If you are like me, you will want to see more than just the city you are living in while studying abroad. Take this chance to see tons of new places all around where you are! In my last article, I talked a little about some of the weekend trips that we have taken. For the first three weeks here, I only had class on Tuesday and Thursday, meaning I could leave on Friday and come back on Monday and spend a whole long weekend in another city. We chose two cities north of Sydney and had vastly different experiences in each place.
Cairns was home to some of the best scuba diving in the world and an amazing rainforest, and at the Gold Coast we got to hold koalas and sand board. After spending hours planning each trip, here is some of my best advice for getting the most out of your short vacations:
- If possible, give yourself the whole weekend. If you have class on Friday, try to leave Friday night and come back Monday morning before class. Leaving Saturday and coming back on Sunday makes it increasingly difficult to find time for the things you want to do. Most of the adventures we took left as early as 5:45am and got back at 5pm, but they gave us the best ways to accomplish our agenda.
- Find the cheapest airlines for your area (for us, JetStar and TigerAir, in Europe, try EasyJet) and search for flights directly on their websites, instead of on Hipmunk or other search engines that search hundreds of flights. I would definitely recommend using Hipmunk first, to get an idea of the cheapest airlines, however often those websites are an underestimation of the actual cost so it is best to look on the airline’s actual websites.
- It depends on your style, but I loved staying in hostels. They are incredibly cheap (usually around $15/night) for a pretty high-quality stay. Most of them are very modern and have pools, bars, and kitchens, and they host or advertise bar crawls and other things that allow you to interact with more people your age. It is a great way to get to know the city and you can meet some incredible people. I also found all of them very safe and closely checked the reviews before I booked. If you are looking for a great website, we found all of our hostels on hostelworld.com. Also, when booking hostels with multiple people, make sure to book together so you are not placed in separate rooms (we learned this the hard way). Booking together also allowed us to get upgraded to a private room in one of the hostels!
- Make a google doc! Especially if you are traveling with other people, this is one of the most helpful things we have used. First, I wrote down all of the things that I wanted to do, and then used that (extensive) list to narrow down the things I could do within the time that I had. Once you have that, adding a daily itinerary really cuts down on the stress of daily travel.
I hope these few tips help diffuse some of the trip-planning stress. Try not to get too caught up in the logistics and allow yourself to enjoy this magical experience!
