Cool contest: win 15 nights in Australia and $500 in a fab free travel giveaway from Hostels.com and Base Hostels -- three nights each in Base hostels in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Airlie Beach (yum) and Magnetic Island, and 500 Australian dollars to spend there. Enter by May 30 by answering this question: "True or false: Base Sydney has a tours desk?"*

• * Find the Answer!
• Enter the Contest
• Been to the Base Sydney Hostel? Leave a Comment

Related Reading: Sydney Base Hostel | Sydney's Best Hostels | <Australia Hostels | Student Travel Contests and Giveaways | How to Pay for Travel

Photo © Kathleen Crislip | Student Travel blog home

The price of gas gets crazy in the good old summertime, no doubt about it; don't let it detour you from a road trip, though. Gas costs are far from fixed: you can save a lot by finding a cheap station; pinch pennies by using some gas saving tips, too. Check out US gas costs in advance, and learn how calculating gas mileage works by reading a tip on calculating US road trip costs. Takes you to prices at the pumps in towns you'll be touring through.

And if you're road tripping away over yonder, European travel go-to guy James Martin has put together some tools for calculating gas mileage in Europe, as well as European car rental info.

• Learn more: Calculating Gas Mileage

Related Reading: Road Trip Planning 101

Photo: © unknown | Student Travel Blog Home

Perfect timing for this Europe train sale: buy a 15-day Global Pass, already discounted for students at $497, by May 30 and get two additional travel days for free. Countries to which you can travel by train with a Global Pass: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. Yep, that about covers everywhere you might want to go in Europe this summer! Learn more and get the deal:

• European Train Ticket and Train Pass Specials
• Learn About "Travel Days" on a Rail Europe Pass
• Learn About Global Passes

Related Reading: Rail Europe Multi-Country Passes | Rail Europe Single-Country Passes | Rail Europe Overview

Travel journals are a must-have for me -- though I pen plenty for public consumption about my travels (that would be because I'm a travel writer), I also think some thoughts and see some things that are for my memory banks only, and those go in my beloved, battered travel journals: actual 3D things that live on a shelf when their pages have been filled with the dust of a distant desert, the sound of Indian Ocean surf, the guy in that Belgian train station... yeah, you get the drift.

You'll find the same is true for your own travel: blogging and emailing are all good, but sometimes paper and pen are the private preservation of the present you want for your future. And they're the place to scribble hostel recommendations and new friends' emails, and certainly where you'll tuck in those little bits of stuff that make a memory: concert ticket stubs, the map to the casbah...

Ask for a travel journal as a graduation gift and you'll be ready to record this summer's travels. Some ideas:

• Travel Journals as Graduation Gifts
• Review: Nomad Travel Journal

Photo courtesy Nomad | Student Travel blog home