The Perfect Transition Plan - How We Get from A to B, Stress Free

Travel days are stressful, we all know that. And being that we live on the road, we tend to have more travel days than most. So we’ve come up with a system to help reduce friction where possible, making for an almost seamless transition on travel days!

7 Days Before

This is when we start taking notice and preparing for our imminent departure.

• Make a list of any things we want to do and haven’t done yet, or any things we want to do again before we leave. Restaurants highly considered.
• Make plans to see anyone we want to see again (family, friends, or acquaintances we met at local CouchSurfing meetups).
• Start looking at our fridge and non-perishables to make the most out of what we bought and reduce unnecessary waste.

6 - 3 Days Before

• One more grocery run to make sure we have enough meals to last us.
• One final load of laundry. Forget to include at least 1 pair of undies.
• Be sure we have a plan for our travel day in the way of: we know what time to leave our house and how to checkout, how we’re getting to the airport/train station, and we have off of work that day if it’s on a weekday.
  • To get to our departure point, we try and see if public transportation is available, otherwise, we schedule a cab.
• Soak in the rest of our stay!

2 Days Before

One comment we get a lot is, ‘you must be pretty good at packing by now!’ It’s true, we’ve had quite a bit of experience in the past 9 months!

• Potentially make a reservation for the night we get in for a casual, local restaurant. This helps make sure that we can come in stress free and don’t need to rush to make dinner.
• Should start packing. Open suitcase, gaze upon it, contemplate other things, walk away, don’t start packing. Berate each other for not starting to pack.

1 Day Before

• Try and get some snacks/fruits for travel day. Hunger + travel stress = not happy Tomer.
• Download entertainment to our phones for travel time including books, podcasts, music, and some Netflix shows we may want.
• Make sure we have check in instructions for our AirBNB (we usually book these months in advance - no need to search around when we land).
• Confirm travel day plans, transportation, times, etc.
• Check in to our flight, if applicable.
• Make a dinner with all of our leftover food!
• Actually pack, while complaining.
• Look up basic words in language of destination, pre-school reading list-like, ie. yes, no, thanks, please, hello, goodbye, 1-10 and ‘wine please!’
• Download your tickets to your phone to make sure they’re available offline and take screenshots of them just in case.
• Plug in our laptops and phones overnight.
• Be sure our passports are in a backpack, not the suitcase.

Tomer on the go

Travel Day is here!

We usually book our transportation in the mornings. This allows us to get into our destination and still have some of the day to settle in before we are up and at ‘em!

• Tomer gets up way too early just in case. Michelle sleeps in until the last moment just in case she won’t sleep for the rest of the day (she will anyway).
• Do a final sweep of the house to make sure we haven’t left anything behind.
• Struggle to squish our toiletries bag into our already-full suitcase.
• Google Maps: Download an offline map of the city we’re headed to and set our AirBNB’s address to ‘Home’ label. Try to commit the address to memory - probably fail.
• We like to show up at the airport about 2 hours before boarding, a bit more wiggle room for smaller airports as they might move slower.
• Use our Chase Sapphire card’s Priority Pass benefit to hang out in any lounges at the airport. This is a nice relief in a (relatively) quiet place with some free munchies and drinks.
• Get confused by new time zone, discuss it, count it, give up and use Google.
• Tomer tries to beat the line at Passport Control after we land by walking fast. Michelle stops by the bathroom. We end up at the end of line. Michelle doesn’t care, Tomer is antsy.
• Get cash out at a nearby ATM using our trusty Charles Schwab card with ATM-fee rebates. If the option is provided, don’t use the ATM’s conversion, take cash out in the local currency - this leads to a better conversion rate.
• Find transportation to our AirBNB. Check in. Plug into the Wifi.
• If we’re at this destination for a month, start unpacking our suitcase into drawers - stop halfway.
• Walk around in the evening and see what our neighborhood is like and spot interesting things to do.
• Find local grocery store and get staples for breakfast.

The key to Travel Day is to be sure that you’re sure of the timetables and where you need to be when. Once all that is in place, the rest is just going with the flow.

1 Day After

• Full grocery run. Buy at least 1 wrong item accidentally. Embarrass ourselves trying to use the language and customs. Proudly feel like locals.
• Check for interesting CouchSurfing meetups coming up.
• Look for interesting things to do in the new city.
• If we’re not ‘in town’, take public transport to visit downtown and make note of interesting looking places.
• Check to see if there are interesting AirBNB local experiences we want to sign up for during our stay.
• Check nearby coworking spots, locations and prices, for a potential office.

After this we’re able to get into our routine pretty seamlessly and soak in our new home for the next month!

And there you have it, folks, the almost perfect transition plan to make for stress-free travel days, tried and tested by yours truly. Safe travels!

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Written on August 13th, 2019 by Tomer Shvueli