How to Create an Itinerary - Part 2

Google Earth's widely recognized purple glowing earth ball.

After you've created your itinerary in Google Map's "MyMaps", you'll probably want to print it out to take it with you on your trip. Here's how:

1. Install Google Earth if you don't have it already.
   
2. Click on the logo located to the right, above the map.
3. Google Earth should open your itinerary automatically.
   
4. In Google Earth, in the left menu, your itinerary locations are listed under the folder "Temporary Places".
5. Two lines under the folder, you'll see this iconwith no words next to it. Click once on it.
6. Go the to menu File > Print...
   
7. Select "Selected Folder in My Places" and then click the "Print" button

In the print out, you'll get an overview map of all locations. Below that is the details you've written for each location and their map locations. This is a handy reference for your trip itinerary!

A little warning regarding the individual location maps. Google Earth zooms in on each location. If the satellite map looks fuzzy on Google Maps because they haven't deemed it special enough to get more accurate pictures, then they'll be fuzzy in Google Earth as well.

How to Create an Itinerary - Part 1

My road trip on Vancover Island using Google maps.

A great way to plan a road trip is to use Google Maps. It has a feature called "My Maps" where you can mark multiple locations and type in comments such as a description, phone number, address, website url, etc. You essentially create a mini-guidebook for your trip!

In the map above for my Vancouver Island road trip, I had chosen icons to reflect what each location was for. The bed icons were B&B's we booked. The hiking, boat and some others were day-time activities planned. We didn't do all of them and I had put in too many on purpose so that we had choices depending on our mood or the weather which leads me to the following advice...

• Plan too many activities! You're not bound to do all of them but a vacation is more enjoyable when you're flexible.


• Find things to do indoors and outdoors - If it starts raining in July, you'll have something touristy to do indoors and not feel like your vacation was spoiled by rain.


• Google "[city/place] tourism" - you'll get plenty of websites that give you things to do at your destination.

Back to Google Maps. You'll need a Google account to use "My Maps" but if you already have a gmail account, that will work. Here is how you use it:

1. Create and name your new map.



2. Add locations. You can do that in two ways.





1. Search for the location. For example, I search for "YVR", Vancouver's airport code. When it's found, you can click on "Save to My Maps".
   
   



2. Drop one where ever you'd like. To do this, first make sure your map is showing where you want to mark. Then click on the upside-down drop located on the top left hand corner of the map which looks like this: Then with your mouse, click where you want to mark. A bubble pops up for you to fill in the place name and any details you want, which leads me to the next step....



3. Put in details of each location. I usually like to put in the phone number, address, place description, admission charge, days/hours of operation, etc



4. Repeat steps 1-3 for more locations.
   

Unfortunately, Google has not made "My Maps" to be printer friendly and you can only access your points and info online. In "How to Create an Itinerary - Part 2", I'll detail out how to use Google Earth as the printing solution.

Jenny's Tip: I like to use the online version of MyMaps for storing for short weekend day trips. You know, you're bored on Saturday afternoon, you want to go out, but can't think of a nice place off the top of your head. I love hiking, so I found many local conservations and regional parks and put them in. Now I just pull it up quickly and pick a place to go to!

Why not plot out your favorite places to eat, drink, and whatever else you like to do in multiple locations ;).

Why Not to Fly on Air Transat

I flew on Air Transat for the first time last week to Germany and will probably be the last. On my 5 star scale, I give it 3 stars. There's a reason why their fares are so low.

It's a Canadian based "holiday" airline which goes to Europe during the summer and the Caribbean during the winter. Schedules are limited so you have to be flexible with your travel dates. They usually fly between each of their destinations 3 days a week.

You won't find them on Travelocity.ca so that means you have to search for their tickets on their own site. Just looking at the fares for August to go to Germany, their tickets are around $650 while the lowest on Travelocity is $1000. And FYI: They don't have frequent flyer miles either.

Pre-boarding:

If you want to choose your seat before the flight, you have to pay an extra fee, which we didn't do. My boyfriend and I almost couldn't sit together but maybe it's because we had booked our tickets separately. When we got to the check-in counter (they don't offer online or kiosk check-in), there was only 1 pair next to each other remaining. Maybe it's also because we were one of the last people to check-in...

During the flight:

Three movies were shown and you had to pay for the crappy headsets, so it's a good thing I had my own on board. I have noise canceling earphones which I totally recommend for flights. However, their audio had a lot of background noise--my headphones only canceled out the background noise from the plane, just so I could hear the movie's background noise better!

They have the old style 15" TVs that are placed every 5-6 rows in the middle isle and if you need to read the German subtitles because you can't understand the English or French audio, good luck! They had a big projector screen on the front wall of the economy section, so I would recommend arriving at the airport early to get this front seats.

I was surprised to see that even their "Club Class" had one main projection screen to look at and didn't have individual screens. Their seats weren't fancy like any other first or business class on other airlines.

Be prepared to feel cramped no matter how small you are. I'm 5'4" and 120lbs and I even felt cramped...not necessarily my seat because my butt fit just fine, but just the whole plane in general. They configured the seating so that 9 seats fit across the plane when most other airlines fit 8 in the same type of aircraft. That means their seats were narrower than normal and also less leg room. My legs are short so that's not a problem for me, but my boyfriend who's about 6'4", his knees were snug against the seat in front of him.

Although relatively small, all the seats are leather, which I think you're supposed to find luxurious. I don't know if the leather actually is more comfortable or your mind tricks you into believing that because we've been trained to believe leather is "better". You can't pull the trays out like most other planes. That means when you're eating and the person in front has their seat reclined, your head bangs up against the seat. That's when you use the Chinese rice bowl technique to eat: you hold up the food container right in front of your mouth and eat from there.

The food was ok so really no complaints there. They don't offer free alcohol like any other North American based airline. Their staff could be better trained though, or maybe we were on the training plane. On one flight, our row was missed on two food/drink services. And then at one point, I saw the head attendant give a tray and pot to another attendant and told her to say to people "Would you like some coffee." Talk about learning on the job!

Well, if all that just sounds finicky and you still want to go with them for their lowest price, make sure you bring books, magazines, video games, headphones, whatever, to help you get through the flight!

You can read other people's reviews of Air Transat here:
http://www.airlinequality.com/Forum/transat.htm