Planning a trip? Look up where you're going and see what you can collect there

There's a moment in every trip plan where you have the flights and the hotel, and you're staring at a map wondering what you're actually going to do.

That's where the place guides come in.

Look up where you're going

A place guide is one page for one country, US state or city, with the Pond Passport stamps you can collect there. The cities, the landmarks, the national parks, the stadiums and the events sit in one list, and the ones that cross a border show up on each side.

Start at Stamps by place and find your destination. A few good ones to try:

• Japan, where most first trips only see a couple of the cities on the page.
• Italy, which has a wonder in Rome and a lot of coastline.
• California, for national parks and ballparks in the same trip.
• New York City, where nearly everything is a subway ride apart.
• Colorado, if you're coming for the mountains.
• Mexico, from Tijuana to Tulum.

If your city doesn't have a guide of its own yet, its state or country probably does, and the stamps there are listed under it.

I've been to Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland, and it's a city stamp. It doesn't have a guide yet, but you can find it in the city stamps.

In Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland.

Read it like a checklist for the trip

Here's how to turn a guide into a plan.

Pick the anchor. Most trips have one thing they're built around: a park, a game, a wonder, a festival. Find it on the page first.

Look at what else is there. The guide shows what else is in the same place, like the landmark you didn't know was in the same city, or a second ballpark in town.

The Palace of Versailles is on the France guide, a train ride outside Paris.

At the Palace of Versailles.

Check the calendar. Experiences like marathons and festivals happen on a date, so check whether one lines up with your trip, or move the trip to line up with it.

Save what you want. In YourPond, add the stamps you want to your Bucket List before you go. It's a to-do list for the trip that clears itself as you collect.

When I planned New Orleans, my list was walking the French Quarter, a ghost tour and Café du Monde. My own Bucket List right now has Alaska, Greece, Angkor Wat and the Himalayas on it.

While you're there and after

Once you're back (or on the last night, if you're organized), log the trip as a moment with the people who came. A moment collects the city, state, country and continent it happened in. Attach the landmarks, parks or stadiums you visited to that moment, and they're collected too. Anything on your Bucket List that you collected moves into your collection on its own.

One thing to know: a moment collects its places once it has happened, so a trip you log ahead of time fills in when the date arrives.

If you did something you can do anywhere, like skydiving or a hot air balloon ride, check in to that Adventure and tag it to the place. It will show up on that place's stamp under "Adventures here."

Why plan this way

The best part of Pond Passport isn't the count. It's opening a country you haven't been to and seeing exactly what's waiting there. You open Japan, you see Kyoto sitting there uncollected, and now you kind of want to go!

How to start

Pick the next place you're going, look it up in Stamps by place, and save three things you want to do there to your Bucket List.

Pond Passport is free, on the web and in the YourPond app for iPhone.

Stamps by place · Browse the stamps · How Pond Passport works