Travel information & site guide

If this is your first trip abroad, the reading order we suggest is: the visa and entry rules page first, because your entry category shapes the entire plan; then the destination guide for your target city for budget and transport; and only then the route features, if you want to string several cities into one trip. That order avoids the most common outcome, where the itinerary is beautifully planned but the entry permission turns out to be less simple than assumed.

How the information here is put together: visa rules follow the official embassy or immigration sites of the destination country, transport schedules and fares follow the operators directly, and food or accommodation ranges reflect what is normal on the ground rather than the single cheapest option. We do not sell tickets, do not process visas, and do not accept payment to change a judgement inside a guide. The kinds of collaboration we do accept are set out openly on the partnerships page.

This site runs third-party advertising to cover operating costs, and the full explanation of cookies and how to turn off ad personalisation is on the privacy policy page. For factual corrections, prices that have moved, or editorial questions, use the contact page — every fix we make is logged on the editorial notes page, so you can see when a guide was last updated.

The three entry categories that get confused most often are worth restating here, because getting them wrong is the most expensive mistake. Visa-free means you simply arrive with a passport valid for at least six months, and an immigration officer grants a stay of a set length on the spot. Visa on arrival is still a visa: paid at the arrival airport, often in a specific currency, and an officer can still refuse you if supporting documents such as a return ticket or proof of accommodation cannot be produced. An e-visa must be approved before departure because the airline checks entry permission at check-in — without it you are denied boarding before the plane leaves, and the ticket is usually lost.

For the Schengen area there is one rule that is misread constantly: the 90-day limit applies across the whole area within a rolling 180-day window, not per country. Time spent in France, the Netherlands, and Italy is added together, and the 180-day window is counted backwards from your most recent entry date rather than from the start of the calendar year. Miscounting this leads to fines and entry bans that apply across the entire area, so work out your remaining allowance before planning a long European trip.

One final note on coverage. We deliberately publish fewer guides that are each complete, rather than many thin pages holding a single paragraph per city. If the city you are looking for is not in the catalog yet, use the contact page to suggest it — that request list is what determines which guide gets written next, and every addition is announced on the editorial notes page.