siastra travel

1) Be smart

When you have a job you need to be smart with the holiday you take, you also need to factor in other circumstances when you may want to use your annual leave. I’m lucky with my job I don’t work weekends so this helps when planning trips. I’d say last year I went on three big trips

• Las Vegas
• Dubai
• Turkey

With these trips combined I used a total of 12 days annual leave and one of these trips fell on a bank holiday which leads me onto point two…

2) Use your bank holidays

If you can make the most out of the bank holidays, they’ll become your best-friend. In 2023 we had a total of nine bank holidays. While prices may slightly increase just think about how many places you could visit.

If like me you want to travel with your work besties but can’t all get the same time off, then this helps plan trips with them. Me and the girls managed to do a weekend in Milan and Lake Como.

3) Weekends

If you’re lucky to get weekends off then I’d recommend taking trips either Friday-Saturday, Saturday-Sunday or Sunday-Monday. I feel most places in Europe you can easily do over a weekend. This is how I managed to go to so many different countries last year.

• Denmark and Sweden
• Ireland
• Switzerland
• Norway
• Lithuania
• Italy – Venice
• Romania

These trips were all taken over a weekend with no annual leave taken. I personally felt like I was able to see everything I wanted to in each place.

I know this may not be for everyone but for me this has worked and I don’t feel like I’ve missed out on anything.

4) Research

If you’re anything like me and a little bit spontaneous then you know when we want to go somewhere we’ll book the trip and worry about everything else later. However, sometimes we have to stop and think about where we’re going and what to do in each place.

These are the things I tend to plan:

• Flight times
• Activities
• Food and drink spots

If you’re only going to a country for a weekend then flight times are so important. There’s no point getting a flight that will get you there at 5pm. This does require a lot of early mornings and late nights. But I promise you it’s all worth it.

When I go away I don’t like to have a strict itinerary as you want to be able to discover some hidden gems however it’s good to have a few things you may want to do booked to avoid disappointment when you’re there.

I’m also such a foodie and love to try new food when visiting a new place so I like to look out for cool restaurants and drink spots.

If you’re wondering the other places I visited in 2023 then here you go:

• Poland
• South of France and Monaco
• Albania

As I’m someone who loves to travel I hope these tips help anyone else in a similar position to me.

If you would like to see how I spend my time when travelling then please feel free to check out my YouTube channel for more travel related videos.

https://m.youtube.com/@Siastratravel

You can also visit my travel page on Instagram where I share travel related content.

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