Get It Together

When we're organized, we create a folder for our trips with all the info we need. It ends up holding various print outs like our flight itinerary, our hotel reservation confirmation and if we're renting a car, Mapquest directions to all our destinations (airport to hotel, hotel to spa, hotel to shopping area). It does get to be a lot of info, especially when coordinating with our friends who are usually arriving on different flights from different cities.

We knew Tripit.com was the site for us the second we logged on and saw the tag line "Leave the Manila Folder at Home." How did they know that's how we travel?

We started entering our info for our next trip, (San Diego in May). It's very handy in a few ways: you can email your confirmed flights or dinner reservations made through OpenTable.com and it will automatically input the info for you; it links you to other sites, like SeatGuru so you can find the best seat on the plane, and it automatically shows the average weather during the trip. We also liked that you can customize your itinerary with a photo--they have cities you can pick from as well as themed trips like beach vacations or road trips or you can upload your own.

What we didn't like: We wish you could just plug in your hotel name and all the address would pop up. We also wish it had a better mapping feature. Now you can just learn how to drive from city to city, but not specific destinations within it, which isn't very helpful when trying to navigate a large city.

Regardless, this will make planning our next trip easier than ever. Once you've packed your bags, all you have to do is print out your itinerary or download it to your Blackberry. We have a feeling we'll be using it for all our future girls' getaways.

Oh, and did we mention the service is completely free?