11 Questions to Ask Before Traveling- Catherine
In this post, guest writer Catherine talks about 11 questions to ask before travelling.
Traveling is an exciting venture into new places with new people and experiences. However, if you want your trip to be the best it possibly can, you should definitely put in some work before you go to ensure that your time away has a positive impact on your life. If you’re wondering what questions to ask before traveling on a big trip, you’ve come to the right article. Below are questions to ask before traveling and how you should go about answering them.
1. Is Your House Ready For You to Leave?
There is nothing worse than going away on a trip and finding out that tragedy has struck in your home with no one there to catch things before they get too bad. For example, if you leave on a trip without fire suppression software installed in your residence, there may be more fire damage that could have been prevented had someone been home. Make sure that you have an alarm system installed that will contact local authorities and work to actively suppress the fire, especially if you’re not planning on having a house sitter watching your home.
2. Do You Need a House Sitter?
One of the main questions to ask before traveling is whether or not you need to hire a house sitter. If you are planning on being away for more than a week or if you have a house that needs a lot of upkeep, it’s a good idea to arrange for someone to watch your home. A house sitter can ensure that your mail is being taken inside, watering plants, or otherwise ensure that your home is staying in good shape while you’re gone. You can, in addition, have someone stop by your home every few days to check that things are running smoothly.
3. Are You Ready For the Physical Exertion of Travel?
Many times, vacations and other trips involve a lot of physical activity, whether it’s walking around a new city or hiking through the airport with heavy bags, which leads to questions to ask before traveling regarding your physical readiness to exert yourself on your trip. To make sure that you’re prepared for your trip, recover like an athlete before you leave. Any committed athlete knows that the best way to prevent injury is to properly recover and prepare your body. This means that if you get neck pain from long car rides, make sure to do some exercises to get your neck loose to prevent neck pain from happening.
If you have a lot of inflammation-related aches and pains, try to address them before you leave for your trip as well. You can look into buying ice cube wholesale so that you can ice any aches and pains to give your body time to heal before leaving for your trip. You can also take OTC medications to help with inflammation, but make sure to consult with your doctor before starting any DIY medical treatment plan.
4. Are You Sick or Injured?
If you have serious aches and pains and your at-home treatments aren’t working, odds are that they will just worsen while you’re traveling. To avoid losing precious time during your travels, make sure to seek the help of medical professionals before your departure. If you have physical issues, they may recommend you to a physical therapist who can help you get stronger in order to help with your physical issues.
If you are feeling sick leading up to your trip, make sure to see a doctor right away. Being sick while you’re traveling takes away from your overall enjoyment of your time away from home, and it can prevent you from doing what you had planned to do on your trip if you are sick enough. Getting the proper treatment before you leave is key to having the best trip possible.
5. Are You Photo-Ready?
Now for one of the most important questions to ask before traveling: did you even go on a trip if you don’t post about it on every social media platform you have?
Taking pictures of your surroundings and yourself during your travels has always been very popular, but that popularity has only grown as social media has gained popularity. If you struggle with your skin or another aspect of your appearance, it can be helpful for your self-confidence to do something about it before your trip.
For example, if you often get breakouts on your face and you want to minimize the chances of having one while on your trip, you should seek out dermatology services in order to get the treatment that you need. If you have issues with feeling bloated, doing a home detox can help you flush toxins out of your body and leave you feeling refreshed. Make sure before doing any detox that you consult your doctor to find out if it is a good home detox or the kind that actually has a negative impact on your overall health — the ingredients and brand can be very important to figuring this out.
6. Are Your Travel Documents Ready?
Once you have your body in order for your trip, it’s time to start to actually get your trip materials in order. If you only ask yourself one of these questions to ask before traveling, it should be this one. This means collecting all of your travel documents and keeping them together in an organized way. Your travel documents can include your plane tickets, even tickets, an itinerary, your visa, and your passport. Having all of these materials in one place can make it a lot easier to have your travel run smoothly and according to the plans you have laid out. If you know that all of your tickets are in one folder, then you only have to keep track of that one folder as opposed to all of the individual tickets.
If you forget one of these important documents, it can completely derail your entire trip. Many of these documents can be stored on your phone, and if that’s your plan, be sure to screenshot any tickets or important information before you leave home so that you still are able to access them if you lose internet access.
It’s also important to keep someone informed of where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing, especially if you’re traveling alone. Tell someone your itinerary so that if they can’t get a hold of you, they will know where you’re supposed to be and will have a chance at contacting you in a different way.
7. What Souvenirs Will You Get?
If you are interested in living a minimalist lifestyle, buying souvenirs on trips can be hard. That’s why one of the questions to ask before traveling is what souvenirs you could get that you will actually use. If you wait until you’re on your trip to pick the kind of souvenir that you want, you may come home and find you don’t have anywhere to put it. Instead, plan the type of memento you want to buy before you even leave for your trip. For example, if you have some wall space that is open, you could look into finding art while you’re on vacation. With this method, you’ll definitely have space for your souvenirs and they won’t end up being stored or thrown away. In addition, planning what souvenirs you want to buy can help you determine what your budget should be.
8. Do You Have a Travel Budget?
Having a set budget before you leave for your travel is key to making sure you don’t spend beyond your means. It’s very easy to spend a lot of money while you’re traveling — justifying buying extra food, experiences, or souvenirs that you don’t really need is easy to do if you haven’t set any limits on your spending. That’s why one of the most important questions to ask before traveling is how much money are you planning to spend?
If you have an itinerary planned of what you’re going to do each day, it’s much easier to create a realistic budget. For example, if you’re traveling around New York City and you know that one day you’re planning on going to a show on Broadway, you can budget for the overpriced food and drinks that they sell at the theaters, or you can plan to eat and drink before or after the show to spend a little less money. Being able to plan ahead of time will let you not blow through your entire vacation budget in the first two days, leading to you having to scrounge for the rest of the trip.
9. Did You Tell Your Bank or Credit Card Company That You’re Traveling?
Your bank or credit card likely has theft prevention measures that prevent transactions from going through in cities or countries that you don’t usually visit. All of these questions to ask before you travel are important, but if you end up in a foreign country with no way to use your debit or credit card, you will not have a good time. That makes this one of the more important questions to ask before traveling.
Check your credit card company or bank’s website in order to find out if they have standard procedures to check-in before a trip. For your credit or debit card company, travelers are a pretty common occurrence, so they may already have an easy and streamlined way to check-in before you go in.
10. Have You Packed Smart?
When it comes to packing for your trip, there are almost too many questions to ask before traveling to count. Here are a few of those questions that you can ask yourself:
- How long with you be gone?
- Will you have access to laundry machines?
- What is the weather going to be like?
- What is the climate generally like?
- If you’re flying, what’s the policy on checked baggage?
- If you’re driving, how much room will you have for luggage in the car?
- Do you have a first aid kit?
- How heavy is your luggage?
- How many times will you move your luggage during your trip?
That was quite a few questions to ask before traveling, but all of them can inform your packing decisions. If you know that you’ll have access to a washer and dryer at the air bnb you’re staying at, you won’t have to pack as many pieces of clothing compared to staying somewhere that you won’t have the chance to wash clothes.
Obviously the largest factor of your packing is how long you’ll be gone — a weekend trip will only warrant a small duffel whereas a multiweek trip may need a larger bag or suitcase. If you’re planning a trip to backpack across Europe, you’ll need to pack much lighter than if you’re planning on going to a beach resort for a month.
Including a first aid kit and other emergency-oriented essentials is very important no matter what kind of trip you’re going on. You never know when you might need a bandage or a wrap for a sprained ankle. Accidents do, unfortunately, happen, but by being prepared you can make sure that those accidents don’t completely derail your trip.
11. What Will You Come Home To?
If you’re gone for an extended period of time, it can be a good idea to have a cleaning service come to your home before your return. Even if you have a house sitter than has been watering plants or bringing in mail, they may not be dusting the unused surfaces or cleaning up any messes you might’ve left behind. A good cleaning service will be able to come into your house and make it perfectly tidy so that it’s like you never left, or even better, they can leave it cleaner than it was. You can ask them to clean things that you usually don’t get to by hiring a service that does carpet cleaning or closet organization. Coming home to a beautifully clean house makes the transition from travel to home life a little bit easier.
If you’re planning a big trip, it’s important to ask yourself questions before you travel to ensure that you’re properly prepared to go on your adventures. Ask yourself these questions and you should be able to have a smooth trip from the moment you leave your home until you return back to it.