How To Backpack Europe

Good wine, multiple languages, historic buildings, underground parties, and French women. These are the joys of backpacking through Europe. There's nothing like having a few weeks or a few months to kill by Euro-railing it around the land of good bread and cobblestone streets. But all that culture can be pretty pricey. And if you've never backpack traveled before, food and lodging will ad up quicker than you student loans. So you'll want to do a little advance reading first.

About.com (surprisingly) has put together an excellent and fairly comprehensive article / guide with links to pretty much all you need to know to backpack through Europe. They talk about what gear to bring, the best ways to get there and around, setting a budget and choosing destinations. Good stuff. So click here for the full story and the best tips to help you save money and impress French women (or men). I made the last part up. Enjoy your travels!

Or you can leave your own hard won Europe travel tips in the comments section below.

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BackpackTravelStore.com Now Offers Asolo Backpacks

Hello all, Here's a bit of shameless self promotion that you may also actually want to know about. Backpack Travel Store has just added to its offerings one of the highest quality travel backpack brands available - Asolo. Many of you have been doing your online research prior to your trips and have come upon Asolo backpacks as some of the most recommended packs from travel. So, we decided to add them. So far we are carrying the Navigator and Wayfarer series.

The Navigator 

is a great full-sized, full-feature travel backpack. It offers really everything you could want - Removable day back, lots of storage, integrated rain cover, large main compartment and zips open like a suitcase. And unique to the Navigator, it offers a detachable toiletries kit / waist pack.






The Wayfarer

is one of my personal favorites and the pack of choice for experiences travelers. At 3051 cu in / 50 liters, its smaller than the Navigators and other full-sized packs. But if you are an experienced backpack traveler and know how to pack, this is all you need. It has a big main compartment which is important is smaller packs as you want to fit as much into the main bag as possible. And it includes a sizable day pack and other features of larger packs, such as compression straps and sturdy hip support. It's also priced right at only $139. Short of climbing everest or other gear intensive trips, the Wayfarer is the way to go.

Other packs will be added shortly. So check them out here.

Obviously, I'm a big fan of these two packs, but would love to hear your experiences/opinions from the road. So share your take on these two packs in the comments section below.
Enjoy your travels!

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Get Paid to Share your Travel Love

Back in the day. Roughly your grandfather’s day. When one person shared a tip with another. Be it the bar with the best music, the hostel with the best beds or the city with the best looking girls, they called it “word of mouth.”  But that was 1947. Today they call it “micro-blogging” and a new website not only helps you do it, but just might pay you for the privilege.

The founders of backpackerforever.com have just launched version 2.0 which includes a “knowledge sharing portal” (Formally known as a hostel bulletin board) which allows actual travelers to rely on each other for knowledge and guidance.

Chances are someone has been where you’re going and you’ve been where someone else is headed. So why not share.

“Backpackers are the best travelers in the world. We travel in tiny budgets, rely on local transportation, meet dozens of locals and fellow travelers daily, and are not afraid to go off the beaten path, says Matt, one of the website’s founders. “The collective budget travel community has the largest and most reliable database of travel information in the world, and if we all worked together, we can build something great we can all rely on.”

And though there are lots of sites that will pay you a pittance for your travel tidbits, backpackforever.com is different in that it returns 100 percent of the site’s profits to its members.

“Backpackers who run out of money early have to go home early, and we thing that stinks,” says Tran, the website’s other founder. “It is our hope that a little bit of extra income will help backpackers stay on the road a bit longer.”

So if you know the best bar or the city with the best looking girls, please share. And it just might get you a few more days in Amsterdam.

To read the whole story on the website’s pay program, click here.

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Website Offers Cheap Flights for 18-25 Year Olds

It’s good to be young. And now it’s also cheaper. StudentUniverse.com – which bills itself as the United States’ leading student travel website – has expanded its flight discount program to include non-students.

Now anyone between the ages of 18 and 25 can buy cheap fights on some of the world’s best known airlines. Previously, only those still worried about final exams were eligible. But with the economy what it is and may recent college grads unable to find decent paying jobs, they figured there was a need. And a market.

So if you’re still young enough to be considered young and you want to head out of town, go here to book cheap flights through StudentUniverse.com.

(No, BackpackTravelStore.com doesn’t get a cut or a commission. We just like to share when we find cool, cheap ways to travel.)

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Website Lets You Pay Local Prices for Int'l Adventure Tours

So you’re at your computer in your kitchen in San Francisco booking a tour of Guatemala's amazing Tikal ruins. You find a reputable international tour operator and unload your remaining credit card limit into the tour operator’s bank account.

You then get in country, are picked up at the airport by Miguel your guide and proceed to have a great week among traipsing around ancient buildings.

No problem, right? Perfect trip? Sure. The only thing is you could have paid less than half of what you did for the same experience.

The dirty little secret is that most U.S. and International tour operators are really just marketing machines. They don’t actually operate tours. They post expensive websites and pay tens of thousands of dollars for banner and Google ads to bring people to their site. But, when someone actually buys a tour, they dish the actual tour responsibilities off to a local company. To cover all those marketing costs and to make their profit, they charge you a huge markup over what the local tour operator would charge you.

So someone got the rather cool idea to create a system to cut out the middle man and connect adventure travelers directly with local tour operators. That’s where www.detourdestinations.com comes in. They hook you up with local, sustainable travel companies – primarily in Africa, Central and South America – to whom you pay local prices. And local is always better. Buy local, pay local.

I’ve checked out the site and it offers a ton of adventures across many countries. They're also partners with a slew of eco-friendly organizations such as The Rain Forest Alliance and Carbon Free.

So next time you want to go to paddle boarding in the Galapagos, check out www.detourdestinations.com to get hooked up with the local guide that would have ended up taking you on the trip anyway.

Or share with the rest of us if you know any good eco-friendly, locally-minded guides who can hook us all up with our next adventure. Just leave your tips/suggestions in the comments section below.

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Gear and Backpacks for Adventure Travelers

Best Choices for Hostels

Hostels are one of the great joys of backpack travel. Whether they are hip, cutting edge (and expensive) Berlin joints or $5-a-night dorms in Guatemala, the community atmosphere and shared laid-back traveler’s spirit they provide can’t be found in conventional hotels.

You pull into a new place. Sip a pint in the hostel common area and within a few minutes you’ve got new friends for the week (and maybe life).

And anyone who has traveled has their favorites. (I’m partial to Mellow Yellow in Rio De Janeiro). But Reuters has divided hostels up into a few cool categories – design, parties, best for couples – and offers their take on the best in each.

So for a few hostel recommendations for your next global jaunt, check out the Reuters story here.

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It's Like Travelocity but for Adventure

Finding your next adventure just became a little easier. Sure there are lots of travel planning websites out there – Kayak, Expedia, Travelocity. But they focus on flights, hotels and restaurants. But most backpack travelers munch on street food and crash at hostels. So we’re more concerned with what we’ll be doing than where we’ll be staying.

That’s where Kumutu.com comes in. Just like Expedia allows you to find the best hotel deal, Kumutu helps you find the best deal for adventure travel. It’s searchable by activity and country. So you just input what you want to do and where you want to do it and they will help you connect to local adventure providers.

I’ve checked it out a bit. It’s a new service and they have only 900 adventure companies so far. So you need to cut them some slack if, for example, mountain biking in Mexico returns no results. But they are growing and it’s at least a tool and place to start in planning your next backpack travel adventure.

So click the link above or go here to visit their site.

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Packs and Accessories for Backpack Travelers