Bella Bird Journeys

I worked with Bella Bird (specifically, Jane, the owner) in planning an anniversary weekend for me and my wife. I didn't have a lot of great ideas, but knew I wanted to stay in Northern California so that my wife and I wouldn't be too far away from our kids. Jane was an absolute joy to work with. She came up with a ton of suggestions, including places I would never have thought of on my own. She was also patient and flexible. A few weeks into planning, something came up for which my family had to go down to San Luis Obispo, so my wife and I decided to turn this into our anniversary trip while bringing our kids along. I wasn't sure how Jane would react to our sudden change in plans, but she took everything in stride and immediately put together a wonderful new itinerary based on our interests and scheduling constraints. She presented a range of family-friendly options for lodging, activities, and even found a family photographer in the area who could take our annual photos at a local beach. Once we made our final choices, Jane booked everything and went out of her way to make sure that we had a stress-free and personalized experience at each leg of our journey. For example, she arranged to have the hotel we stayed at give us a complimentary bottle of champagne to celebrate our anniversary. She also had the bike shop from which we rented electric bikes (this was way more fun than we expected, btw) set up a child-size bike and a trailer for our two young kids. Small details like these made our trip delightful and refreshingly friction-free.

My family and I ended up having a wonderful time, and there's no doubt in my mind that things wouldn't have gone nearly so wonderfully without Bella Bird's help. In fact, I've already asked Jane to plan another trip for me and some college friends, and they've been similarly impressed. Highly recommended!

AMAZING recommendations of what to pack and where to go. Camping (and even glamping) can be a little daunting the first time, so it's really helpful to have someone to get you oriented and feeling comfortable. Hugely helpful!

The recommendation for mendocino was exactly what we were looking for! the list of things to bring was very helpful, the suggestions of activities to do there as well as where to stop along the way were awesome!

The mystery trip is a cool concept. If you’re going to cede the planning of the trip to someone else, you may as well have the location be a mystery. Another benefit to the mystery aspect is that there is no way I can feel guilty about not doing any research or planning ahead of time. Everyone, from the Airbnb hosts to the tour guides, thought we were VIPs because of the level of details that Jane handled on our behalf in order to maintain the mystery. They remarked that you can’t buy that attention to detail anymore. Apparently, you can!

Jane doesn’t just plan trips. She designs truly unique travel experiences. I appreciated her thoughtful questions, which eventually led me to reflect on my motivations for traveling, and connecting that to why certain encounters are especially meaningful for me. Based on what she learned, she created a very rich itinerary, something that would have taken me a long time to research and build myself. Throughout this process, which was new to me, Jane was very patient, listened deeply and was always responsive. I felt supported. All in all, a gratifying experience to have journeyed with Bella Bird.