wish I read this before I went to London last year.
.It was still heaps of fun though!
My cousin and I have been planning to go on a summer-long Europe adventure since we were about 10 years old. When I got into the internet about a year ago, I started collecting info about travel (not just in Eurpoe) on a blog (http://www.world-wide-dreams.blogspot.com/) so that everything would be in one place when the time came to finally plan the trip. It’s never too early! There’s some useful stuff there if anyone wants to look, even though I made it just for my own benefit. The coolest thing I found is this online community of people who agree to host international visitors for free so that they can enjoy the cultural exchange and meet new people.
Travelling is alot of fun, I recently went on a trip to the UK (that was more of a family trip, but still it was great) and I went to Paris as well. Loads of fun! The shopping was amazing, a word of advice…The Champs Elysees is more of a tourist, sight-seeing thing, rather than actually buying stuff from it. It’s hugely expensive, and unless your a rich oil sheikh or summat you aren’t really going t boy anything…
unless you go their Sephora’s. It’s HUGE, and very reasonable. I loved it and but perhaps…a little too much makeup but it was loads of funny at any rate!
Awesome article!! I already forwarded it to my 2 girlfriend. This article was so magically timed for me that it’s a lil spooky (lol). We actually made plans last night to do a week-long trip to somewhere (we haven’t decided on location yet) next summer. Thanks to your tip, I already started a new automatic transfer to a separate savings account just for the trip. I wish I could do a few months somewhere exotic, but I work full time + go to school part time, so that’s just not very practical right now. However, traveling is great no matter what & a week would be sufficient for now!! =)
hmmm i never plan ….not intentionally… it just happens that way…when i used to live in europe it was simple really.. just go buy 25euro easy jet ticket and you can be from berlin to barcelona for a weekend! cheap! hence i have been all over europe and middle east..this november im going to china to continue my language course… traveling inspires me!
Ooooh spooky timing, you’re good at writing articles just as your readers need them!! I’m planning a month long trip around Europe at the moment! I’m going to get an InterRail pass and travel Europe by train! I’m so excited!
It’s a bit late but Happy Birthday and I’m glad you had a fab day! And congrats on the make up course! I bet it will be loads of fun!
You might not remember but you gave me some great advice a while ago, I took it and now I’m living life to the full! Doing things that I want to do to make myself happy! I’ve never been so secure in who I am and a lot of it’s down to your support! Also I don’t know how I got along without EFT!!!
And a tip to anyone visiting the UK: don’t forget us here in the North! London is amazing but the North of England and Scotland have tons to offer and have loads of amazingly beautiful places you can visit!!
Thanks for this Awesome Article!
My hubby and I are trying to plan a trip to Hawaii for November-A little more attainable than the UK but still pricy.
Anyway, Have a wonderful day. :)
I loved this article. I’m going to start a savings account today! Or rather, add some money to it so it’s actually doing some saving…
You’re right about the “idea without a plan is just a dream” thing. Totally. I’ve just learned that, and you put it perfetly in words. Actually everything I’ve found in your site (I just discovered you less than a week ago) I’ve found just when I have needed it. These days I’ve been under a lot of stress and you’ve quite helped me.
I loved this article because I want to go europe next summer with some friends and this is a very good idea. I’ll start right away. The hard part’s gonna be my parent’s permission…they say I’m too young to go on a backpack trip alone.
Hey and happy belated birthday. You’re awesome. Have fun ballooning.
If you’re hoping to stay for a while, you might look into volunteering somewhere in exchange for room and board. After college, I fulfilled a dream of living in Europe for a year by contacting a friend of a friend who ran an American school and working out a deal to help out at the school in exchange for an extra room in a faculty apartment. The “board” part was a bit tougher to do legally (since I didn’t have a work visa), but they just paid the 2 other teachers in the apartment a little extra and told them to buy groceries for me too!
At the time, I had dozens of people tell me wistfully that they wished they could do something similar, and I always wanted to say “So do it, then.” I didn’t have any secret / connections / money / whatever that they didn’t; it’s just that I stopped wishing and actually DID something about it….
Good luck!!
Im addicted to your blog.
I only check 4 sites everyday and yours is one of them.
Oh and I love the pictures you took for paraphrenila, you look so cute and their necklaces are super rad.
Great tips! I’m hoping to study abroad in London next year, so I will definitely look back on your articles about the topic. :)
PS: I didn’t know you were born on 9/13! Me too! For some reason it’s always thrilling to find someone with the same birthday as me, haha.
i completely fell in love with the postcards of Prince Charles’ head when i was in London. SO cool!!
hurray! London! i leave in 43 dyas! for real! :D ive been planning this trip for like a year now. i am so very excited. my boyfriend lives there- it will be wonderful to see him- and im going to be an au pair for a little while. and i’m going to paris for new years eve- another dream of mine!
i agree with gala- making a journal, having pictures and inspirational messages and quotes around the place is a really excellent motivational tool.
my only advice is don’t let anyone drag ou down- a lot of people have ried to tal me out of my dreams because they say im too young or too inexperienced. if you have a dream, follow it- with all your heart!
xxx
Hey Gala! Thanks so much for doing this article, made my day :)
And today, i got that all important job that i need to save up ! hooray ..
i’m going to start doing some of the things you mentioned, there so practical..
Hopefully this time next yr i can be looking at your blog from ol’ London town hehe..
love !
Oh. My. God. I had a Mary Tyler-Moore flash back looking at THAT picture!!!
You can tell how old I feel now ….
Great tips Gala. And I’m glad you want to come to the UK. I have another suggestion to help you fund your trip. Check out www.arvon.org They run the best writing courses in the UK.
You should apply to teach a one week course (writing a column for Cosmo will give you a lot of credibility). You will have fun on the course and they will also pay you for teaching for the week.
Perfect timing for me as well – I bought a ticket on Wednesday for South Korea, from Toronto! I’ve wanted to go to that part of the world for a long time, and I have a friend who’s teaching english there at the moment. I woke up on Monday of this week and decided that it was silly for me to keep waiting around for something to happen – Time to take charge and make them happen!
I leave in a month!
:D What’s wrong with black pudding??? Perfectly good and tasty food!
Actually I seem to remember a thing in the paper recently from the tourist board: they were saying that apparently visitors to Ireland are put off by the full Irish breakfast they are served in hotels and the tourist board want hoteliers and B&B owners to consider other options or something. Maybe the black pudding was the problem, who knows?
English people tend to think black pudding is a bit weird though, and you don’t get white pudding in England at all…
:) I second that!!!
Black pudding is awesome. (And I love the full breakfast) Also you are right, english people don’t generally get it, I am scottish and my english friends tend to find it … bewildering!!
Ps. Hi Gala! I have been without internet all summer so missed a fair bit :( but Happy Birthday and congrats on all the cool stuff you have done/achieved. Its wierd, so many new people – you’re famous!
My sister is living in London, and she had her first son there! I haven’t meet him :( But it seems that next year we’re gonna go there…I’m SO excited! I have never go to Europe :D! I’m planning to go with my boyfriend too, so we can escape my mom’s plans and maybe go to Croatia or Italy…Making traveling plans is awesome!
I have just in the last 2 days finally made up my mind as to whether I should come to Melbourne in March, and have decided yes! I’m quite sure I’m the only Kiwi I know who hasn’t been to Australia yet so I’m now making all my plans and it’s soo exciting. I’m going to be bouncing off the walls for the next 6 months.