Travel Resources

G Adventures runs small-group trips with expert local guides. Their thoughtfully planned trips include cultural experiences which would be hard to plan on your own, and their itineraries offer enough independent time so you won’t feel smothered.

Intrepid Travel plans small-group adventures led by expert local guides.  They keep things eco-friendly and deeply connected to local communities, so you get an authentic experience of the places you visit.

TourRadar is a marketplace where you can compare multi-day tours by destination, operator, travel style, itinerary, and departure dates.  **Important: Not every tour listed on TourRadar is carefully vetted.  Read reviews, and don’t book anything from a poorly (or thinly) reviewed tour operator.

Urban Adventures runs guided day tours.  With a local guide you can ditch standard tourist traps for real neighborhoods, food, culture, and stories you would likely miss on your own.  Urban Adventures is my go-to – the only downside is that they operate in only ~50 cities worldwide. If there is a tour at your destination, consider it.

A food tour is a great way to kick off any trip. Eating Europe offers food-centered walking tours, cooking classes, and experiences that connect you with local flavors, neighborhood stories, and give you a better sense of place.  Like the name suggests – check it out if you will be in Europe.

Context Travel is for curious travelers who hate boring, crowded tours. They pair you with local experts – like historians, architects, or chefs – for deep-dive, small-group walks that feel less like a lecture and more like exploring with a brilliant friend.   If the price is too steep for a private tour guide, search on “small group tours”.

Get Your Guide is an online marketplace where you can search for and book tours, activities, and attraction tickets worldwide. Think Expedia but for experiences – tickets, day trips, all in one app.

Viator is owned by TripAdvisor and is a large marketplace of tours, day trips, tickets, transfers, and activities.  If I don’t find what I need at Get Your Guide, I’ll check Viator.

Klook is a booking app built for Asia-Pacific travel – JR Passes, theme park tickets, eSIMs, tours, transfers, all in one place. Some tickets in Asia are difficult to purchase directly with international credit cards.  You can usually find and book what you need through Klook.

Google Flights lets you filter by airline, departure or arrival times, number of layovers, and you can exclude specific layover airports or airlines.  I usually run the filters I want and then sort the remaining flight options by trip duration.  The tool is really powerful, and the first place I turn when I already know where I need to go and am looking for the best route.

Skyscanner has two main benefits over Google Flights.  Skyscanner looks beyond major carriers and so they sometimes find cheaper “hidden ticket” fares that Google doesn’t show. Skyscanner also includes more regional airlines and local carriers than Google Flights (particularly in Europe and Asia).

Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights) is a subscription service that tracks down insane airfare discounts and mistake fares. You sign up with your home airport(s), and Going alerts you when prices hit rock bottom. If you like a good deal, Going might be for you.

SeatMaps shows you an airplane’s layout – including legroom, seat features, and potential drawbacks before you choose where to sit.  Ever have a window seat with no window?  Or an entertainment system box takes half your leg room? Or a seat that doesn’t recline?  SeatMaps can help you identify and avoid that. It’s free.

Booking.com is a one-stop shop for hotels. It has a great map feature so you can see exactly where your hotel is related to the rest of the city, and tons of reviews so you have a good idea of what you’ll get when you book.  Not only for hotels, it also lists apartments, guesthouses, and boutique properties all over the world.

VRBO (Vacation Rentals by Owner) is the ultimate tool for families or group trips.  I love VRBO because you can filter properties based on very specific features.  Need a waterfront property with 3 bedrooms and at least 1 king bed?  VRBO filter for the win. The filter is better than AirBNB, and fees are lower, so the same properties are usually a little bit cheaper.

Plum Guide curates stylish vacation rentals for travelers who want a beautiful place to stay without sorting through endless listings.  Their critics manually vet every single home, rejecting 97% of them. You get gorgeous, design-forward rentals with zero risk of arriving to a sketchy, disappointing house.

TrustedHousesitters connects animal lovers with house-sitting stays in exchange for caring for someone’s pets.  If I knew about this when I was 25, I might have just traveled forever.  On the flip side, if you HAVE pets (like me) you can find vetted housesitters to come take care of your pets and house while you are out exploring the world.

Squaremouth is a travel insurance marketplace that takes the guesswork out of coverage. You just plug in your trip details to compare side-by-side policies from dozens of top providers – sorting instantly by price, medical limits, or trip cancellation perks.  Squaremouth guarantees their prices are the best and will act as an advocate if you need to file a claim.

MedJet isn’t technically insurance, it’s a membership subscription. Standard travel insurance flies you to the “nearest acceptable” hospital. If you have a MedJet subscription and are hospitalized more than 150+ miles from your home, MedJet will transport you all the way to your home hospital of choice. This is an add-on to insurance, not a replacement for it.

Google Maps is the app I reach for the most, both in my daily life and while traveling. It shows me where I am and options for how to get where I want to go.  Google Maps includes public transportation routes all over the world. It doesn’t have every option though, so if you are in Europe consider checking City Mapper.

Citymapper is a super-detailed transit app that can blend subways, buses, trains, scooters, and rideshares into a single route. You get step-by-step walking directions, and it even tells you which train car to board so you exit right next to your station stairs. It’s more accurate than Google in many locations outside the US.

Trainline is a one-stop app for booking European train and bus travel – 270+ operators like Eurostar, SNCF, and Trenitalia all in one place.  Compare prices, get digital tickets, save with ticket-splitting.  Not an operator itself, just makes booking way less of a headache if you are planning multi-city trips in Europe.

Discover Cars is a car rental comparison app – like Skyscanner but for cars. Pulls deals from 1000+ suppliers (Hertz, Avis, local companies) across 150+ countries, with transparent pricing and free cancellation. Compare and book in one place..

Wanderlog is a free trip-planning app – build your whole itinerary day-by-day, pin spots on a map, add your flights and hotels, and collaborate with your friends in real-time.  I love Wanderlog.

Splid is a group expense-splitting app. Enter each expense, and it calculates who owes who – no more awkward math at the end of a trip with friends or family. You can also specify who took part for each expense, so if someone joins partway through the trip, they only split costs from the point they arrived.

NordVPN is a heavyweight security app built for business travelers and remote workers. It delivers fast speeds, blocks malicious links on sketchy public Wi-Fi, and bypasses censorship firewalls when traveling globally. Protect your personal data abroad with one of the most trusted names in digital security.

Surfshark is a budget-friendly VPN designed for families and group trips. It offers a massive perk: unlimited simultaneous device connections on a single plan. You can protect everyone’s phones, tablets, and laptops at once without paying extra. It has a very simple interface and is easy to activate.

Holafly focuses entirely on duration-based data packages (like 5 days, 14 days, etc.), making it a stress-free choice. While it remains an excellent, worry-free option for typical vacationers who want to browse and stream without tracking meters, “unlimited” plans like Holafly’s can throttle down to a crawl after heavy daily use (typically between 2GB and 3GB per day), and tethering is limited to under 1GB. If you need guaranteed, continuous high-speed data, grab one of Airalo’s larger fixed-gigabyte packages instead.

Airalo is the gold standard for straightforward, budget-friendly travel data. It sells fixed, transparent data chunks across 200+ countries, making it incredibly simple to track your exact usage and top up mid-trip. Download before you land, and connect right away.  Airalo has multiple tier plans – pay only for what you need, and top it off inside the app if you need to. There are no restrictions on data usage or hotspotting if you buy a fixed data package.