How to make a travel itinerary, step by step

A good itinerary isn’t a list of everything worth seeing. It’s a plan you can actually follow on a tired Tuesday afternoon, with time to eat and get from one place to the next. Here’s the method we use, in six steps.

1. What can’t move?

Write down the fixed points first:

• Flight or train times, in local time.
• Check-in and checkout times.
• Anything already booked: a tour, a restaurant, a show, timed museum entry.

These are the skeleton. Everything else fits around them. The first and last days are usually short, so plan them lightly; our guides to the hours before check-in and after checkout cover those days.

2. Which area each day?

Group what you want to see by neighbourhood, then give each day one or two areas that sit next to each other. Crossing a city twice in one day is where most of the time goes. A map with your places pinned makes the groups obvious.

3. What is the one main thing for each half day?

Pick one anchor for the morning and one for the afternoon: a museum, a market, a long walk, a viewpoint. Everything else (coffee, a shop, a church you pass) fits between the anchors. If an anchor needs a ticket for a set time, book it now, and put it in the morning when queues are shorter.

4. How long between stops?

Check the real travel time between consecutive stops, on foot or by public transport, at the time of day you’ll travel. Then add a buffer: 15 minutes for short hops, more for longer ones or with children. If a day has more travel than visiting, move something to another day.

5. Where do food and rest go?

Put meals in the plan, not in the gaps. Lunch near the midday anchor, and an early dinner near where the afternoon ends. Add one real pause in the afternoon, such as a café, a park or the hotel.

6. What should go on your phone?

• The plan itself, with addresses.
• Booking confirmations and tickets.
• Offline maps of the areas you’ll be in. Google Maps lets you download an area to use without data.
• The hotel address, in the local script if the country uses another one.

A real example: three days in Lisbon

This is the plan Amicly made for “3 days in Lisbon, food, balanced pace” on 21 October 2026. It found 16 of its 18 places on Google Maps and timed 11 journeys between them. Each day stays in one or two neighbouring areas:

Notice what it doesn’t do: day 3 doesn’t cross back to Alfama, and each day has one big sight in the morning and something lighter later.

What next?

Keep the plan flexible. If it rains or something closes, swap whole half days rather than squeezing in extra stops.