Good morning from the Big Apple, New York City. 🍎

Today’s newsletter is going to be longer than usual. But it’s also going to be useful, actionable, and fun… and educational... and fun (did I say fun already?).

Let’s get into it:

• 🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

• ⏰ How to get a new passport in 3 hours

• 🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

• ✈️ How to travel on buses and budget airlines

🤓 Travel Trivia Tuesday

There are almost 50 countries in Europe, and I’ve been to all but 3 of them, many of them multiple times.

For today’s trivia, I want to mix things up with something actionable and personal.

So see if you can guess:

Keep reading for the answer and some fun tips for booking a trip there!

⏰ How to get a new passport in 3 hours

Something funny happened last month… I was crossing the border in Tanzania, and the border agent looked through my passport and said, “you need a new passport… this one’s full.”

Sure enough, my 52-page passport was full… even though I just got it 2 years ago.

Thankfully, I had plans to spend a few days in the U.S…. And you might not realize that just a few days is more than enough time to get a new passport.

In fact, just one single day is usually enough time.

When I was in Vermont last week, I walked into the passport office at 8 am and walked back out at 11 am with a fresh, new, shiny, 52-page passport.

Today, I’ll tell you how to do the same.

Who is eligible

If you have international travel booked in the next 14 calendar days, you can make an appointment at a U.S. passport agency… that’s basically it.

If you need a foreign visa for your trip, you qualify once you're within 28 days of travel… but depending on the visa, that might not be enough.

There are 28 agencies and centers scattered around the country, and the list goes well beyond the obvious big-city locations.

Along with New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, there are agencies in places like St. Albans, Vermont, where I just got mine.

That’s important because it’s much harder to snag appointments in the bigger cities… whereas the Vermont office is wide open every day, every week.

I once had a friend fly to the Puerto Rico office for a day because it was so easy to get an appointment there. 😏

You book an appointment (for free) through the State Department's official site, or by calling their line at 877-487-2778.

What you need to bring

• Your application form filled out but NOT signed. You sign it in front of the agent, and they'll make you start over if you signed it at home.

• Your old passport, assuming you have one.

• One 2x2 photo that you can get at places like CVS for ~$10 (though the Vermont office offers free on-site photos, and it seems like more locations might be rolling this out soon).

• Proof of international travel within 2 weeks. Theoretically, if you make a booking and cancel it right after you get your passport…🤐

What it costs

If you're renewing, it's $130 for the book plus the $60 expedite fee, so $190 total.

If it's your first passport, there’s a $35 execution fee on top of that, along with some extra documentation requirements.

Honestly, paying an extra $60 to walk out with a new passport on the same day is a steal.

The catch

Same-day pickup is not guaranteed.

Officially, agencies do same-day pickup when you're about to miss your trip. Otherwise, you're looking at next-day pickup or a few days by mail.

But I’ve always gotten mine on the same day, because I always aim for the first appointment slot of the day (usually at 8 am).

I can’t guarantee the same will be true for you, but I have done this four times and gotten it the same day every time. 🤷🏼‍♂️

The bottom line

If you have international travel booked and you need a passport, you are not stuck.

Find an agency you can easily get to and see which appointments are available – you might just have a shiny new passport in your hands tomorrow. 😉

🌎 Travel Trivia Reveal

Once you get that fresh new passport, you’re gonna want to put it to use and travel somewhere.

And there’s no better place to do it than the Balkans – which is also the answer to today’s trivia question from earlier. 🎉

I LOVE the Balkans.

You get a little bit of everything: nature, old cities, weirder languages… and it’s all SUPER affordable.

Like other parts of Europe, it’s also easy to get around, which makes it a great backpacking spot.

Let me give you some quick recommendations for booking a trip there. 👇

How to get to the Balkans

Before you go looking for award flights to Sarajevo, stop. Stop that. 🛑 

The best thing to do is use points to fly into bigger cities, then work your way to the Balkans.

For example, if you live in the Midwest, you can fly nonstop from Chicago to Rome for 40,000 Aeroplan points on United:

Since most of our Top Credit Cards allow you to transfer points to Aeroplan, this is a solid way to get across the Atlantic with good availability. (Also, this bank has a 20% transfer bonus to Aeroplan until the end of the month btw. 👀)

By the way… this pricing applies when connecting to Chicago from smaller cities, too.

If you live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, you can book the same route with a connection in Chicago:

Once you're in Rome, getting into the Balkans is absurdly cheap. Wizz Air and Ryanair will fly you from Rome to Sarajevo for $41.

Once you get there, your money (and points) suddenly starts to go much further.

Buses, trains, and beautiful nature

From Sarajevo, you can take buses and trains all over the region for next to nothing.

The train from Sarajevo down to Mostar costs a few euros and spends most of the ride running through a river canyon. It's one of the prettiest rides in Europe and puts you in one of the coolest cities in Europe.

From Mostar, you take a bus to Kotor, Montenegro, and from Kotor over to Tirana.

The rides are long, but super cheap. I did it last year and loved the whole thing.

During my trip, I opted to stay the Hyatt Regency in Kotor, which was phenomenal (mostly thanks to my private rooftop jacuzzi). 😎

As a Category 5, it’ll definitely cost you…

But UR points (if you have this premium card) and Bilt Points transfer to Hyatt at 1:1, so you have plenty of cards that can earn you those points to book it.

In Tirana, the hotel game gets even better. I personally stayed at the Marriott in Tirana, and it was one of the best Marriotts I’ve stayed at anywhere in Europe.

It's priced at 32,500 Marriott Bonvoy points (or less in the off-season) against a cash rate of about $264 USD a night.

There are two ways to make that cheaper:

First, Marriott offers every fifth night free on award bookings, so a five-night stay only costs you four nights’ worth of points.

Also, multiple lower-fee Marriott co-branded cards offer annual 35,000-point free night awards, which are perfect for a hotel like this.

Just like the trip out to Europe, getting home is a piece of cake when you combine budget airlines and good award deals.

First, our old friend Wizz Air will fly you from Tirana up to Paris for $64.

After a night or two in Paris to get your Western Europe fix, you can get home to Chicago nonstop on Air France for 12,000 Virgin Atlantic miles in economy.

Yes, the points price is lower… but the taxes and fees are higher. 😮‍💨

But given the cash savings of traveling in the Balkans, I think it’s worth it for the nonstop convenience.

Plus, there’s good availability. Most banks transfer to Virgin, so opening (and earning the welcome offer on) a single card that transfers points to Virgin could get you flights for the whole family.

The bottom line

The Balkans offer some of the best value in Europe right now, both with or without points.

The food is excellent, the mountains are enormous, and the old towns are older and a lot emptier than the ones you usually hear about.

Try taking a trip there – you might just end up loving it as much as I do. 🤗

✈️ How to travel on buses and budget airlines

Now I know what most of you are thinking after that last section:

My answer is:

Imagine this:

No checked bags to drop off before (or wait for after) flights, no rolling a suitcase on cobblestones, no fighting for overhead bin space, no paying $60+ for extra baggage on budget airlines.

It’s more doable than you’d think… but you need the right travel backpack to do it. So I’m going to tell you about one of my favorites:

The Nomatic Travel Pack

Nomatic is an AWESOME travel brand that makes bags and other travel gear.

Their famous travel pack looks like a sleek, normal backpack, but opens flat like a suitcase.

Your clothes go into an actual compartment and lie there properly, so you're not stuffing them down a hole from the top and hoping for the best.

And there's also an unreasonable amount of organization inside for everything else.

I'm not the only one on the Daily Drop team who loves Nomatic. Sam has owned a Nomatic bag for years. When she was fully nomadic, her entire life fit inside it, and it’s still the only bag she uses. Of course, she brought it to Toronto last week for our meetup:

Nomatic’s other gear is also awesome. I’ve personally been using their toiletry bag for years.

It's compact and water-resistant. It also unfolds and hangs from a hook, so you're not laying your stuff out on a wet counter in a guesthouse bathroom in Mostar. 😬

It fits neatly inside the Travel Pack, but it'll work with whatever bag you already use.

I love being able to recommend travel brands and products that I actually use, so I have no issue telling you how great Nomatic is.

We've been fans of their gear for years, so it's worth poking around at the rest of what they make too. 👇

If you buy anything, we’ll get a tiny commission. But Nomatic was not involved in the writing or publishing of this newsletter in any way – these are just our personal opinions on a brand that’s made our travels better. 🤷🏼‍♂️

Phew. That was a long newsletter, but I had fun writing it. Did you have fun reading it?

Thanks for tuning in, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeee

40.7128° N, 74.0060° W

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Katie Begnoche.