Welcome to TripTins!
Hi there! Thanks for taking the time to visit TripTins. I hope the itineraries and guides up on the site have helped you out so far, and you are better prepared to plan your next trip!
To give you a quick background about myself – I’m Charles, I grew up in New York, worked in finance for 6 years, took a year off to travel the world, and am now back in NYC.
However, I am not a writer, I am not a web developer, I am not a photographer or search engine optimization expert. You may think that by having a travel website I would be one of those but in reality I would say I am just a regular guy who loves to travel. I have taken that passion though and turned it into a travel website to help others around the world visit some of the places that I have experienced throughout the years.
In the past I have been lucky enough to travel consistently. Whether it be traveling as a kid to my mom’s homeland of Italy or heading to Southeast Asia as a post graduation trip, there have been many places I have been able to visit in between. After college though and once in the real world, travel became more important to me. It was a way to get out of reality for a couple weeks and experience what else is out there beyond the big city of New York.
The travel planning process became something I thoroughly enjoyed doing and soon enough my friends and I were taking annual trips around the world. Which takes me to my next point and how TripTins actually began…
A TripTins History
After taking a few trips with some friends in the post college years, they mentioned to me that I should put my itineraries up on a website. Since I was getting a lot of questions from family, friends, and friends of friends about the trips I have taken, I thought a website could be a good medium for others to get a more detailed look into what my itineraries are all about. Instead of just sending them a short day by day overview, a website could be that next step.
So sometime in late 2017 / early 2018 I started writing. I wrote about trips I just took to Colombia and Iceland and I also wrote about trips I took in the past like to Italy and Peru. Once I started to have a few of my trips written up it was time to put them live for others to see. I opened up a web hosting account, used a simple template and put up my itineraries and some pictures onto the site. Now anytime someone would ask me or one of my travel buddies about a trip, I would send them off to TripTins (Trip iTINeraries) and they were able to read through the entire trip step by step.
It wasn’t until later in 2018 though when more people (other than family and friends) started visiting the website. I recently had written up a bunch of content from my trips to Switzerland and The Azores, and I soon realized that this could start becoming more than just a hobby. Beyond just writing new content, I also began researching SEO, website design, image optimization, etc., which improved the site significantly.
It was then in March of 2019 when I decided to spend a year traveling the world full time. Instead of a couple ten day vacations each year, I would be able to visit a whole variety of places in all corners of the world. So from March 2019 to March 2020, I set off on a one way ticket to New Zealand and visited 20+ countries in 6 continents before heading back home to NYC.
While I have written a ton about my trip, there is still plenty more content written each and every week.
What I Write About
When I visit a country these days I don’t just stay for a couple days visiting one city and then jumping to another country to visit another city. I try to immerse myself into one country and see a little bit of everything – whether it be exploring a city, taking part of some hikes, or doing an off the beaten path activity – I like to mix and match my trips as I go. That is why you will almost always see full on itineraries for each country I visit with plenty of detailed guides intertwined throughout.
With that said though, I do find myself continuously chasing the outdoors – whether it be hiking, waterfalls, scuba diving, cliff jumping, or any other outdoor activity that takes advantage of the surrounding nature. You will see that the itineraries and guides up on the site do focus more on that aspect of travel.
So I guess for now you can consider TripTins an “adventure travel” website with the focus on connecting with the outdoors but you can still find a variety of everything all throughout.
At the end of the day though I try to put together content that is actionable by the reader and that can “help take the hassle out of travel”. I try not to say just do XYZ and ABC. But I instead go into detail on how to go about those activities, what to expect, and how to prepare best. I see too much content out there on the internet that is too high level, leaving me with additional research for everything I want to do. I am hoping that TripTins can be more so a one stop shop with all you need to know to go about your trip. Now of course everything on the site won’t be perfect and to the tee but I am hoping that you can use these itineraries and guides to get you going in the right direction.
Hope you enjoy the content! Feel free to contact me at Charles(@)triptins.com if you have any questions!