As we start to plan our next trip I found myself immersed in travel books and searching the web for inspiration.

I love travel books, travel programs and just surfing the web about travel. I am watching Michael Portello’s train journeys at the moment. Even Escape to The Country and Escape to the Continent have provided useful travel trips. Travel books are fun, but more recently I have found that they are more useful to people planning their trips than to us!

So I thought I’d mention how we have used blogs and forums and some of the sources we have relied upon for inspiration and valuable information in our travel.

I found out about rail travel from the man in seat 61. Relying on Mark Smith’s advice I have graduated from having the travel agent book my train travel to being completely comfortable travelling through Europe, reading timetables and making my own bookings. Sure I have missed trains and misread timetables but that has led to some pretty amazing experiences like an unforgettable Bastille weekend in Paris when we should have been on the train to the Amalfi Coast!

As we plan our trips I type a country or place into the search engine and see what I can find.  Starting broad with something like “driving holiday in Scotland” or “A week in Florence” and then get more specific. On our recent trip to the UK, we wanted to explore the Highlands of Scotland. The books had some interesting information, but it was when we searched on the internet that we found out about the amazing Northcoast 500. We planned our day in San Gimignano with the benefit of blog posts about getting around Tuscany. We had a day walking the streets of Florence based solely on posts we had found and spent another in Rome based entirely on a search for unusual museums of Rome!

In Sicily, we tapped into the vibe based on many great blogs – The Dangerously Truthful Diary of a Sicilian Housewife, (I am not sure she is still living in Sicily but the information is still relevant), Rochelle’s  Sicily inside and out  to name just two but there were so many more that we stumbled on by simply typing in the name of the place we wanted to visit. Had it not been for Jules told me’s post on Naples Pizza I doubt we would have had one of the great weeks of our life in Naples.

We would have found life much more difficult without the help of Trip Advisor’s Travel Forums. I think Vagabonda, a major contributor to the Trip Advisor Sicily Forums truly knows everything about Sicily!

However, without doubt, our go to site is Chris Christensen’s Amateur Traveler. It’s a regular podcast that centre’s on a location, area or country. A podcast to listen to while walking the dog or sitting at the computer so you can search the places his guest mentions. But it’s better than that because each podcast has a companion page with the full transcript and links to key places mentioned.

We made decisions about Rome and Lazio based on Amateur Traveler pods. We thought about a trip to the Italian Alps based on a fascinating pod – the weather was against us but it did open our eyes to agriturismo.  Sure the pods and sites take a very American view but it requires little effort to adapt the thought process from an American view to our own, which in our case is Australian. For example, references to they drive on the wrong side of the road usually means for us Aussies that they actually drive on the right side of the road!

Chris podcast on train travel in Wales definitely influenced our decision to make a steam train journey a must on a recent trip. As we plan our next trip, his pods on Israel have been invaluable.

I’d bought a Lonely Planet Guide to get a heads up on travel in Israel but found the Amateur Traveler pods on Israel and Jerusalem invaluable in our planning for a possible side trip when we venture to Europe, hopefully later this year. The interviews with Douglas Duckett (Episodes 167 and 192) are perhaps the most useful insights alongside the Man in Seat in 61 that I have ever had in all our travel planning.

As I eluded to earlier in this post, we also use Trip Advisor’s forums. People are so willing to share their thoughts.  How to get somewhere? How long should I stay? What should I do? Most questions have already been asked so just trawling the forums gives great ideas and useful practical information. And if the answer isn’t already there, post a question.

It’s also interesting to see which of my own travel posts get the most views. Overwhelmingly it has been a post on Piazza Armerina, and the link to a local driver who will deliver you to the Villa Romana del Casale. I found the driver, who was excellent, in a blog post by someone who like us was trying to work out how to get there without hiring a car.

A final word on blogs. I tend to avoid commercial blogs on locations as I find personal accounts give the best feel. As an example, if you haven’t read Picnic at the Cathedral, you should, the Wife of Bath’s writings are both informative and hilarious.

Palermo Street Food Tour – I found this from reading a blog!