We did a good amount of research in the weeks before we left on what to pack, where to go, and how to get there. I though it might be useful and/or interesting to share the resources we’ve found to be the most helpful.

• travelindependent.info is one of the sites that convinced us to travel with smaller bags. Anyone interested in learning more about why travelling with a smaller bag should check out their ‘what to pack‘ section.
• We occasionally turned to r/travel, the reddit forum for travelling. It can provide some really good advice and people often post some inspiring pictures and travel accounts to keep up your enthusiasm. Marisa really enjoys reading the various blogs that people submit on there, though all I can think of (as our resident web designer) is that their blogs look so much nicer than ours =P One thing I enjoy is reading about people from abroad planning their trips in the United States. I also like to read the guidebooks for the USA in bookstores. I’m sure that says something profound about me but I’m a little too buzzed on Belgian beer to have that particular epiphany. A couple other subreddits that came in handy were r/backpacking and r/rtw (round the world).
• One of the most well-known resources for travelers, Lonely Planet has a forum called the Thorn Tree where people ask questions and share stories. It’s useful if you want to get a general impression of a place, or if you want to see if somewhere is worth going. We used this pretty minimally, to be honest. Most of our time was spent going through the physical guidebooks (one of which was given to us as a gift from a certain brother and sister-in-law), which had more than enough information.
• We bought our tickets through a site called AirTreks.com. It works like a travel agency, with one agent helping you figure out the best tickets to buy. We had a great experience with them and the prices were comparable if not cheaper than the other services we looked into. They also provide travel insurance that includes coverage for ‘repatriation of remains’. Let’s hope that nice little bonus doesn’t end up being necessary.
• For daily planning, we use a mix of all the above along with google, or the ever popular ‘asking a local’ option. We haven’t lacked for stuff to do yet, so we must be doing something right. Marisa is much better at this than I am, I have to admit. If it were up to me, we’d end up sitting in our rooms the whole time watching Archer on netflix.

As far as planning our day to day stuff, we use a variety of resources.

• Kayak.com has been a bit help in pricing out places to stay in each city. It’s nice to be able to figure out what the range is for lodging in each place when we’re looking at other resources to find our next bed. It tends to leave out the cheapest options (mostly hostels) but it lays out the lodging market pretty clearly.
• Hostelz.com has also been a huge help. It’s basically like the kayak for hostels. It searches through a few different hostel websites to find a place that has available rooms. It picks up on the lower end of the market where kayak leaves off. We’ve only booked on place on it so far, but that’s mostly because the next resource on this list has worked out the best so far.
• Airbnb.com is maybe the most useful site for us so far. It hits that middle ground for people that aren’t quite adventurous enough to use couchsurfing.net but still want a more personal experience in each city. We’ve also used it a couple times domestically and it is just as awesome overseas (maybe even better). Clearly we highly recommend it.

So that’s pretty much it! Our list of travel resources. We will probably find some more as we go on. It’s only been a few days, after all. Any suggestions or comments are welcome!