[travel] Old-school organization

[mattbell]

I'm compiling little "country guides" for myself that are essentially cheat sheets for 90% of the relevant info I'd need to get around that country.

The cheat sheets cover
- Major things I want to visit, how I get to them, when they're open etc.
- Bus/train/plane schedules and fares
- Contact info for local places to stay.
- Maps (photocopied from my travel books)
- Currency conversion (which I'll have memorized by the first day anyway)
- Basic phrases (photocopied from travel book)
- All the advice Ive received about stuff in that country, in really really small text. 

Basically, it's a hell of a lot better than thumbing through a tour book every time I want to look something up. 

Are there any other things you all can think of that I should have on the cheat sheets?

Comments

[doublefeh.livejournal.com]

Actually, I just remembered the final piece that brought me to the current strategy of ripping up my travel books;

Compared to the cost of the trip, how much is it really going to cost to replace the book if I ever want another copy for display or use on my next trip? An extra thirty bucks on a multi-thousand dollar jaunt is a pretty big change in perspective.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Yeah, after reading your comments, I did some thinking about my per-day travel cost, and realized that by comparison, informaiton is very very cheap. I ended up getting all three Lonely Planet Europe amalgamations (Western, Eastern, and Scandanavia) and chopping out the chapters I need. I did however, speed-read the DK books for the countries I cared about first. The pictures do help orient me in terms of priorities for things to visit.