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The best trip planner apps to make your travels easier

Booking a trip can be an exciting yet daunting task. As if booking airfare, hotel, and transportation weren't enough, you also need to consider food, sights, and attractions. As a travel lover myself, I often dread planning and preparing for a trip. Not only do I never have the time, but I often get oversaturated by the vast amount of information found online and the fear of getting scammed. 

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Over the years, I've found the best websites and apps to help smooth out the planning process. These apps help me keep track of all my reservations, send me booking reminders, and guarantee I always find the best prices -- because there is nothing worse than falling for tourist traps or overpriced offerings. 

Whether you are a spontaneous or a nitty-gritty planner traveler, ZDNET has tested and reviewed the best trip planner apps on the market. Our top pick for the best trip planner site and app is Booking.com due to its easy-to-use user interface, extensive booking capabilities, and pricing. However, since not every trip or traveler is the same, we've included several options to help you plan and stay organized during your travels. 

Keep reading to learn more about ZDNET's expert-tested and reviewed trip planner apps. 

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The best trip planner apps of 2023

Booking.com, best overall trip planner.

• Multiple bookings
• Great deals
• Can earn points from bookings and reservations
• Easy to use
• No group planning
• Can't organize bookings per trip

Booking.com features:   Platform: App and website |  Compatibility:  iOS and Android |  Pricing:  Free |  Booking:  Yes |  Group planning:  No

When planning my trips, I always make a stop at the Booking.com app, especially when reserving hotels. I find their user interface visually appealing and easy to use, and that it provides just the right amount of information I need when scrolling through hotel suggestions. Personally, I enjoy that I can add my top picks to my favorites with a quick tap of a heart, glance through reviews, look at cancellation policies, and even find out how far away hotels are from key spots. Through Booking.com, you can also book flights, car rentals, taxis, and city attractions, making it a great all-in-one place to plan and book upcoming weekend getaways or longer vacations. While I have personally never used the car rentals, taxis, or city attractions components of the app, I enjoy knowing that if I ever needed to, I can quickly hop on my phone and glance at the latest offerings. 

My favorite feature when using Booking.com to plan trips is the offers and promotions it displays for users. In the app, when you click your profile, you can see your "Genius" loyalty program status as well as discover the best deals around the world for your specific chosen dates. My only critique of Booking.com is that it does not enable group trip planning or let you organize your bookings per trip. This means if you are planning a trip with a friend, only one person can book and have access to reservations. 

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Best trip planner for organization

• Synced with e-mail inbox
• Organizes reservations no matter where you book
• Works offline
• Can't make any bookings
• Need to pay for advanced features
• UI could use an upgrade

TripIt features:   Platform:  App and website |  Compatibility: iOS and Android | Pricing: Free or $49 per year | Booking: No | Group planning: Yes

In terms of planning a trip, creating an itinerary, and keeping all your information in one place, TripIt is one of the best travel apps to keep yourself organized. When you first create an account, TripIt will sync with your inbox and automatically add all of your upcoming flights and reservations to your account. You can then modify each trip to include as little or as much information as you'd like. As someone who likes to be spontaneous when traveling, I usually only add the essentials: flight information, hotel reservations, and important documents. However, if you like to plan your trips down by the hour, you can also include activities, restaurant reservations, transportation, and more in your trip plan to share with fellow travelers.

As your trip approaches, TripIt will also send you packing reminders, give you COVID-19 travel guidance, and show transportation options. While you can get most of the essential features within the free version of the app (this is the one I use), you can also pay $49 a year to get advanced features such as check-in reminders, real-time flight alerts, point tracking, and even notifications for drops in airfare prices. 

Keep in mind that while TripIt gives you transportation options and finds places near your hotel, you cannot book or make any reservations directly from the app. The app is solely used to organize and keep track of all of your travel plans in one place, no matter where you book them. 

Best AI trip planner

• Personalized travel itinerary
• Hotel booking
• Can modify recommendations
• Group planning enabled
• Only available as a website
• No flight or restaurant booking

Guide features:   Platform: Website  Compatibility: all major browsers |  Pricing:  Free | Booking: Yes, but hotels only | Group Planning: Yes  Generative AI is everyone's favorite buzzword this year, and slowly but surely, it has been making its way across all industries -- including the travel industry. Guide is an innovative AI travel planning tool that creates personalized travel itineraries based on your preferences. (Full disclosure, it's also owned by ZDNET's sister company. It's currently in private beta, but you can join a wait list.) All you need to do is select your destination, the dates, whether you are traveling alone or in a group, your budget, and the types of activities you are looking for, and Guide will do the planning. 

After generating a trip itinerary for you based on your prompt, Guide then lets you modify and customize the itinerary to your liking. I recently used Guide to plan a six-day trip to Austin, Texas, and this was the feature I enjoyed the most, since I had specific restaurants and activities I wanted to incorporate into my trip, but I also needed some additional recommendations. While you can't book flights or restaurant reservations through Guide, you can book and find great hotel deals powered by Expedia on the platform. 

Guide will also give you an overall budget for your trip, a packing list, and a comprehensive list of things to know about your destination -- which may be helpful for some more than others. While my trip to Austin was a solo trip, Guide has a feature where you can invite other fellow travelers to collaborate in planning your trip through Guide's chatbot, GuideBot. This chatbot also works sort of like ChatGPT, where you can ask GuideBot questions about your trip, your destination, or recommendations. Keep in mind you can not ask GuideBot to directly modify your trip for you, and instead need to manually do it yourself -- believe me, I tried. 

Tripadvisor

Best trip planner app for reviews.

• Countless reviews
• Used by travelers worldwide
• Variety of information
• Booking capabilities
• Great for local spots
• Booking is not its strongest feature and you may not always find the best deals
• Doesn't vet reviews

Tripadvisor  features: Platform:  App and website |  Compatibility:  iOS and Android |  Pricing:  Free |  Booking:  Yes |  Group planning:  No

Reading customer reviews is one of the most important steps when planning a trip. While you shouldn't base all of your decisions on reviews, you should consider past customer experiences to get a feel for the brand and company you are about to trust, or the experience you are going to pay for.  When it comes to travel reviews, Tripadvisor is the best trip planner app to rely on. Since the platform has so many reviews for restaurants, activities, accommodations, and locations all over the world, it is always easy and convenient to log onto the app or website to help you make an educated decision. (However, remember that not all Tripadvisor reviews are legit, since the platform does not independently verify customer postings.) Beyond reviews, TripAdvisor also lets you book hotels, restaurants, things to do, and more while also providing detailed insights into their offerings -- including cancellation policies, ratings, and features. 

Tripadvisor's "Travelers' Choice" best-of list is also a popular part of its platform, allowing visitors to see top-rated destinations, hotels, restaurants, and things to do around the world. With Tripadvisor, you can plan a trip yourself from scratch, hire a trip designer, or get a custom itinerary built by AI. 

Best trip planner app for transportation

• Great multi-mode travel comparison
• convenient and seamless transportation booking
• Multiple currency and language availability
• Flight deals and suggestions are not the strongest
• Limited offers depending on the country or city of travel
• Not the most reliable customer service

Omio features:  Platform:  App and website |  Compatibility:  iOS and Android |  Pricing:  Free |  Booking:  Yes, transportation only |  Group planning:  No

I first discovered Omio when a friend recommended it to me while I was studying abroad in Spain, and ever since I downloaded it, it has become my go-to app for booking the best deals and fares on transportation within Europe. The concept behind Omio is simple: You plug in your departure and arrival location, including the number of people you are traveling with, and add whether you are looking for a one-way or round-trip journey. Omio will then show you the best deals by train, bus, or plane to and from your desired destination, including how much time each option will take you and the number of stops. 

The German-based travel booking site is great at aggregating travel information from multiple sites, allowing you to view all of your transportation options in one place. This is incredibly beneficial when planning trips within Europe since there are several ways you can cross each border and often various languages and regulations to keep in mind. Omio is set in English but has multiple additional languages available, as well as currency options. During my time abroad, I solely used Omio to book all of my transportation, including planning a 17-day trip across seven different European countries. Overall, using Omio was not only convenient and seamless but also helped me save hundreds of dollars by helping me maximize my travel time by switching between flights, trains, and buses. 

However, since returning from Europe, I have not used Omio as much as I thought I would -- maybe because I have a car and take most of my trips by plane. And Omio's flight deals and suggestions are not the strongest compared to Booking.com or Skyscanner's, which heavily focus on flight deals. I have also found they have some limitations depending on the country or city you are traveling in. Be mindful of the deals and tickets you buy through Omio since some tickets are non-refundable, and some customers complain their customer service is not the best -- although I have yet to have any issues with them. 

What is the best trip planner app?

Booking.com gets our vote for the best trip planner app due to its wide selection of accommodations, its points and promotions offerings, and its easy-to-use user interface. Not only does Booking.com help you find the best deals throughout your trip, but it will also help you stay organized throughout your trip by keeping all of your reservations in one place. To determine which trip planner app or combination of trip planners is best for you, check out this comparison chart below. 

Which is the right trip planner app for you?

The best trip planner app ultimately depends on your travel and planning style. If you like booking and planning everything in one place while also earning points and getting great deals, then Booking.com is your top app. However, if you are looking for a place to keep all of your accommodations, reservations, and activity details organized, then TripIt is a better app for you. Check out the following chart to help you find the best trip planner app or a combination of apps for you to plan your next adventure. 

How did we choose these trip planner apps?

To find the best trip planner apps, we drew upon real-life experiences and tested their performance and capabilities during our latest trips. Ultimately, we weighted the following factors when choosing which trip planners to include on our list: 

• Features: Each app can vary significantly with the features it offers, whether it is solely to book flights and hotels, help you plan your next trip using AI, or help you find the best deals and booking information, each app on this list can help you address several common inconveniences that present themselves while planning that next adventure.  
• Compatibility: An app is of little use if it does not work with your devices, so we look to see what compatibility each trip-planning app offers and which platforms you can access it from. Personally, I enjoy apps that combine an app and website component since this quickly helps me switch between my wide computer screen and my tiny yet portable iPhone screen. 
• Customer reviews: We study real customer reviews and ratings to evaluate customer satisfaction and service. This is incredibly important since most times when you travel, you visit an unknown city or country, and you should be mindful of past experiences others have had. 
• Cost : Most trip planner apps are free, but you may have to upgrade to receive special access to exclusive features or deals. If your app is already free, it means you only have to pay a small amount (often unnoticeable) when you book your accommodations. 

What is a trip planner app?

A trip planner app is an app that provides organizational features for your upcoming trip. It is often free and incorporates trip planning tools, whether you are traveling by ground, water or air.   

How does a trip planner app work?

A trip planner app can incorporate special features, like an itinerary, calendar, reservation and booking hub, and map assistance. Depending on the app you choose, there is even trip-sharing with friends and family to simplify the entire trip planning process.  

How much does a trip planner app cost?

Most trip planner apps are free, but some may offer in-app purchases to upgrade or enhance your experience. Within this list, only Tripit costs money, but only for their advanced features version, which costs $49 a year. However, you can get access to most if not all, trip-planning features, through their free version. 

Are there alternative trip planner apps worth considering?

As I mentioned earlier, trip planning heavily depends on your personal style of travel and preferences. However, whether you like to plan your trips down by the minute or prefer to just have the basics, there are several apps that can optimize your planning. Here are a few apps worth considering that almost made it onto our list: 

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An easier trip, each time

Imagine checking one place for your travel details and getting a heads up as things happen throughout your trip. See why life without TripIt is a distant memory for millions of travelers.

You handle the booking, we'll take it from there

Unlike other travel apps, TripIt can organize your travel plans no matter where you book. Simply forward your confirmation emails to [email protected] and in a matter of seconds, TripIt will create a comprehensive itinerary for every trip.

“I’m on the road 100 days a year and TripIt is my go-to-app. It’s such a powerful tool in the hands of a traveler. There’s simply nothing like it on the planet.”

Helpful reminders and alerts so you don't miss a beat

Packed with features that give you a leg up on changes and help you make the most of all your trips, TripIt Pro is where the magic happens.

“I love knowing exactly when my flights are, when they are delayed, what gate to leave from, and all the other amazing TripIt Pro features.”

Know where to be and when

Need a reminder when it's time to leave for the airport? Not sure where to eat in the airport or near your hotel? TripIt has you covered.

“My favorite business travel app so far is TripIt. Carrying all of my itineraries, it saves me during my ‘Where am I, what do I do next?’ panic attacks.”

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Easily save, collaborate and book - all your travel plans in one place

Make your travel plans easier with Expedia's Trip Planner. From saving favorites and organizing, to deciding with your group and booking your ideal trip, everything is together all in one place. You can select your favorite stays and activities while you search, and then find them later in your account. Avoid the hassle of sending multiple links to a group chat by inviting your family and friends to collaborate on a group trip where they can share ideas and see everything at once. After you've settled on your itinerary, you can make the bookings you need and keep them organized all in one place. Its ease of use makes it one of the best trip planning tools around.

How Trip Planner works

Sign into your Expedia account to save and compare your favorites to a new trip, work together with your friends and family on your group vacation, and keep all of your bookings in one itinerary planner. It just takes a few clicks to get the ball rolling.

Create a trip and save your favorites to plan your itinerary

Go to the Trips tab on the homepage, click on "Create a trip", and type in a new trip name. Start trip planning by searching for stays or things to do at your destination. Tap the heart icon to save your favorites to the right trip.

Invite friends and family to create a group trip

Open your trip and invite your fellow travelers to collaborate in the Trip Planner. Once they accept the invitation sent to their email, they’ll be able to view, save more items, comment, and like their favorite options to help decide on the best ones to book.

Book and manage your trip itinerary in the same place

Make all the bookings you need by tapping the three dots on your saved options. You can also change and cancel bookings in the same place.

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FAQ: Learn more about Trip Planner

What should I do to plan my trip?

Get started with our Trip Planner in one of two easy ways:

1. Sign into your account, search for places to stay or things to do, and tap the heart icon on the image of a listing that you want to save. You'll be asked to create a new trip by giving it a name and saving it to your trip planner.

2. Head to the Expedia homepage, click on Trips in the top right corner (on desktop) or in the bottom menu bar (in the app), and then select "Create a trip".

How do I create a trip plan?

Once you've signed into your account and created your trip, you can save accommodations and activities to your trip. Soon you will also be able to save your preferred flights in our Trip Planner.

Why is trip planning important?

Saving items in a travel planner online helps you stay organized by keeping all your favorite stays and activities saved in one place. Instead of switching between multiple browser tabs, just open our Trip Planner.

When you're ready to book, it's easy to compare options , see all your locations on a map, and book directly from your saved items.

When should you start planning a trip?

Any time is a good time to start planning travels, and our Trip Planner can be used for everything from last-minute weekend getaways to a summer vacation planned over the winter. Just click on Trips on our homepage to get started.

How to plan a successful trip?

Saving your stay and activities to a trip helps Expedia better understand your preferences, so we can recommend more places to go and things to do to fill out your travel plans and make your trip unforgettable. Take advantage of our vast inventory and useful filters to make sure you get the accommodations and activities for your ideal trip.

Where can I find the items that I saved to a trip?

Head to the Expedia homepage and click on Trips in the top right (on desktop) or in the bottom menu bar (in the app). Select the trip that you want to view and look for "Saved items" to see all the items you've selected for that trip that haven't been booked yet.

With our trip planner, your booked and saved items are all in one place, which makes it easier to book your trip piece by piece.

Where can I find my booked items?

On the Expedia homepage, click on Trips in the top right (on desktop) or in the bottom menu bar (in the app). Select the trip that you want to view and head to "Bookings" to see all the items booked for that trip.

When you plan a trip online with us, you can keep your booked and saved items all in one place, making it easier to manage and build your trip.

Can I move a booked or saved item to a different trip?

Yes, we've made it easy to move items, because we know that planning your trip can mean adding more places to see or splitting favorite destinations up into multiple trips.

First, select the trip that already has the items you want to move. For booked items, tap the three dots on the top right corner of the item and select "move to another trip". For saved items, follow the same process and select "save to another trip" instead.

How can my friends and family help me plan a trip online?

Friends and family invited to collaborate on a trip with you will be able to view, save, and book items in your trip planner itinerary. All they need to do to start collaborating is accept the trip invite sent to their email.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

The Trip Planners

By Emily Witt

You can’t tell a great deal about the Web site Erowid from its home page. A tagline reads, “Documenting the Complex Relationship Between Humans & Psychoactives.” This text is surrounded by photographs: a cactus, a cannabis bud, a bottle of ketamine, tabs of LSD. The design looks old, Web 1.0 old, with a simple typeface and a black background. The Tolkienesque name, the F.A.Q. page reveals, was coined with assistance from a dictionary of Indo-European roots. It means, roughly, “earth wisdom.”

People who are interested in psychoactive cacti, ketamine, and LSD are generally unfazed by strangeness. Any such person will likely know of Erowid, as will most toxicologists and many E.R. doctors. When the site launched, in 1995, it served as a repository of drug-culture esoterica, drawing just a few hits a day. Today, Erowid contains highly detailed profiles of more than three hundred and fifty psychoactive substances, from caffeine to methamphetamine. Last year, the site had at least seventeen million unique visitors.

In October, on the twentieth anniversary of Erowid’s launch, I travelled to the home of its founders, in the Gold Country of northeast California, where the Central Valley gives way to the Sierra Nevada and road signs along I-80 start marking the altitude. The hills are dotted with Gold Rush museums and monuments, along with evidence of a thriving cannabis-growing scene. Local television weathermen refer to the region as the Mother Lode.

The founders of Erowid are a couple in their mid-forties—a man and a woman who call themselves Earth and Fire, respectively. Their names date from 1994, when, as recent college graduates living in the San Francisco Bay Area, they went to a Menlo Park storefront to sign up for a dial-up account and for their first e-mail addresses: [email protected] and [email protected]. They live and work in a one-bedroom post-and-beam cabin, built in 1985 and surrounded by ten acres of forested land, on a high slope facing a ravine. The property’s original owner was a collector of obsolete industrial machinery, and the house is a collage of California artifacts, including oak floorboards salvaged from nineteenth-century Southern Pacific Railroad boxcars. During my visit, Earth, who is tall and lumbering and wears his hair in a ponytail, identified strains of a Grateful Dead track wafting from the home of a distant neighbor. Fire, who is more assertive and fast-spoken than Earth, has dark hair and fine features that often earn her comparisons to Björk.

On Erowid, which is run by Earth and Fire with the help of two off-site staffers and many volunteers, you can read about drum circles in the “Mind & Spirit” section, and about Jerry Garcia in “Culture & Art.” You can also find the digitized research archives of Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD. But the centerpiece of the site is “Plants & Drugs.” Each substance has a “vault,” which includes pages on such topics as dosage, effects, legal status, and history. Some of that information is derived from “experience reports,” which are descriptive accounts of drug trips that anyone can submit.

Since 2000, Erowid has received more than a hundred thousand reports and has published about a quarter of them. Some are positive: “The Inner Eternity,” “Spiritually Orgasmic.” Others are not: “Existential Horror,” “Unimaginable Depths of Terror,” “Convulsions, Seizures, Vomiting.” Reports are reviewed by a few dozen specially trained volunteers, who range from college students to computer scientists. Each submission is read twice, and the best ones are passed on to a handful of senior reviewers for final selection.

At one time, the samizdat on drugs was so rare that those who found it seemed like sages at parties and in college dorms. Earth and Fire call such enthusiasts, and anyone extremely knowledgeable on the subject, drug geeks. Earth said that he “considers it an honor” to be among them. In the eighties, President Ronald Reagan’s war on drugs sent the geeks into hiding. An ad sponsored by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America featured a father delivering a tearful graveside monologue, and showings of some Hollywood films included public-service announcements from the likes of Clint Eastwood and Pee-wee Herman, who held up vials of crack before the phrase “The thrill can kill” appeared on the screen. People who wanted both to try drugs and to know the risks had difficulty finding any credible guidance.

But by the mid-nineties a fragmentary drug-geek community had started sharing information on e-mail lists such as Leri, Web sites such as Deoxyribonucleic Hyperdimension, and Usenet groups such as alt.drugs.psychedelics. The geeks and the government continued to ignore one another. In 2002, during a talk at the consciousness-studies conference Mind States, in Jamaica, Fire said, “From the establishment viewpoint, it’s surprising if new data come out of the drug-using community. In the drug-using community, it’s surprising if information that’s useful comes out of the establishment.” Earth and Fire’s idea was to close the rift: to maintain a comprehensive data set that could serve as a primary reference for everyone from the village stoner to the national drug czar.

Edward W. Boyer, the chief of medical toxicology in the department of emergency medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, in Worcester, first became aware of the drug-geek sites in 1997. A pair of high-school students had ended up in his emergency room after going online and learning how to synthesize the sedative GHB at home. “My first thought was, It’s really bad—people are potentially learning online about new drugs to abuse,” he said.

In 2001, Boyer wrote a research letter to the New England Journal of Medicine alleging that Erowid and other “partisan” Web sites were outperforming federal antidrug sites in the search results for ecstasy, GHB, and certain other drugs. But during the aughts Boyer paid attention to assessments of new drugs as they went up on Erowid, and found that his emergency department did not receive an influx of poisonings. Instead, Erowid taught Boyer the street names of unfamiliar drugs, along with the basic chemicals that they contained. “We emergency physicians pride ourselves on being pretty close to the street,” Boyer told me. “Erowid just blew the doors off what we do.”

According to the 2014 National Survey of Drug Use and Health, nearly half of Americans over twelve have tried an illicit drug. They may borrow Adderall from a friend to work harder, or Xanax to reduce anxiety; they may use cocaine to have more fun at a party or ayahuasca to contemplate the great questions of life. Today’s experimenters can also partake of many new psychoactive substances. In recent years, suppliers have expanded into a wide range of synthetic chemicals that, until they attract government attention, go untargeted by molecular bans in the United States and abroad. Once they have been prohibited, these “research chemicals,” as Earth and Fire call them, can be modified in labs and sold anew; they are often cheap and can be bought through online marketplaces.

Erowid is an educational nonprofit, whose mission is to “provide and facilitate access to objective, accurate, and non-judgmental information” about psychoactive substances. Users can assess benefits and risks by reading experience reports, and many vaults have a summary “Health” page. Erowid has also formulated a set of standard warnings, or “Erowid Notes,” which are used to flag risky activities in experience reports (“Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don’t do it!”).

The average age of Erowid’s thirty thousand Twitter followers is twenty-six. The most frequently looked-at profiles are those of LSD, MDMA, and mushrooms. For years, Erowid’s traffic has declined during school breaks—a gauge of its popularity among eighteen-to-twenty-five-year-olds, the demographic most given to experimenting with drugs. Earth and Fire have spoken before the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and in 2011 the reform-minded Drug Policy Alliance gave them the Dr. Andrew Weil Award for Achievement in the Field of Drug Education. They have also co-authored several papers in peer-reviewed journals (for example, “Use Patterns and Self-Reported Effects of Salvia Divinorum,” in Drug and Alcohol Dependence ) and have collaborated on projects related to such drugs as hallucinogens and opiates with researchers at various institutions, including N.Y.U. and Johns Hopkins.

As a condition of talking to me, Earth and Fire insisted that their “driver’s-license names” not be published, even though their given names can be easily found. Earth explained, “Everyone calls us Earth and Fire, approximately, except for the robots.” Like the volunteer medics who used to patrol parking lots at Grateful Dead concerts, they want to be seen as the straights among the weirdos and the weirdos among the straights. They want readers to focus on the usefulness of Erowid’s information, not on the authority of the people publishing it.

Earth and Fire spend most days in their living room, which is also their office. Fire is the site’s main editor and fund-raiser, and Earth attends to the technical side. They work at a shared desk with a landline and six computer monitors on top, and towers of hard drives underneath. A stack of books on the coffee table includes a copy of “Sapo in My Soul,” about an Amazonian frog whose skin secretes a psychoactive compound. During my visit, Earth and Fire would wake up at noon and work until 4 A.M. , with a pause for dinner around 8 P.M. —a time that their cats, Eos and Nyx, marked by staring expectantly until they were fed.

Earth does most of the cooking; Fire is the sous chef and the dicer of garlic. Each uses a “personal bowl.” Fire explained, “This is my bowl. I eat every meal out of my bowl. I don’t have to wash my bowl before I eat out of it if I don’t want to. He never has to wash my bowl.”

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I received my own bowl for the three nights I ate with Earth and Fire. They are vegetarians, and, for the past twenty years, they have subsisted on healthy snacks and one meal, at night. Dinner consists of what their friends call “Erowid chow”: vegetables served over a mixture of brown and wild rice. They don’t eat sweets. One night, they offered me a Carr’s whole-wheat cracker for dessert, which I declined.

As for psychoactive substances, we ingested only Rex-Goliath Pinot Grigio and Chateau Ste. Michelle Sauvignon Blanc. Drug geeks are not necessarily heavy drug users: Earth and Fire say that they have tried LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin mushrooms, but not cocaine, heroin, or meth; of prescription painkillers, Earth said, “I prefer an ibuprofen and a beer.”

For small doses of caffeine, Earth and Fire drink Diet Coke. Earth told me that it tastes “like the future.”

“Like a robot!” Fire said.

When Earth and Fire say “I,” they usually mean “we.” They describe themselves as life partners, and each wears a stainless-steel earring. They don’t have kids, and call themselves “online socializers.” They speak in tandem, like twins in a children’s novel. When one of them left the room, I felt uneasy.

Earth said, “We used to use the term ‘soul mate.’ ”

“But it annoys people,” Fire said.

Earth and Fire grew up in the northern suburbs of St. Paul, where they attended the same schools. Earth’s mother was a therapist and his father a designer of supercomputers, who founded the Supercomputer Systems Engineering and Services Company. Fire’s parents owned a consulting business. At forty, Earth’s mother separated from his father, later becoming a minister in the United Church of Christ. Fire’s parents, after they retired, moved to Africa and did educational work through the Lutheran Church.

In 1987, Earth left for New College, in Sarasota, Florida, and Fire for Miami University, in Ohio. They started dating after their freshman year. In their sophomore year, Fire joined Earth at New College, which had been established, in the nineteen-sixties, as an experimental learning community. Earth and Fire refer to the ideas that they spread through Erowid as “memes.” One meme is that nobody should take a drug without first being able to consult a reliable source of information about it. On arriving at New College, Earth had been offered LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, and MDMA. He declined every overture, and, by the end of the couple’s time there, neither had tried anything other than pot and alcohol.

Fire earned a general humanities degree, and Earth designed his own course, Language and Culture. They read books on philosophy, anthropology, Buddhism, and meditation. As Earth remembers it, a turning point came when one of their close friends argued that without having tried a psychedelic “you could not be taken seriously as an engaged intellectual who was interested in topics of spirituality and metaphysics.” Other friends agreed.

“We turned out to be the kind of people who like to research something first,” Fire said. “And it turned out to be impossible.” Earth had to drive all the way to the University of South Florida, in Tampa, to photocopy some scientific papers about MDMA. He and Fire started collecting the few books on psychedelics that they could find locally, and they observed their friends experimenting. Sometimes, Earth and Fire showed other people their research materials. “We had more computers than anybody else,” Earth said. “We made a database of all the movies we’d ever seen and rated them and wrote little descriptions.”

They graduated in 1992 and returned to Minnesota. Earth designed databases at his father’s company, and Fire wrote manuals. Within a year, they felt that they had learned enough about LSD to try it. They took a quarter of a blotter each—within the range of a “light” dose, according to Erowid.

While tripping, Earth and Fire experienced a sense of wonder in looking at everyday things. Earth told me, “It made us very much more aware of how different states of consciousness are constantly flowing by, and that one can—”

“—have some control over that,” Fire said.

On Halloween, 1994, Earth and Fire, dreading another Minnesota winter, packed their belongings into a U-Haul and drove to Northern California. I asked them if they were hippies.

“We were hippie-ish,” Fire said.

“It was tech,” Earth said.

“Hippie liberals.”

“Tech hippie liberals.”

They crashed in the laundry room of Earth’s brother, in the bucolic Bay Area suburb of Woodside. Earth was working remotely for his father’s company, and Fire, who was looking for freelance jobs, decided to teach herself Web design. They bought a VW camper van.

On Labor Day weekend in 1995, they picked up some friends for a camping trip at Lake Tahoe. One of their friends had a flyer announcing a festival called Burning Man. They drove past Tahoe to the Black Rock Desert, where the festival was taking place, and veered around a man in a straw hat who was trying to charge admission. They parked next to a group of Nevada locals, who were cooking heroin by a campfire. In subsequent years, Earth and Fire would set up a geodesic dome and bring a whiteboard on which visitors mapped out molecular-synthesis paths.

Also in 1995, Fire began work on a Web site that would use the couple’s collected materials on drug subculture as a data set. On drives up to San Francisco to see friends, Earth and Fire debated what to call the site; they knew that it was important to make the name unique. In September, they rented a house on a mountain peak in Sky Londa, with a view of the Pacific, on the site of a former tuberculosis sanitarium. In October, they launched Erowid.

Earth and Fire stayed in Sky Londa for seven years. They posted the site’s first warnings in 1996, after watching a friend get sick after accidentally taking a large dose of GHB at Burning Man. Fire said that the early site “felt to us like an act of civil disobedience.” They worried that the authorities might shut them down, and to this day they operate their own server, burn all envelopes sent to them with return addresses, and use search software that will not generate data for Google. (They say that they have never had any legal problems.)

During those years, Earth and Fire became friends with the Bay Area chemist Alexander Shulgin, who discovered more than two hundred psychoactive compounds, and his wife, Ann. Together, the Shulgins wrote the books “Pihkal” (Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved) and “Tihkal” (the same acronym, but for tryptamines); their Friday-night dinners, or F.N.D.s, served as regular gatherings for local drug geeks, among others. Taking drugs at the meal was not allowed, but Earth and Fire got to know Bob Wallace, a software pioneer and former Microsoft employee, who became Erowid’s first donor and major supporter. Wallace encouraged the couple to work on the site full time, and, starting in 1999, Fire did so; Earth joined her the following year.

By then, Internet users were no longer a small group of tech-savvy familiars. Teen-agers were trying to figure out how big a dose of LSD they could safely take, and at the end of 2001 the site was getting more than two hundred thousand hits a day. In 2002, Earth and Fire were priced out of the Bay Area; they moved to the Gold Country. That same year, Bob Wallace died. The period that followed was financially trying, since Earth and Fire had decided early on against posting advertisements. By 2008, however, Erowid had become a nonprofit; its current operating budget is three hundred thousand dollars. In February, Reddit users deemed it the fourth-most-worthy nonprofit out of more than eight thousand candidates, granting the site a donation of exactly $82,765.95. Erowid came in ahead of NPR.

One day, I sat on a paisley couch as Fire compiled a new vault, for the chemical methoxphenidine. Like ketamine, to which it is often compared, MXP produces a dissociative out-of-body experience. The drug was patented by Searle in 1989, as a possible treatment for neural injury, but its recreational use wasn’t documented until 2013, on user-moderated discussion forums like Bluelight. Erowid deliberately lags behind such sites, in order to let a more representative sample emerge.

In April of this year, an Erowid user from Virginia anonymously submitted a sample of MXP to a licensed lab in Sacramento that the site works with, as part of an initiative that Erowid calls EcstasyData. Since then, Earth and Fire had been waiting for experience reports to arrive, and now Fire pored over the dozens that had been winnowed down by the triage team, along with other online accounts. One report read, “The space between me and my phone is enormous. Is my arm really long now?”

Fire also looked up the chemical’s molecular structure and scrolled through toxicology reports on PubMed, a search engine for biomedical literature. Using estimates mentioned in the reports, and after chatting with users on drug forums, Fire settled on a tentative dosage table, sending it out to a group of Erowid volunteers for comment. In the MXP vault, the dosage page will retain the “very tentative” label for perhaps a year, which is typically long enough for about a hundred reliable reports to emerge.

Six days later, Fire tweeted that the vault had opened. The landing page displayed a biohazard symbol, which Erowid uses to designate drugs that “should be considered experimental chemicals.” A warning reads, “There have been several deaths associated with its use.” I clicked “Law,” and learned that the chemical is not prohibited in the U.S. but is “not approved for human consumption.” It had just been banned in China. On the “Effects” page, I read, “Increase in heart rate and blood pressure,” “Nasal discomfort upon insufflation,” and “Sense of calm and serenity.”

Erowid adopts “the perspective of a user rather than that of a health-care professional,” according to Andrew Monte, an emergency physician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, in Aurora, and a medical toxicologist at the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center, in Denver. He contrasted Erowid with the National Poison Data System, a standard resource in E.R. work, which he described as “a series of check boxes that are geared toward collecting medical data.” Erowid, he said, instead creates “a rich tapestry of what users are wanting to experience, what they do experience, and what the potential downsides are.”

The experience reports can also be helpful to researchers. Erin Artigiani, the deputy director for policy at the Center for Substance Abuse Research, at the University of Maryland, College Park, said that she relies on the reports in her work as the co-coördinator of the National Drug Early Warning System. (The system, which is supported by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, tracks drug trends by monitoring poison-control reports, social media, and other sources.) She called Erowid “a useful tool for our initial phases, where we’re detecting and looking for what’s emerging.”

Roy Gerona, a clinical chemist at the University of California, San Francisco, told me that he has used Erowid as a source to identify research chemicals in toxicology cases. “Designer drugs have a really fast turnaround,” he said. “The primary literature cannot keep up.” For Gerona, Erowid occupies a useful middle ground between unedited drug forums and scientific journals.

Is Erowid accurate? Artigiani told me that the site “makes a concerted effort to be accurate with what it’s sharing.” Gerona described Erowid’s information as “a good starting point.” Still, Earth and Fire readily admit that they cannot correct all errors, and that experience reports are not peer-reviewed studies. The reports are meant to be read en masse, creating a broad spectrum of impressions for regular users, just as they do for medical professionals. According to Fire, any individual document must be taken “with a grain of salt.”

One reason that Earth and Fire haven’t tried opiates themselves, Fire told me, is that “Erowid’s legacy would take a nosedive” if one of them were to die of an overdose. But the site does not unequivocally advise against taking opioids or any other drug, no matter how dangerous or addictive. Earth told me that the goal of the site is not to “shape behavior,” and that, even if it were, proscription would be the wrong approach: “If you say no to one drug, you’re essentially saying yes to all the others.” They told me that the facts indicate only which drugs are more dangerous than others, not which ones are “good” or “bad.”

Oxycodone, the tenth-most-popular drug on the site, is described as being “widely available by prescription” and as “notoriously addictive, leading many users to have problems controlling their own use.” Some drug experts don’t see what’s wrong with urging people to avoid such a substance. “The Web site should say, ‘Don’t do it,’ ” Robert DuPont, the first director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, who served as the drug czar under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, told me. “We don’t say, ‘Most people who don’t wear seat belts never suffer any injury,’ though that’s true. That would be irresponsible in public health. Instead we say, ‘Wear your seat belt every time you drive.’ ”

Corey Waller, an addiction specialist at the Center for Integrative Medicine, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, said the site was “without checks and balances.” He works with drug users who land in emergency rooms ten times or more a year. Addicts, he told me, would not read Erowid with the skepticism that the site presumes. “Part of the disease is that they’re not able to make logical decisions.”

Fire said that those who treat addicts “understandably see the whole world as—”

“—as a giant heroin overdose waiting to happen,” Earth said.

“Our audience is not the most likely to become heroin addicts,” Fire went on. “Our message might be, ‘If you start finding yourself needing to increase your dosage, you’re building tolerance. That means you’re using too frequently.’  ”

Of course, no matter what the user’s knowledge base, some drugs are more addictive than others. According to Edward Boyer, the recent opioid epidemic has proved that “exposure does matter.” The greater the number of people who try certain habit-forming drugs, the more addicts America will have.

To the extent that Erowid does caution users, it is with infrequent warnings, such as the injunction against driving while high. Andrew Monte, of the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said that these standard cautions are disingenuous. “I would say that they’re largely throwaway kinds of statements,” he told me. “They’re really put there almost as a protection, it seems to me, just for the operators of the site.”

Earth said that warnings are good, but only insofar as they “help people put the risks and benefits into proper balance.” As for the question of quantity, Fire said, “We don’t over-add warnings, because then it’s just all warnings.” It’s possible that the warnings they do include, some of which are echoed by drug users across the Internet, are taken more seriously as the result of being on Erowid, given its reputation for avoiding hyperbole. “We are developing a library, not a personal-use guide,” Earth said.

Such statements put Erowid in a particular corner of the drug subculture. Recently, there has been a general uptick in the use of “harm reduction,” some of it opportunistic. Bluelight, the drug-user forum, claims to be “reducing harm by educating the individual.” Ross Ulbricht, the imprisoned founder of Silk Road, an online black market that sold drugs and other illicit goods and services, used the term in his legal defense. Fire told me that harm reduction is a goal for Erowid, but not a primary one.

Erowid’s object is to help establish a conversation about drugs in which “actual accurate information is published and agreed upon.” Fire said, “When we publish about a drug, some people will choose to do that drug who otherwise might not have. But we can’t just stay back where we are.” Earth added, in an e-mail, “There will always be deaths, regardless of information or policy.”

Sometimes, late at night, when Earth and Fire get tired, they turn on a football game. They happen to enjoy what Earth calls America’s “head-trauma fest,” but they also like to keep an eye on what common psychoactive substances (alcohol, sex drugs, caffeine, antipsychotics) are being advertised to television audiences.

Today, long after the “Reefer Madness” era, there is less consensus about which drugs are “good” and which are “bad,” and the latter are less likely to be treated as such—the federal government includes marijuana in “the most dangerous class of drugs,” yet twenty-three states have legalized its medical use and four permit its retail production and sale. In 2010, Congress changed sentencing rules for crack-cocaine possession, establishing higher-quantity thresholds for mandatory jail time. The Affordable Care Act requires insurance companies to cover substance-use disorders. As Mark A.R. Kleiman, a drug-policy expert at N.Y.U.’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, put it, “Drug policy is moving in a less hysterical direction.”

Nevertheless, Kleiman said, “it’s not as if the National Insitute on Drug Abuse were conducting serious research on the intended effects of drugs on ordinary users.” In a statement, Mario Moreno Zepeda, a spokesman for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, used watchwords such as “evidence-based initiatives,” but in the context of the Obama Administration’s focus on “prevention, treatment, and recovery.” According to Kleiman, “If some kid wants to know what drugs to use and what their risks are, he’s not in a better position,” particularly given the proliferation of new psychoactive substances. Earth seemed to agree: “Where we are in 2015 is substantially evolved from 1995, but things are still in a relative stone age for teaching people how to make good decisions about psychoactives.”

Now Erowid’s task will be to teach people not only about specific substances but also about what to do with a mysterious white powder. This meme is called “Know your substance,” and, among those who understand that the “Molly” they bought on the street might not be MDMA, it has gained a following. They might try to determine what a substance is with a liquid reagent test, which can be conducted inexpensively at home, or they could send it to a lab through Erowid’s EcstasyData program.

These hurdles are high, but, in Earth and Fire’s view, they are necessary. Earth told me, “I don’t feel that humans have ever been in this position before, where we have the ability to deliver to every single person in a rich society a variety of mind-altering chemicals.” He added, “We’re not that far away from having the ability to have the coffee-maker print our drugs for us.”

“I don’t think most seventeen-year-olds are ready for that,” Fire said.

When Earth and Fire took me on a tour of their property, they showed me a three-story barn, filled with antique saws, a car-size diesel generator, and a gantry installed on railroad tracks. Their plan is to turn the top two stories into a library that would be open to researchers. “There should be generations of knowledge,” Earth said. One current initiative is the Wisdom Cycle Project, which collects reflections from older generations about their drug use.

One afternoon, I asked Earth and Fire how they saw themselves in relation to psychedelic proselytizers like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna, the drug philosopher. We were sitting on the couple’s deck, overlooking the ravine. Deer picked their way through the leaves on the slope below.

“We’re not showmen,” Fire said.

“We’re just not that fun,” Earth said.

“We’re not so into the ‘woo’ side of psychedelic stuff,” Fire said. “But we try to keep it open and flowing, because we talk to a lot of people who are more into the ‘woo-er’ side.”

“Well, but we also are ‘woo,’ ” Earth said, pointing out that they had done their share of “sweat lodges and that sort of thing” in the nineties. “We’re so ‘woo’ we’re ‘post-woo.’ ” They laughed.

The light had faded, and a gloom settled over the dry forest. Nyx the cat jumped onto the railing.

Earth said, “We just want to—”

“—be accurate,” Fire said.

“Be accurate, but we also want to allow for all—”

“—to create room for other people to have their experiences.” ♦

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The 10 Best Road Trip Planner Apps for 2024

Save time, money, and energy with these apps so you can focus on the fun instead

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We love road trips! Planning them can be fun but, let's be honest, also stressful. The right road trip planner apps can take some of that stress away by helping you plan, organize, and manage travel before and during your trip. We've researched and tested these apps to help give you peace of mind so that you can spend more time enjoying your trip.

The Ultimate Map App for Planning Your Route: Roadtrippers

Access to free and convenient travel guides.

Share-ability so friends can join in on the planning process and suggest places to visit.

The app can use up the battery life of your device quickly. Take a car USB charger with you.

Built for travelers, Roadtrippers helps you create your route while allowing you to discover great places as you plan it out. Add a new place to your itinerary to work it into your trip.

The app features an easy-to-use interface. In addition to covering the U.S., it also covers Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Download For:

Automate Your Trip Planning and Organization: Google Travel

Automatic trip organization via Gmail integration. 

Offline access so you can see your trip information even when you don't have an internet connection.

Limitations with customizing some day trips exactly the way you want.

You can count on Google to make your trip planning a breeze. Pre-constructed day plans are available for hundreds of the world's most popular destinations, which you can customize to your liking.

It's one of the most versatile travel planner apps out there, giving you one convenient place to see your hotel, rental car, and restaurant bookings.

Find and Book a Last-Minute Place to Stay: Hotels.com

A fast, easy-to-use booking feature.

For every 10 nights you book through Hotels.com, you get one night free, provided it's the average daily rate of those 10 nights.

No option to easily cancel if you change your mind.

Whether your road trip itinerary changed, or you haven't decided on a place to stay yet, Hotels.com can help you find a place and book it when you're on the go, even when it's super last-minute. You can sort and filter hotels, see the amenities they have to offer, compare prices, and catch a glimpse of how many rooms are available.

This is the app you'll want to have handy if you want to see in-depth hotel details at a glance and need to find a place to crash ASAP without breaking the bank.

Find Local Restaurants, Read Reviews, and Make Reservations: OpenTable

Lots of great filter options and suggestions.

Access to gorgeous, high-quality images of menu items and informative reviews from other users.

Reported problems and inconveniences with their built-in reward system.

Searching for specific restaurants is more difficult than simply looking at what's around in the area.

Deciding on a place to eat in a new area is quick and hassle-free with OpenTable. See what's nearby, filter restaurants by cuisine, see photos of what's on the menu, make reservations, and get personalized recommendations based on your preferences.

OpenTable is known to be one of the top  location-based food apps  available, so you know you can trust its information when you're dying for something to eat.

Navigate Like a Local: Waze

Hands-free navigation with voice commands.

Alerts-only mode for road hazards and police.

Share up-to-date ETA with friends.

Spotify and Apple Music widgets get in the way.

Cluttered maps can be confusing.

Higher battery usage than Google Maps.

Waze  is a community-driven travel app that shows you the shortest possible route to your destination. Like Google Maps, Waze makes real-time adjustments for traffic jams and other obstacles—but Waze is often more accurate since it caters specifically to drivers.

The app syncs with your Google Calendar and can tell you when you should leave for appointments based on traffic. There's also a cool option to record your own voice and use it for directions .

Know Exactly When and Where to Make a Pit Stop: iExit Interstate Exit Guide

Access to detailed summaries of what's at the next exit (including gas prices at nearby gas stations).

Search for the next 100 exits from your location.

The app can only be used on major U.S. exit-based highways.

No offline access, so you'll use your data plan while you're on the road.

Making a pit stop for food, gas, or a bathroom break is easy when you have the iExit app. Using your device's GPS, the app offers helpful suggestions for when and where to stop based on your location along the highway.

Whether you're looking for well-known franchises like Starbucks and Walmart to convenient amenities like free Wi-Fi and truck or trailer parking, this app has you covered.

Find the Cheapest Fuel Nearby: GasBuddy

An in-app gas payment feature.

Opportunity to save 10 cents per gallon on your first fill-up and five cents per gallon on every fill-up after.

The app can take up a lot of data and battery life as it runs in the background.

GasBuddy is an app specifically designed to find nearby gas stations and save money on gas. Use it to find the cheapest gas in your area and filter gas stations by amenities like car washes, restaurants, and bathrooms.

It's the app you want to have if you're serious about finding the cheapest gas around. Information comes from users like you, so you have the most up-to-date prices.

Download For :

Never Forget an Item: PackPoint Premium Packing List

Access to a built-in library of items to pack with the ability to add or remove items as needed. 

An elegant, intuitive app interface.

Can't input multiple destinations for a single trip.

Not a free app.

PackPoint helps you make sure you have everything you need based on where you're going and what you're doing. In addition, the app takes into consideration the length of your trip and the expected weather conditions. Perhaps best of all, this app turns a mundane chore into something that's actually quite fun.

Find Out Where to Park and How Much It Will Cost: Inrix ParkMe

ParkMe is the only app that also includes street parking and parking meter rates where available, in addition to parking lots.

Real-time updates on available parking spots.

Rates and hours may be inaccurate in some areas.

ParkMe claims to be the world's largest and most accurate parking database. It allows you to purchase your parking spot through the app and compare prices across parking providers to help you save more money.

If you're road tripping around major cities in the U.S., Canada, or Europe, this app can be a huge help. You can even compare parking options and prices so that you always get the best deal.

Automate Your Itinerary: TripIt

Automatically creates itineraries from your inbox.

Widget displays trip details on your home screen.

Annoying amount of alerts by default.

If you're planning a trip, you'll likely have a lot of confirmation emails for hotels, appointments, restaurants, and attractions. TripIt syncs with your inbox and uses that information to compile an itinerary so that you don't have to scramble for it.

The free version is fine for road trips, but if you ever fly, the premium version gives you the option to upgrade seats and track reward miles.

In addition to your phone, laptop, and tablet, other travel tech essentials include chargers, headphones, travel adapters, cameras, luggage trackers, and off-grid communications

Yes. You can use Google Maps as a trip planner through the “Places” and “My Maps” features. Both the Google Maps website and app let you save locations to lists and get directions.

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10 Best Travel TRIP PLANNER APPs To Have in 2024

In a fast-paced world where the stress of work and school is overwhelming, we all need a break to de-stress our minds. Traveling is one good way to take your mind off of stressful things – a breather. And a scheduled vacation gives you something to look forward to.

Whether it’s a local trip alone, a family holiday, or a getaway with your best friends, it just excites you to wish the day would come faster. 

10 Best Trip Planner Apps in 2024

The freeform app.

• TripIt: Travel Planner

Hopper – Flight & Hotel Deals

• Sygic Travel Maps Trip Planner

Roadtrippers: Trip Planner

Tripadvisor, travelspend: track travel expense & trip budget, tripcase – travel organizer app, travel planning apps for your next trip.

The Freeform app is an endless whiteboard that lets users add information from a variety of websites, photos, videos and files.

Because the boards are kept in iCloud, they can be accessed from any device anytime inspiration hits. While you and your travel companions plan your dream trip, the specifics can be shared with several individuals working together on the same whiteboard, making them an ongoing work in progress.

The Freeform app is free to iPhone users on iOS 16.2, iPad users on 16.2, and Mac users on Ventura MacOS Venture 13.1. 

Download the brand-new app here .

Read our full post: Apple Launches New Travel App Freeform – What to Know

Wanderlog Trip Planner App

Wanderlog is your all-in-one destination for planning future trips, sharing travel guides, and blogging past trips.

Its trip planning features are incredibly flexible: you can research destinations and activities, organize reservations by connecting your email, and map out a day itinerary with start/end times. You can also add notes and links all throughout.

Everything is stored offline so you can access your itinerary when traveling abroad. For road trips, it calculates the time and distance between places and exports them to Google Maps (and there are no limits to the number of stops you have on a trip!).

Plus, there’s a fun social component: collaborate with friends on itineraries, write your own travel guide, and blog about past trips. Wanderlog is available on the web and on your smartphone, so you can seamlessly plan while at home and on-the-go.

iOS  /  Android

TripIt: Trip Planner App

If you need any help organizing the dozens of itineraries, TripIt is the app for you. Users simply need to forward your flight, hotel, restaurant, and car rental confirmation emails to [email protected] and the app will create a free master doc for each of your trips. The best thing about this app is that you can get access to your itinerary anywhere, even without an internet connection. 

In addition, the Pro version will find you alternative routes for canceled flights and send out notifications for delayed flights, cancellations, and more from the airlines. 

iOS / Android

Rome2rio is a versatile travel planning app that simplifies the process of finding and booking travel options. It’s a handy tool for travelers seeking to explore various transportation choices between destinations. Rome2rio offers users a comprehensive view of travel options, including flights, trains, buses, ferries, and even driving directions.

Key features of Rome2rio include:

• Route Information: The app provides detailed information on different routes, including estimated travel times, costs, and the number of transfers required.
• Booking Integration: Users can book flights, train tickets, and other transportation options directly through the app, streamlining the booking process.
• Map Integration: Rome2rio integrates with maps, allowing users to visualize their travel routes and explore nearby attractions.
• Multi-Modal Travel: It offers options for combining various modes of transportation, making it easy to plan complex journeys.
• Accurate Pricing: The app provides real-time pricing information, helping users make informed decisions based on their budget.
• Offline Access: Rome2rio offers offline access to previously searched routes, which can be handy when traveling without a data connection.

Hopper is an amazing trip planner app to have on your phone. The app predicts airfares up to 1 year in advance, with 95% accuracy. It analyzes over billions of flight prices and hotels within the day – telling you whether to book your trip now or wait for just a little longer.

Here’s how it works: Key in your destination and a color-coded calendar will display the cheapest and most expensive date to fly. The app will then recommend you to either book the flight now or sit it out and wait for airfare to get cheaper. Also, you can filter predictions to custom-fit your trip – remove long layovers, extra fees, restrictions, and more. 

And if you worry about missing out the cheap flight bookings, don’t be! Hopper will send you a notification when fares have dropped to its lowest point.

SYGIC Travel Maps Trip Planner

Sygic Travel Maps , the new version of Sygic Trip Planner, is the first travel app to display all of the attractions and places a traveler needs to see and visit on a single map.

Sync your trips with the Sygic Travel app and find hidden gems in all cities you visit. The app boast a large database that allows you to find the best hotels, tourist attractions, museums, restaurants, bars, and stores wherever you go.

This mobile app also let you download offline maps and guides, which come in helpful when traveling to remote locations with poor or non-existing Wi-Fi.

It also has a dedicated section to worldwide places of interest for travel business. Get location information for individual cities, countries, continents, or the entire planet.

The app is available in 18 languages.

iOS / Android iOS

Planning on a cross-country road trip ? Roadtrippers is the app for you! Not everyone is fond of waiting long hours at the airport while sitting through your red-eye flight. Hit the road with your friends instead.

Roadtrippers provides everything you need to know on your road trip. Just enter your starting point, destination, and let the app do its work for you! From camping sites to rest stops, outdoor activities, exciting adventures along the way that you didn’t know existed. This app is the perfect buddy for your road trip regardless of your mode of transportation – a sedan, a rental car, or a huge family RV.

Most of us dream of going to places! But planning an amazing trip to places we have not been to is pretty hard as you don’t know where to stay, what to do, places to eat, and adventures to try. We mostly rely on recommendations, most of which are not even right, that we find online. 

TripAdvisor has over millions of travel recommendations on hotels, top dining spots, must-do experiences, and treasured gems to over 8 million destinations at your perusal. It is an all-in-one app that lets you book tables at restaurants and compares low prices on hotels and flights.

You can also follow friends and travel experts for advice that match your interests, watch videos, and read articles. In return, you can share your experiences, reviews, and helpful guides for other users too!

Setting up a budget for your trip is easy, however, sticking to it is hard. TravelSpend will help you with that. It starts with entering your budget and expenses over multiple days so you don’t go overboard. The app helps you in sticking to your budget effectively.

Being in another country is not a problem at all: enter your expenses in any currency and the app will automatically convert it to your home currency.

Track your travel expenses whether going on a solo around-the-world trip or backpacking holiday with your best friends. The app allows you to share your trip with your friends and track your expenses together. Pay debts, split bills, and check your balances – all in the app!

TripCase, a comprehensive travel organizer app, has emerged as a popular choice among travelers seeking a streamlined and efficient way to manage their journey details.

Here’s a breakdown of its key features and functionalities:

Centralized Itinerary Management : TripCase allows users to consolidate all their travel details, including flights, hotels, and car rentals, into a single, easily accessible itinerary.

Real-time Flight Alerts : The app keeps travelers informed with up-to-the-minute notifications on flight statuses, including delays, cancellations, and gate changes.

Itinerary Sharing : TripCase offers a sharing option that enables users to send their travel plans to friends, family, or colleagues.

Travel Directions and Maps : To aid navigation in unfamiliar locations, the app provides directions and maps.

Nearby Recommendations : TripCase offers recommendations for restaurants, attractions, and other services close to the traveler’s location.

Document Storage : For added convenience, the app allows users to store essential travel documents digitally, ensuring that important information like passport details, visas, and insurance policies are readily available.

Customizable Notifications : Users can customize their notification preferences, choosing what types of alerts they receive and how they are notified, tailoring the app to suit individual needs and preferences.

iOS / Android 

Hi, great List. I couldn’t travel without my Apps! I have one App you could check out =) Its called ” ATM Fee Saver” and it gives a list with all ATMs and their fees and limit. I found it super helpful and it really helped me to save some money. Best regards, Charlotte

Thank you for your suggestions! Those apps are very useful and various

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How to plan your dream vacation

Sometimes you crave a vacation — but actually taking one feels out of reach. Maybe you're struggling to find the time or save up the money. Or maybe you just can't seem to launch those plans out of the group chat. Overcome that planning inertia and take the big trip of your dreams. Here's where to start your search, organize your logistics and enjoy yourself.

MARIELLE SEGARRA, HOST:

You're listening to LIFE KIT...

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SEGARRA: ...From NPR.

Hey, everybody. It's Marielle. You remember the early part of the pandemic when the days of isolation stretched into months? At night, I would lay on the floor of my apartment with my eyes closed and listen to guided meditations, to try to take myself to a happier place. One time the prompt was something like, picture yourself doing something that brings you great joy. The first thing that popped into my head was an image of me wandering the cobblestone streets of some small European village, probably in France. The sun was shining, and every step I took was a feast for the eyes. Medieval houses, colorful flowers resting in vases on outdoor tables, patisseries with gorgeous pastries in the window, just waiting to be eaten.

I didn't realize until that moment just how much I missed traveling and how badly I wanted to look at something outside of my four walls or the blocks of my neighborhood. The next year, I took a three-week trip to the U.K. and France, and I ate those pastries and wandered until my feet hurt and filled a hole that had been growing inside of me.

Big trips can do that. Lale Arikoglu knows what I'm talking about. She's the articles director at Conde Nast Traveler.

LALE ARIKOGLU: On a really basic level, I think it's just being able to have a break from the crush of regular life, whether that's work or childcare or school, wherever it may be, you know, the opportunity to just take yourself out of your routine and be somewhere else and get to immerse yourself in that place to me is, like, the main draw of it.

SEGARRA: Now, when we talk about a big trip, that could mean different things depending on your travel style and your budget. You know, it might be a long road trip or an extended stay at a cottage in the woods or a multi-city tour on another continent. But it's typically something you save up for and plan months in advance. Lale has a big trip coming up. She's going to Peru.

ARIKOGLU: I've been waiting to do it for a long time. The reason to go there is for a friend's wedding. And now I'm building a trip around it, and it's going to be about ten days long with multi-stops, you know, having to choose multiple places to stay. And logistically, you know, it's actually taking some thought and some planning. One of the things that we're going to do when we're there is hike Machu Picchu. There's a group of us going. And Machu Picchu - it's a dream to see and experience.

SEGARRA: Now, it's easy to get bogged down in trip planning. And it might stop you from booking the thing entirely, but Lale says, do it. It's worth it.

On this episode of LIFE KIT, Lale shares her best tips on planning the big trip of your dreams. We'll talk about where to start your search, what logistical questions you should ask yourself and how to actually relax and enjoy yourself once you're there.

SEGARRA: Let's say I do want to take a big trip, right? I'm feeling that itch to travel, but...

ARIKOGLU: Right.

SEGARRA: ...I don't have a destination in mind yet or a duration. I'm really starting from scratch. Where does the planning start?

ARIKOGLU: When you start the planning, you've really got to think what you want to get out of the trip. You know, If you really just want to decompress and relax and rest, then you probably don't want to do some like multi-stop European city trip, right? You probably don't want to hike Machu Picchu. Perhaps it is that you're incredibly bored of your surroundings, and you need adventure and you need excitement. And therefore, you're going to be thinking of some really different destinations. It might be that you're traveling alone for the first time. You've decided to do a solo trip. You know, where is a place that might feel comfortable for you as a solo traveler, but still feels like it's taking you out of your comfort zone? So I think it's sitting with yourself and thinking, OK, what is, like, the goal here? That's takeaway one. Ask yourself what do you want to get from this? Set the mission of your trip.

It feels like another really important detail at the beginning is budget, right? Like, how much money do you realistically want to spend on this trip or can you afford to spend?

ARIKOGLU: And, you know, that's going to look different for everyone. If we're talking big trips, rarely are they spontaneous, right? You're planning for a long time. So that also allows you to save and finance for it. No, there's lots of great savings apps that can just, you know, that take a little bit of money out of your paycheck every few weeks, and you can kind of start, like, a travel fund that way. I think that's quite a nice way to do it. But I think, you know, you can do a big trip on a budget. It doesn't have to be, I think, a lavish, international trip. I mean, you know, we're going into spring and summer, there are so many incredible national parks to see, there are so many amazing, very diverse, different cities. There's, like, so much on your doorstep, so I think you can really argue, you don't have to cross continents to have a big trip. And so if that feels a more affordable way to get away for a couple of weeks, then, you know, look in your backyard.

SEGARRA: Right. I wonder, too, like, part of budget, besides money, is also time. Like, how much vacation time do you have? Do you have any tips for people who don't have that much vacation time?

ARIKOGLU: So I think if you look at the calendar and you look at where the holiday weekends fall, There are some tricks to being able to kind of, like, turn your limited number of vacation days into - kind of you can stretch it out if you bookend it with a holiday weekend or something like that. But on the flip side, it's also most expensive time to travel, right? There is an argument for choosing shoulder season, so that's not traveling to a destination when it's at its peak. And this is great for your own personal experience, but it's also in terms of helping that destination deal with overtourism, overcrowding. If we're talking about Europe, for example, the summers are getting hotter. So avoiding those really intense, hot, summer seasons can actually be really advantageous for your own travel plans.

SEGARRA: Yeah. That seems like maybe the next thing to consider as you're planning a big trip before you start looking at destinations is what time of year are you looking to travel?

ARIKOGLU: Definitely. And that's more of a luxury for some people because If you're having to navigate school holidays, then you're a little bit more limited. But again, it's sort of when you're thinking about carving out those goals and what you want to get out of the trip. Maybe it's the seasonality that's really important. Maybe it's all you want is hot weather and a beach. You know, if you're planning some summer travel, you could totally flip things on its head and go experience winter somewhere. I went to Patagonia when it was entering into their fall in Chile, and it was a really magnificent time to be there, and it was when New York City was going into spring. It felt like upside-down land to be choosing to do that, and it was so wonderful. It was great.

SEGARRA: Yeah. I think there's a lot of room for creativity there. And also, as you said, like, it opens up more possibilities if you consider going places during the shoulder season.

ARIKOGLU: And you get to be in a place and actually be in the place with the people who live there. One thing in August, if you go to Europe, everyone who lives there has, you know, gone off somewhere else on vacation to escape the heat and the tourists, and so, you know, you're in Rome with just all the other tourists and none of the Romans.

SEGARRA: All right, so takeaway two. Before you land on a destination, think about your constraints. What time of year do you plan to travel? For how long? What budget are you working with? If you're short on time, you can make use of holidays or pick a destination closer to home. If you're short on money, think creatively. You know, maybe you do a road trip through some parks or cities nearby.

SEGARRA: It seems like another thing to consider here is, how much do you like crowds? Because for me, it kind of ruins a trip or an experience if everywhere I go is super crowded. I get very overwhelmed by that and overstimulated.

ARIKOGLU: And it's also, you know, who are the crowds? Because there's been times when I've gone somewhere and I've gone and done the same bucket list site that everyone else is, and you're sort of standing there and you're thinking, What am I actually here for? Well, what is the purpose of this? What am I getting out of it? What am I giving to this destination other than just being another member of the crowd?

SEGARRA: Yeah. I think that's an important question, right? 'Cause, like, we have been talking about what are you looking to get out of it, for the most part. But there's another side to this - right? - and it's what am I giving? And also, what am I taking? Like, am I taking too much from this place?

ARIKOGLU: I think about that a lot. When you're planning, be really thoughtful about where you're spending your money. When you're choosing a hotel, is it a hotel that is locally owned? What restaurants are you booking? Where are you shopping? Where are you buying your souvenirs? You know, I think there's lots of ways to be really thoughtful about, you know, how you spend your money, and that can go into your budgeting, as well.

SEGARRA: I know there are certain places that at a certain time, at least, they said, please, tourists, like, please stop coming or stop coming during this time.

ARIKOGLU: Yeah. When a destination says that, I mean, it's something to be taken so seriously because they're usually destinations that have an infrastructure or an economy that really relies on tourism. So things have to have gotten pretty bad for a destination to say, take a beat, not right now, and listen to that, and, you know, the place will be better for it when you do go see it.

SEGARRA: I picture it as if you were, like, going to - going over, like, a friend's house uninvited, or, like, if they were like, please, today's not good. Like, our whole family's sick, like, we're all throwing up, and then you were still banging on the door, like, hey, what are you doing? Can I come stay over?

ARIKOGLU: I think that is a perfect analogy. Perfect. And no one wants to be that person.

SEGARRA: No.

ARIKOGLU: I'd hate to be that person.

SEGARRA: That'd be weird behavior.

ARIKOGLU: Yeah.

SEGARRA: Takeaway three, travel responsibly. Research the places you're interested in, and make sure they want tourists at the time you're looking to visit. When you're booking, consider putting your money toward the local economy rather than international chains. Also, learn about whatever destination you choose. Be open to the cultural practices and languages there. And be a respectful visitor.

Anything else that people would want to figure out before they start narrowing down or looking at destinations?

ARIKOGLU: I think it's also thinking about who you want to travel with. Someone can be your best friend, but they can be your worst roommate. I think travel's kind of the same, so kind of finding someone to travel with or a group of people to travel with who you're aligned with in the planning stage, rather than when you get there and then you suddenly discover you all want to do different things. So I think communicating right off the back what you all want out of the trip and what you're excited about and also being really honest with each other about finances.

If you're on a group trip, I mean, it's like splitting the bill, but a thousand times worse. And so I think if you can kind of, like, set some parameters at the start and be really honest about what you feel comfortable spending money on because inevitably, there is going to be some people on the trip who want to spend more money on some things than others.

SEGARRA: Yeah. And it seems like that conversation, there should be some form of that before you book anything.

ARIKOGLU: Yes, 100%. And, you know, I think even if you don't feel comfortable doing it, speaking up if something just feels too expensive.

SEGARRA: All right. So takeaway four, figure out who you're traveling with. You might prefer to travel alone, or if you're going with friends, partners, or family, just make sure you're on the same page about what you want from the trip - the pace, the activities and how much money you can spend.

SEGARRA: OK. So it sounds like we've given people a lot of things to consider before they choose a destination. Once they've done this soul searching, how can they start to find destinations that fit those desires and limitations?

ARIKOGLU: For me, part of the fun of travel planning is doing the research, whether it is a trusted travel publication or reading some books you love or going on to - you know, there's, like, a ton of just, like, online communities of people who love swapping travel tips and actually, I think, can be really helpful.

SEGARRA: Yeah. I think it can be helpful maybe to in the brainstorming stage to just, like, not go in too deep but just make a list of places that seem exciting to you and that might fit your parameters. Like, I have a Google Doc, and it's just, like, places that I would be really excited to go.

SEGARRA: When you are considering a destination, how helpful is social media - is - like, seeing where your friends are going or where influencers are going? Is it a good idea to follow those trends?

ARIKOGLU: I think it can be useful in picking things you want to do once you're there, particularly if it's, like, based around, like, big events or openings. You know, we have our best places to go list that runs every year. It could be, like, new train routes, new hiking routes, new museums that have opened, things that are happening in destinations centered around an anniversary. So, you know, kind of consulting those sorts of lists and rounds up as well can be very helpful. But I think, you know, going back to what we were talking about in terms of over tourism or overcrowding - you know, on social media, you will see people at the same spots time and time again. And they're usually spots where just around the corner, there's also something equally beautiful to see.

SEGARRA: Yeah. Like, I remember when Santorini was really popular. And it's like, whew - like, if you could actually see what was going on behind that photo, like, you would hate being there because it's so - it's just way too many people...

ARIKOGLU: Right. Right.

SEGARRA: ...All lining up to take a picture in - against that beautiful backdrop.

ARIKOGLU: Exactly. And, you know, it's Santorini. It's all beautiful. It's all amazing.

SEGARRA: OK. So takeaway five is to choose a destination. And cast a wide net when you're brainstorming 'cause you never know what's going to catch your eye. Also, Lale says, do your best to think outside of the current travel trends. Though you can use them for inspiration.

So once you've got a destination in mind, how can you start to sketch out the details of the trip? And I guess I should say, how much detail do you really need to figure out?

ARIKOGLU: So I was going to say, don't overschedule yourself, and don't overbook yourself. I think I've been guilty of doing that before, and then you realize that you have no downtime. It might seem like you're being really efficient, but you need a little bit of spontaneity on your trip. Don't overschedule. If there are a few key things you really want to do that you feel you will be crushed if you don't get to do it, then book it. Make sure that's arranged all in advance. So maybe it's finding one thing on each day of your trip. That's what you center your day around and you can frame your itinerary around that, but I wouldn't overschedule.

SEGARRA: Yeah. And then I think when you look at these things potentially sketched out on different days, then you say like, you know, that seems too busy. What's the most important to me here? Like, which of these activities do I want to book ahead?

ARIKOGLU: Right. You know, if you're suddenly realizing - you're like, I am cramming a lot in if I try to go to these three places, then choosing which one to let go.

SEGARRA: Yeah. 'Cause that's always a consideration, too. Like, if you're flying somewhere far, you might think, well, I'm already going to Poland, should I also do Germany?

SEGARRA: There's that impulse, you know? Or I'm going to Poland, so I want to see all of Poland. But that can make for a very frenetic kind of trip.

ARIKOGLU: And you wouldn't tell someone who was visiting America to be like, well, you've come all the way to America, so if you're going to New York, then you also need to go to New Orleans.

SEGARRA: Right, right. Exactly. That's Takeaway 6 - keep your schedule light and malleable. Lally recommends picking only one activity to do for each day of your trip and then building a flexible itinerary around those.

You know, it occurs to me that another element of a big trip when I'm going into them - I know that something's going to go awry during it.

ARIKOGLU: Always (laughter).

SEGARRA: Yeah.

SEGARRA: I remember being in Barcelona when I was in college. I went by myself for, like, a week. And I speak Spanish, but it wasn't fluent at the time. And I just got - I just missed being able to easily say what I wanted to say, and I went into, like, a Wendy's or something because I just wanted something kind of American. And I got some chicken nuggets. I couldn't think how to say nuggets in Spanish. Like, I was like, is that even a word, like, in Spanish, or did they just say nuggets? And I just broke and started speaking in English because I was trying to only speak Spanish. And I was like, I give up. Like, can I get some chicken nuggets, please?

ARIKOGLU: The true American in you comes out screaming at chicken nuggets in a foreign McDonald's.

SEGARRA: Yeah, yeah, give me my nuggies.

ARIKOGLU: (Laughter).

SEGARRA: Yeah, I just - like, sometimes you just need to go roll up into a ball and eat your chicken nuggies and be by yourself for a minute and then come back out, you know?

ARIKOGLU: Yeah. I mean, like, travel so much of the time is sort of, like, infantilizing because you're so powerless. But it's, like, the same in an airport. You're just sort of powerless at a certain extent when things go wrong. And I think my approach to it - to sort of very taxing and challenging air travel schedules, with connections and potential miss flights and lost luggage and all the things that come with that - is to sort of just give myself up to the airport gods, and just as soon as I'm, like, through TSA, just be like, what will be will be. I'll get there eventually and just, like, I'm powerless. And that's been, like, for me, quite liberating. And it also means that I'm not the person screaming at some poor gate agent when things go wrong.

SEGARRA: Yeah, it's a moment of - it's actually an opportunity for mindfulness. Like, I think that could even be helpful going into a big trip, to tell yourself, like, something is going to go wrong. Yeah, just keep that in mind.

ARIKOGLU: Oh, my God, so much of travel is about being tired and hungry.

SEGARRA: We're really selling this.

ARIKOGLU: I know.

SEGARRA: (Laughter).

ARIKOGLU: I'm like, my whole job is to travel. It's great.

SEGARRA: Isn't it terrible? Yeah.

SEGARRA: I try to remind myself, like - what is the point? - like, go back to those goals. What is the point of this? It's to have a good experience, to meet those needs, to give myself what I've been craving.

ARIKOGLU: Exactly. And I don't know. This sounds a little cheesy and a little trite, but anyone who gets to travel is really lucky. Ultimately, it's a real privilege that you get to do it. And it's such a freedom and it's such a special thing.Don't make it stressful.

SEGARRA: That's our final takeaway. Something on your trip is bound to go wrong. So once you're there, sit back and try to surrender. After all, traveling in the first place is a treat.

SEGARRA: OK, jet-setters, time for a recap. First, figure out what you want from this vacation. Decide your budget and time constraints. Commit to traveling ethically. Make sure you're aligned with the people you're traveling with. When you choose a destination, cast a wide net and have fun with the research. Don't overschedule yourself, and once you're there, relax and roll with the punches. For more LIFE KIT, check out our other episodes. We've got one on how to find cheap flights and another on how to pack your suitcase like a pro. You can find those at np.org/lifekit. And if you love LIFE KIT and you just cannot get enough, subscribe to our newsletter at np.org/lifekitnewsletter. Also, we love hearing from you, so if you have episode ideas or feedback you want to share, e-mail us at [email protected].

This episode of LIFE KIT was produced by Margaret Cirino. Our visuals editor is Beck Harlan and our digital editor is Malaka Gharib. Meghan Keane is our supervising editor and Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our production team also includes Andee Tagle, Clare Marie Schneider and Sylvie Douglis. Engineering support comes from Robert Rodriguez. I'm Marielle Segarra. Thanks for listening.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Holidays make life worth living. Whether we are away for a night, or halfway around the world on a vacation, “getting away” is what adds that silver lining to our otherwise busy lives. But international holidays also mean a lot of planning, patiently checking hundreds of travel reviews, reading dozens of travel blogs and guides, whetting promotions and deals that airlines and hotels have to offer, and keeping in mind travel advisories and safety nets. Sometimes juggling work, home and kids all in a day seem tedious enough. Add to that the average time you need to spend online to map your holiday, and ouch, do we hear even the most enthusiastic travel junkie let out a long sigh!!

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Where to Find AAA TourBook Guides and Maps

Updated : April 23, 2024

Michelle Palmer

Table of contents, what information is in a tourbook, what else will i find, travel information from experts you can trust, where can i find aaa maps.

Get TourBook ® guides for destinations across the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean at TourBook.AAA.com , and find paper maps at your local AAA offices as well as printable maps at AAA’s online map gallery.

Since 1926, AAA’s free TourBook guides have been providing trustworthy travel information to AAA members. The digital guide is the same great TourBook you know and love, but now you can get that information and more in an eco-friendly, easy-to-use format on your smartphone, tablet or desktop. It is also downloadable, so you can access the guide wherever you are at any time of day.

Go from dreaming about your next vacation — whether that’s a family adventure to Yosemite, a romantic getaway in Asheville or a fun trip with friends in Austin — to planning with this interactive guide. You can find a hotel with ease and book your room with just a click of the Book Now button. Save money with access to special deals and benefits available only to AAA members, and you can rest assured that wherever you choose to stay, it will be clean and comfortable. Or follow the link to contact a travel agent at your local AAA office. They can assist you with a complete vacation package from finding the best deals and booking your hotel to helping you plan an entire itinerary.

All hotels in the guide have earned a AAA Diamond designation by going through rigorous evaluations conducted by AAA’s team of professional inspectors. Not only are they clean; you can know what level of amenities are offered making it easy to choose a hotel that best suits your budget and your preferences.

Save time planning your trip by using our helpful articles. AAA’s team of travel editors has created one-day itineraries that you can follow exactly to get the most out of a short excursion. Alternatively, use them as a guide to get an idea of where things are in a city to assist in planning your trip, so you don’t waste valuable vacation time.

Our travel editors also have identified must-see attractions including AAA GEMs (Great Experience for Members ® ) that shouldn’t be missed. These include stops ranging from the Montréal Botanical Garden and The Field Museum in Chicago to the Painted Desert in the Petrified Forest National Park. They have also noted top places to take children, so everyone of all ages has a good time during your family vacation.

Unlike the printed guides, the digital TourBook includes road trips. You can use these to plan out an entire itinerary like a classic trip down Route 66 or a drive up the Northern California coast. Our suggested routes include stops such as tasty local restaurants to refuel, museums to learn about the area, and parks to recharge and stretch your legs in an idyllic setting. Or use them to take a detour down a scenic byway through forests, around lakes and even for leaf-peeping in the fall.

• Diamond-designated restaurants with information on cuisine
• Sports and recreation, including where to catch games as well as places to hike, bike, golf and other activities
• Recreation charts to quickly identify national, state, provincial and local parks, as well as available activities and amenities
• High-quality maps to see nearby cities, national parks and scenic natural features
• Interactive table of contents that navigates where you want in just a click
• Shopping information on malls and specialty districts
• Nightlife articles to find the best bars and late-night eats

For more than 80 years, AAA’s expert inspectors have been evaluating hotels and restaurants across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica and the Caribbean. They conduct surprise evaluations based on a rigorous set of guidelines to provide members with detailed comments on what to expect at AAA Diamond-designated hotels and restaurants.

Unlike other rating systems that are based solely on travelers’ experiences, AAA inspectors determine Diamond designations on-site and according to established guidelines and requirements. The AAA Diamond Program reflects the latest in industry trends and travelers’ expectations. The designations not only indicate the level of amenities that you can expect at a property; they also assure that hotels offer a clean, comfortable experience no matter the budget.

Our team of AAA travel editors has been providing travel advice and information for members since the release of the first TourBook in 1926. They are experienced travelers who provide in-depth information on cities and attractions as well as sample travel plans. With the AAA TourBook guides, AAA’s travel information is more convenient than ever.

There are a few ways to get AAA maps. Firstly, you can stop by your local AAA office to pick up paper maps of U.S., Canada and Mexico — for free for AAA members. Plus, select offices carry an atlas of North America.

The second way you can get maps is via the AAA Map Gallery , an online gallery where you can access printable maps of destinations in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, as well as maps of cruise terminals and national parks.

The other way to access maps is with TripTik Travel Planner . The TripTik tool allows you to plan and save routes, find important points of interest like hotels (including pet-friendly hotels), campgrounds, restaurants and attractions as well as identify locations that offer discounts and savings to AAA members.

Michelle Palmer is a development editor who has over 10 years of experience in the travel publishing industry. She loves telling the stories, histories and culture of places that inspire others to go and experience new destinations. When not traveling, she participates in circus arts, goes to live shows and is a “Murder, She Wrote” aficionado.

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As one of the largest travel agencies in North America, we have a wealth of recommendations to share! Browse our articles and videos for inspiration, or dive right in with preplanned AAA Road Trips, cruises and vacation tours.

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Save and organize every aspect of your trip including cruises, hotels, activities, transportation and more. Book hotels confidently using our AAA Diamond Designations and verified reviews.

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The kids are going to summer camp. Time to plan an adult vacation.

The nearby trip can be comforting while also maintaining independence.

Michelle Minor drove more than 600 miles last summer to drop off her 12-year-old son at NASA space camp, his first overnight summer camp. Once he was settled in, Minor didn’t drive back home. She and her partner drove about two hours away to Nashville, where they stayed for the week.

“I wanted to be close. That’s really it. I did not feel like I could have him far away,” Minor said, who lives in Evanston, Ill., multiple states away from her son’s camp in Alabama. “I think he kind of also felt comforted by the fact that I was close by, that I wasn’t states and states away.”

It was an added bonus that for the first time in a long time, Minor and her partner got to enjoy a couples vacation. They’re planning a similar trip this August, when Minor’s son goes back to overnight camp.

“We could get to know each other as just adults again, doing things that we like, that aren’t necessarily related to us being parents, like art museums or live music. ... We could actually go see live music that starts at 9 p.m., and we don’t have to get up and make scrambled eggs at 7:30,” she joked.

Every summer, more than 26 million kids and adults attend camps, with overnight camps increasing their enrollment, according to the American Camp Association. As some parents sort out their children’s summer plans and make camp packing lists, they’re also planning nearby trips of their own. Here’s how to start thinking about one.

What to consider

Jody LeVos, chief learning officer at the children’s education company Begin, said staying close by while kids go to camp can be comforting for parents, but still allows children to build friendships and independence.

“It’s not going to impact the child’s experience. They’re away from their parents, whether the parent is half an hour away or six hours away, so it’s more about the parent and what makes them comfortable,” LeVos said.

She says each child develops independence at their own pace, but when they’re emotionally and mentally prepared, overnight camp can be a great opportunity for kids to enhance their skills. The transition, however, can be nerve-racking for parents who are seeing their child’s growing independence.

“Parents may be asking the what-ifs, you know, what happens if my child needs me or gets hurt? And so there is some anxiety around, what will the child do when I’m not there to protect them or respond to their every need?” LeVos said.

She recommends practicing overnight camp routines with children who are going away for the first time, like having them sleep in their sleeping bag at home first and practicing other routines that may typically get done with help from parents.

Melanie Gast is planning her first summer vacation spent without her older kids. After years of attending camps near their home in West Palm Beach, Fla., her 13-year-old daughter and 10-year-old son will attend their first overnight camps during the same week; an outdoors summer camp for the eldest, and a nearby overnight science camp for her son.

“I look at this as an amazing vacation for my husband and I,” Gast said. She and her husband will bring their 2-year-old daughter along on the trip to Memphis, but they’re planning to take turns entertaining her at the hotel while the other parent visits Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum and other sights.

“We’ll still have a baby, but that’s really different than having a teenager and a 10-year-old,” Gast said. “So for me this is the best it can get.”

Most parents find a camp first then find a nearby city to explore, but it’s possible to reverse engineer that part of the process. The most important thing to do is make sure the chosen camp will be one that keeps your child engaged from start to finish. Once your kid is enrolled, you can start planning your own nearby getaway, but know that unforeseen hiccups at camp could cut a parent’s vacation short, such as illness.

Gast chose Memphis as the city she wanted to visit for vacation, then found summer camps for her children that were within a driving range that made her comfortable. Both Gast and Minor said a city that’s about a three-hour drive or less from camp is best.

LeVos says parents who are nervous about how well their child is adapting to their new environment should make time for movement to relieve stress.

“Going for a walk at night, looking up at the stars, knowing that your child is looking at the same stars can be really helpful and remind families that they may be a little bit apart, but they’re still together,” she said.

LeVos also recommends journaling, for both children at camp and their parents, to explore what emotions come up when the family is apart. Once reunited, family members can use their notes as an entry point for understanding how the time went for everyone.

A win for both parents and kids

At the end of camp, LeVos says children will likely return home feeling proud of the way they cared for themselves and developed new skills for managing their emotions.

That’s what Minor experienced when her son returned from camp last year. He did better than she expected. “I was like, ‘Oh, okay, you did bring all the clothes home? You actually wore all of them versus wearing the same thing? Oh, you did good.’ Those are important life skills,” she said.

She’s more comfortable sending her son back for another overnight camp this year, but she’ll still be vacationing nearby, just in case.

“This is an opportunity to not only still be the best parent – because as a parent, you get a lot of credibility when you send your kid to space camp, but then you also get to enjoy some of the benefits in a rewarding way,” Minor said. “Everybody wins here.”

Sheeka Sanahori is a travel journalist and video producer based in Atlanta. You can find her on Instagram: @sheeka.sanahori .

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Distance between Moscow and Tokyo

Flying non-stop from moscow to tokyo.

How far is Tokyo from Moscow? Here's the quick answer if you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line.

Flight distance: 4,661 miles or 7501 km

Flight time: 9 hours, 49 minutes

Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula. For a long distance, this appears as a curve on the map, and this is often the route that commercial airlines will take so it's a good estimate of the frequent flyer miles you'll accumulate as well.

This is a fairly long flight, so unless you have a Gulfstream G650 or your own Boeing or Airbus, you might be booking a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time .

Moscow to Tokyo airports and flights

In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.

To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.

Departure airport: Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO)

Arrival airport: Tokyo Haneda Airport (HND)

With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.

Getting to the airport: 51 minutes

Getting to your destination: 28 minutes

Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from SVO to HND and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.

Commercial flight time: 9 hours, 49 minutes

So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Moscow to Tokyo including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.

Total travel time: 13 hours

Plan a trip to Tokyo

Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Tokyo, Japan. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Tokyo . If you're looking for a place to stay, you might want to check out The Peninsula Tokyo . A great place to eat might be Golden Gai . Trippy members can suggest things to do in Tokyo like Akihabara . Check out some of the questions people have asked about Tokyo like Exploring Tokyo solo for 3 days: Where to stay and what to do? . Click the button below to explore Tokyo in detail.

How far is it the other way?

The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line. But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Tokyo to Moscow , or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities .

If you happen to know Moscow, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Moscow!

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The majority of us travelers plan to do a road trip this summer: survey.

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Travel experts at The Vacationer released their 2024 summer travel survey results this week, giving an overview of what travelers can expect this summer season beginning on Memorial Day weekend.

The anonymous survey asked more than 1,000 American adults if and how they plan to travel this summer. Mathematics professor Eric Jones of Rowan College, South Jersey, analyzed the results.

According to the survey, nearly 82% of Americans plan to travel this summer, which could be more than 212 million adults throughout the season.

This number is down from summer 2023, with 3% fewer people intending to travel at least once this summer.

While nearly 52%, or 132 million Americans, said they would fly this summer, air travelers are down compared to last summer, when 54% intended to fly at least once.

According to The Points Guy, airline passengers could be in for another busy summer travel season in the U.S. and internationally. Experts also don’t expect fairs to drop significantly compared to last summer.

The average domestic airfare for June will cost about $303, with round-trip routes trending lower for July and August, according to The Points Guy.

According to The Vacationer survey, the most popular method of travel is by road. Seventy-five percent of Americans intend to take at least one road trip this summer, most driving somewhere within 100 miles of their home. 

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Less than 21% will stick to a destination within 250 miles from home, and 5.8% will drive more than 1,000 miles from home. 

How much road trip travelers pay at the gas pump this summer remains to be seen. 

According to AAA, the increasing gas prices may be about to stall – at least for a little while. The national average for a gallon of gas is $3.67, about two months ahead of Memorial Day weekend, when the summer travel season begins. 

“The situation overseas with war in both the Middle East and Ukraine has the oil market on edge,” AAA Andrew Gross spokesperson said. “But this is also the time of year we may see a bit of a lull in gasoline demand between the end of spring breaks and ahead of Memorial Day. So the national average for gas may waffle a bit with small increases, some flat days, and even some price dips.”

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