Best Travel Resources - Family Gap Year Guide

Take it from the family who traveled the world full-time for many years — being prepared and well-equipped for your travels makes everything more fun!

Below you’ll find all our top recommendations for everything you need to make your trip a smooth journey.

Our Favorite Travel Products & Services

🗺️ Planning your trip
✈️ Finding the cheapest transportation
🏨 Booking your accommodations
📷 Scheduling fun activities
🧳 Packing the necessities
🚙 Staying safe on the road
💖 And a few non-travel resources we love so much we had to share!

🗺️ Planning your trip

Chase Sapphire Travel Credit Card

Before you do anything else, apply for the Chase Sapphire Travel Credit Card! This is the number one thing you should have as a traveler.

In my opinion, the top benefit to having the Chase Sapphire card is that they don’t charge any foreign transaction fees. If you’re headed overseas, that alone is worth getting this card.

In addition, you’ll get tons of other benefits like 2-5x rewards on travel purchases, an annual hotel credit, and travel protection benefits.

Chase is always offering bonus points for new cardholders that usually add up to hundreds of dollars back in statement credits! I can’t recommend it enough — apply for the Chase Sapphire Card today!

click here for the chase sapphire card!

Digital Travel Planner

Ready to start planning your next trip? You’ll definitely need this Digital Travel Planner!

For just $7.99, you can get our completely customizable Digital Travel Planner, which you can reuse again and again for every trip you take. Since it’s digital, you’ll always have access from wherever you are, and you don’t have to remember to bring it along!

Our Digital Travel Planner is a Google Sheets file that you can easily save to your own Google Drive or download as a spreadsheet file. There are tabs for logging expenses, calculating currency exchanges, comparing travel options, planning your itinerary, checking off your packing list, and more!

Even better, the whole document uses spreadsheet logic and formulas to automatically make calculations and keep your information consistent from sheet to sheet. You can’t get any better than this for making your next trip an organized success!

click here for your digital travel planner!

The Family Bucket List book

Get the whole family involved and excited about planning your travels, with The Family Bucket List book.

Go through the book together and see how many items you’ve already checked off — then plan what adventure you’ll tackle together next!

✈️ Finding the cheapest transportation

CheapOair

Use CheapOair to search for flights when you know where you want to go. You’re likely to find the lowest prices on their site, and you can also book hotels and rental cars.

Going

I suggest signing up for Going’s email notifications for cheap flights out of your home airport. This is great for booking spontaneous trips to a destination just because the price was low!

Rail Europe

I have so many great memories of traveling around Europe by train. With Rail Europe, you can book train tickets to destinations all across the continent.

🏨 Booking your accommodations

Booking.com

I often use booking.com for finding and booking hotel stays. They have a fantastic search function that allows you to narrow the results to fit your needs, and the map option helps me find the perfect spot to stay.

Vrbo

Vrbo is a great option for finding houses and apartments to rent for long-term stays. We generally book via Vrbo or Airbnb when we are staying somewhere longer than 1-2 weeks.

Hostelworld

For the most budget-friendly option, make sure to look at hostels, too. With our family of six, we’ve booked entire private hostel rooms before because we filled them up! Check out your options on Hostelworld, and pay attention to reviews to find the best places.

📷 Scheduling fun activities

GetYourGuide

Be sure to browse the offerings at GetYourGuide to find all the unique tours and activities available at your destination. You’ll find great deals here like skip-the-line tickets and tours led by locals.

Viator

Viator is another great site to search for the best local attractions and experiences. Take a cooking class or hop a bus for a tour of hot spots and hidden gems!

Tiqets

Tiqets’ specialty is offering travelers the ability to book last-minute digital tickets via their mobile phones. Check Tiqets the next time you find yourself standing in a long line to buy admission for an attraction!

🧳 Packing the necessities

Best backpack for one-bag travel

I’ll never stop shouting the praises of our REI Ruckpacks! They fit so much, are comfortable to carry as a backpack, and the straps zip away and make them easy to bring onto an airplane. Not to mention they meet the requirements for a carry-on for most airlines!

Head here for the REI Women’s Ruckpack, and here for the REI Men’s Ruckpack.

Packing cubes

Keep your clothes and other items organized and easily accessible by using packing cubes. I recommend buying a set of packing cubes in a variety of sizes. I usually use my large packing cube for bottoms, medium for tops, and small for underthings.

We use EZpacking.com’s packing cubes for our kids. I love them because we can color-code and use a different color for each kid, making it easier to keep track of everyone’s things. Use my coupon code ‘GAPYEAR’ for 15% off!

Must-have travel products

Here are some more of our favorite, must-have travel products!

🚙 Staying safe on the road

SafetyWing travel insurance

If you’re headed out of the United States, you’ll definitely want to pay for SafetyWing travel insurance. We used their plans for our family while backpacking across Europe, and we were able to breathe easy the whole time, knowing we had good coverage in case we ran into any issues

Check out my SafetyWing review here: Do you need family gap year travel insurance?

Car battery jump starter

Driving to your destination? Taking the great American road trip? Don’t leave home without this car battery jump starter! With this powerful little guy, you won’t have to flag down another car to jumpstart yours if your battery dies.

Just keep this portable jump starter charged and in your car, and you’ll be able to jump your battery yourself. Bonus: it’s also a flashlight and portable power bank for charging other devices.

Personal Safety Alarm

Stay safe with Birdie, a personal safety alarm that will emit a loud siren and flashing strobe-light when activated. Hopefully you never have to use it, but you’ll feel safer and be equipped for unsafe situations with Birdie!

💖 Other things we love!

Best deals on theme park vacations

We love a theme park! Our favorite is Universal’s Islands of Adventure. If you’re planning a trip to either Florida or California to visit Disney, Universal, or other nearby theme parks, be sure to book through GetAwayToday for the best deals on tickets, hotels, and packages!

Pura home fragrances

You know how a great smell can instantly transport you to a favorite moment, maybe one from your travels? I absolutely love Pura’s fragrance diffusers and huge variety of scents.

We have diffusers upstairs and downstairs in our house, and they make the whole house smell amazing. You can install two fragrances in each diffuser and set a schedule so they automatically turn on and off when you want.

They even have car diffusers to make those road trips more enjoyable!

Family Gap Year Academy

Of course we love our own online course that teaches families how to take life on the road! Packed with incredible value, Family Gap Year Academy will set you on course for taking the most extraordinary journey of your entire life.

From charting your dream destinations, to planning your budget, to roadschooling the kids, we’ll guide you every step of the way. Careful, this course is life-changing…in the best way!