Planning Your College Break Trip

With spring break upon us, I decided that this is the perfect time to help my readers plan a short getaway while on break from school. If you have any additional tips, feel free to leave them in the comments!

If you’ve decided that you want to make travel a priority in college, taking advantage of the many breaks and days off is the best way to go. I spent nearly every opportunity to travel in college, including a winter break in Paris, fall break in Montreal, another winter break in Ireland, and another summer in Croatia. Planning your college break trip is easy if you know where to start.

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When Should I Go?

Spring Break

Usually between late March and mid April, spring break is most commonly associated with binge drinking and wet t-shirt contests in places like Panama City, South Padre Island, Cancun, or the Jersey Shore. But this can be a chance to travel or volunteer, as many students choose to do. Ideal alternatives to the trashy beach vacation include jaunts to Europe or South America.

Summer Break

From May to August, many students participate in shorter study abroad programs. But if you, like me, would rather be sightseeing than in class, you can spend the three months traveling.

Fall Break

Most universities also have a long weekend break before Thanksgiving. It’s not long enough to travel too far, but is a great time to travel domestically.

Winter Break

Once finals are done, traveling is a great way to blow off steam. Between Christmas and New Years is a good time to go. Europe is in its low season in the winter because of the colder climates, making it cheap for college students.

Where Should I Go?

Your destination will depend on how much time you have and how much money you have.  A good tool for wanderlusting students is Skyscanner‘s “search everywhere” tool. You can enter your departing city and click SEARCH. It shows how far you can go for a set amount of money.

Also, keep in mind the climates of your destination. Ireland in January may be cheap, but it’s brutally cold. Summer in the northern hemisphere is winter in the southern hemisphere and you don’t want to pack the wrong clothes. Here are places I would recommend for each break.

• Spring: Central and South America and the Caribbean are ideal for warm weather, but book with a reputable site so you don’t get stuck somewhere bad.
• Summer: Europe and Asia are good options since you have more time to travel. Australia is cheaper in the summer because it is winter down there.
• Fall: With only a long weekend to use, Canada and USA are ideal for road trips.
• Winter: Europe is at its cheapest in the winter, apart from New Years. If you plan on spending the holidays abroad, be sure to book well in advance.

Who’s Going With Me?

This has been the biggest struggle in my years of traveling: getting your friends to come with you. There are always complaints about the cost of the destination, the planning and wanting to do different things. Here’s my advice for picking your travel companions.

1. Decide where you want to go. Extend the offer to your friends. If they want to go, great, if not, go anyways.
2. Discuss your itinerary and expectations beforehand. If one of you wants to party all the time and the others want to go to museums, there could be problems.
3. Budget. It sucks when one of you has less money than the others and has to miss out on certain activities.
4. Give each other alone time, but always make plans for where and when to meet up again. Remember, no friend left behind.
5. If you’re going alone, congratulations. You’ve just made one of the best decisions of your life.

How Should I Book the Trip?

Many travel agencies specialize in student travel and help you get as much out of your short time as possible. Here’s a few I can recommend:

• Student Universe: They offer travel deals as well as discounts on flights, accommodation and even textbooks.
• Round The World Experts: As a part of the Flight Centre network, this website works with hundreds of tour operators and airlines. They specialize in round the world trips and gap years.
• Adventure Travel Bugs: This company can put together your entire Australian itinerary and often throws in free tours and accommodation. Wicked Travel and Peter Pans are also based in Australia.

Should I Take A Tour?

Tours are good if you are short on time. In fact, many companies, like EF College Break, plan around the university schedules. They cover your accommodation and sightseeing as well as a few meals. Here are a few tour operators I have used myself or heard good things about.

• EF College Break: I took my first student trip to Amsterdam and Paris over New Years my freshman year. I enjoyed myself and met lots of other students. The majority of their tours are in Europe, although they have since expanded to include Asia, Africa, Australia
• Contiki: The leader in 18-35 travel runs tours on every surface of the planet. The tours often coincide with festivals like La Tomatina and Oktoberfest.
• BusAbout: This tour operator has the best festival tours, sailing and adventure options and of course, the famous hop on hop off tours.

If you don’t want to take a big tour, consider doing a day tour once you arrive in your destination because there’s only so much guidebooks can tell you. It’s also a good way to meet other travelers.

• Intrepid Urban Adventures: Intrepid Travel offers day trips in hundreds of cities in offbeat topics, like a beer lover’s guide to Melbourne.
• Viator: This website consolidates every tour you could ever want to take into one convenient booking site.
• Vayable: If Couchsurfers ran tours, it would be Vayable. Any local can create their own tour and charge for it on this site.
• Food Tours: Intrepid Travel now runs food tours and my friend Lauren Aloise runs the fantastic Madrid Food Tours! They are a great way to learn about a city through its cuisine.
• Bike Tours: I had a blast on bike tours in Berlin and Munich as a healthy way to see a new city. Both of my Mike’s Bikes and Fat Tire tours included stops at the beer garden!
• Walking Tours: You can find free walking tours in nearly every city in Europe through Sandeman’s New Europe tours. I loved my tour in Hamburg. There are also free tours in Sydney and Melbourne.
• Pub Crawls: What better way is there to meet people than to share some beers and stories? Sandeman’s also runs pub crawls in many European cities but there are dozens of other independent ones. Read more on European pub crawls on Art of Backpacking.

Where Should I Stay?

Accommodation is what you will spend the majority of your money on while traveling. I always recommend hostels as the cheapest option. But in some places, splitting a hostel room or apartment with friends may be cheaper. I’ve used both AirBnB and Wimdu in the past. CouchSurfing is another great option if you can find a host.

Keep in Mind

Make sure that you have all the appropriate visas for your trip abroad. Take note of any festivals or events going on while you are there that could mean difficulty finding accommodation or crowds. Many shops and museums are closed on certain days of the week and on local holidays.

Resources

Travel Insurance is something every student traveler should have, no matter where you are going. The cost is minimal in comparison with what you would pay without it. I recommend World Nomads, as it is what I use on my travels.