As we’ve been starting to book our 2018 travel in earnest, I’ve been asked a couple times lately about how I find cheap flights within Europe. Today, I thought I’d talk about that here. I don’t pretend to be an expert — frankly, I think I pour more time into searching options than most reasonably can — but I want to share what works for us all the same.

For us, the most important thing we’ve learned to do in our hunt for cheap flights is to GET CREATIVE. Because our home airport is fairly small compared to big hubs like Rome or Milan, there aren’t as many options to choose from. As such, I’ve gotten into the habit of looking into a lot of possibilities. I generally ask myself the following questions if I can’t find a cheap flight from Catania:

• Is it feasible to fly from a different airport? Comiso, about an hour south of us, sometimes has options. We’ve also chosen twice to buy a ticket to Rome, then bought a separate ticket to get to the United States from there as flights from Rome are often so much cheaper and require fewer stopovers. I’ve considered doing this for times when there aren’t good options to get to a place I’d like to go, like Portugal.
• Is it feasible to fly into a different airport? Can I fly into Trieste instead of Ljubljana?Rome instead of Florence? Munich instead of Salzburg? Some airports are cheaper than others, and if the difference is big enough it can make sense to take a train or drive a couple hours to the destination from the cheaper airport.

I recently spent way too much a lot of time trying to decide how to get to Scotland next year after determining the straight-forward Catania to Edinburgh routes were all either out of our price range or involved obnoxious long layovers. Some alternatives I considered included: a) flying into London and taking the overnight train, The Calendonian Sleeper, to Edinburgh or Inverness, b) flying into London and taking flights into Edinburgh and out of Aberdeen (tempting at $25 and $13 each), c) flying into Manchester, England, and driving four hours to Edinburgh or d) flying into Milan, then taking a direct flight to Edinburgh.

Option B was almost the winner, being surprisingly cheaper than the train option, but we ultimately chose to go waaaaay out of the box and combined our Scotland trip with our hoped-for trip to Berlin next summer. We’ll be flying directly to Berlin, spending a few days there, then flying direct to Edinburgh for $42 round trip each.

One word of caution: Make sure you do the math ahead of time and be very certain that a) you are actually saving money after paying for train or bus tickets and b) the savings are big enough justify the hassle that will come with going this route.  Also, verify that your planned transportation matches up timewise; I was really into the sleeper train idea, for instance, but because of the timing we’d have had to spend more time than we wanted to in London to make it work.

Beyond that, I have a few more pieces of advice:

1. Set up flight alerts. If you have even the vaguest idea of going somewhere, I suggest setting up a Google flight alert on those particular dates and routes — plus the days immediately around when you want to travel. I currently have 37, many for different locations on the same weekends. It can be a little maddening during times when it seems like prices are constantly going up, but this way if an irresistible deal crops up you’ll be ready to pounce.

2. Sign up to get emails from all the low-budget carriers, and follow them on Facebook. It can clutter up my inbox a bit, but getting emails from low-cost carriers like Volotea, RyanAir and EasyJet ensures I’m aware when flights go on sale. These emails (and the flight alerts) also help me gauge what a good deal is; for instance, I’d like to go to the tiny republic of San Marino via the Ancona airport one weekend. Having seen Volotea tickets there for 30 euro before, I’m now waiting for them to come down to that again.

3. See a good fare? Swoop. The reason I’m waiting on those Ancona flights to come back down is because I didn’t swoop when I had the chance. Same goes for tickets to Amsterdam for the four of us for 270 euro in April (I’m honestly still kicking myself about that one). If you see a cheap fare, it is unlikely to last so make your decision fast.

4. Be flexible on your dates. If you need to go to a very specific place on very specific dates, there isn’t necessarily going to be a lot you can do to control the costs. If you are flexible with your dates, on the other hand, you’ll find you have more wiggle room. Consider flying late the night before you’d planned to go; it might be an extra night in a hotel room, but if you are traveling with the family that might cost less than a more expensive flight the next morning. Likewise, if you can squeeze out an extra day or two off work and fly home mid-week, you’ll tend to find things are a lot cheaper. Fridays and Sundays, in my experience, are the most expensive days to fly. Tuesdays and Wednesdays tend to be the cheapest, though Saturdays are also often reasonable.

5. Travel in shoulder season. Traveling in summer is generally going to be the most expensive option, but the weather can be just as nice and the crowds less bothersome if you choose to travel in the spring or fall.

I know that not all of these things are going to work for everybody, especially if you have limited time available because of work or the kids’ school. But if you have a more flexible schedule, going this route can help shave a lot of the transportation costs off a trip.* Happy hunting!

*Another possibility for saving money on transportation costs, of course, is also using credit card points to pay for it. I recently wrote an e-mail to a few friends about how a couple working together could get almost $1,500 in travel for $95 by just meeting the minimums on Chase Sapphire Preferred cards. I’ll probably post about that in the future, but if anyone wants any more information about that give me a shout and I’ll forward you the email.

Now I’d like to hear from you! What tricks do you use to get the best airfare? What the best deal you’ve ever found?

The post How to find cheap flights in Europe: get creative first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post How to find cheap flights in Europe: get creative appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Basically conversations with Chris lately have gone something like this:

“So I’m thinking we should go to (place name) over Columbus Day weekend.”

“We’re going to Oktoberfest right before that and Venice after, it is too much.”

“Huh? No, I’m talking about the next Columbus Day. 2018!”

” … seriously?”

So yeah, I’m trying to map out our travel destinations for all of 2018, basically. Yes, Chris (and uhh a few other people I’ve mentioned this to) think I’m crazy.* But listen, I have my reasons (beyond being obsessed.)

1. Making sure we are being strategic about what weekends we plan travel.* Chris’ work schedule means that he gets every other Friday off (he works nine hour days). This year, I didn’t really look ahead well enough at the combination of RDO days and federal holidays, and missed some opportunities where we could have timed trips differently to use less leave. Next year, I’m planning our longer trips in ways so that we can end up with, say, 10-day trips that use only four days of Chris’ vacation time.*Originally ony of my goals was to avoid having trips super close together (our two big trips, France and Ireland, were less than a month apart) but it kind of seems like they are going to end up being close together anyway because of when holidays fall. Ha! 
2. Planning for when visitors come. If we get a schedule set for when we’ll be out of Sicily, the various friends and family members who are talking about visiting next year can use that to plan their own trips to see us! (Which we are so excited for, guys!!)
3. Being strategic with our credit card points. As I mentioned in this post, I have some hotel points stockpiled in a few different currencies. Knowing when we want to go where helps me a) decide at which property I’d like to use them, and b) actually make this happen. Award space can fill quickly at highly desirable places and times of year, so booking early is often a must. Knowing that we want to go to the Hilton Malta on X weekend also allows me to check to see how many more points I need to make it happen, and thus make an informed decision about what credit card I want to be using to rack up points.
4. Top pick of AirBnBs (and hotels). In the summer months here, the best AirBnBs at desirable tourists destinations (like San Vito Lo Capo or Tropea, for example) can book up quickly. Knowing where we want to go when means I can be looking ahead and get the best selection when time comes to actally book. I actually already booked one place a few weeks ago for summer 2018. It is a cool treehouse on Lake Bled in Slovenia that Chris saw last year and wanted to visit, but there was no availability even months ahead of when we wanted to go. This year, I was on top of it!  Added bonus: they honored the 2017 prices even though I found out they intended raise them by 20 euro per night in 2018 (we communicated via e-mail because rooms weren’t even available to be booked online yet).

   

5. Getting the best price for flights. Trying to time it right when buying a plane ticket is a frustrating business. Booking too early could mean missing out if prices become cheaper down the line, but waiting too long could mean your preferred flight sells out. Planning ahead means I can set up price alerts for flights and, combined with looking at options compulsively periodically, I at least have a general idea of what pricing has been doing for a specific place. For instance, if I saw a flight for Rome to Lisbon for 100 euro it might seem good, except that I know a few weeks ago I saw one for 75 euro. See? 

*This post is in no way intended to lay out the case to my husband for why I’m not crazy. Well, “in no way” is probably a bit strong. I should probably say it is mostly not aimed at Christopher. Love you hon!

The post Trip planning: why I’m looking more than a year ahead first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Trip planning: why I’m looking more than a year ahead appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.

Since getting to Italy I’ve spent a (probably ridiculous/borderline compulsive) amount of time online researching places to stay for upcoming trips with the kids. I’ve outlined our thought process in determining where to stay before, in this post. This week, however, had me doing researching a type of accommodation that has been out of consideration since we got here: hostels.

I’ll get to the why in a minute.

Before I got married (almost seven years ago!), most of my international trips involved staying in hostels. I’ve stayed in them throughout Europe and in Australia, Turkey, Israel, Egypt, Singapore and possibly another that I’m forgetting. My parents had us staying mostly in hostels during our big three-week trip to Europe when my siblings and I were 13, 11, 9 and 7 years old — a fact that seems even more impressive now that I’m a parent myself. During that time, I’ve had good experiences and bad, but by and large it is something I highly recommend to single travelers.

So, the hostels that I remember most fondly are notable less for what they are than how they are. I’ve twice stayed at the Yoho Youth Hostel in Salzburg, once at 13 and once at 18 years old. Despite that I can’t even remember what the actual rooms were like (dorms, of course, but comfortable or not I couldn’t tell you) but what I do remember is constant screenings of The Sound of Music, meeting fellow travelers in the hostel pub and fun employees. Likewise, while I remember being beyond grateful for bedding that didn’t feel like horse blankets and air conditioning that actually worked at my favorite hostel in Cairo, Hostel Brothers, my best memories are of making friends there.

For the single traveler, hostels are great because a) they are cheap and b) they offer companionship. When I spent two months in the middle East and Asia in 2008, I loved hostels because I almost always ended up making friends and having people go out to dinner, see sights or swap stories with. By contrast, once I hit the India portion of that trip I switched to hotels because it was so cheap (not much point in sharing a dorm if you can have a private room for $5) but I found that I got pretty lonely. That’s not to say it is all upside — crappy mattresses, noise when you are trying to sleep, complete lack of privacy and perpetually and infuriatingly wet bathrooms are pretty much the rule, not the exception — but while on my own and focused on saving money it was a pretty decent trade off.

Chris and I haven’t  been into staying in hostels together, but this week I was revisiting hostelworld.com again on behalf of my brother-in-law, Brett. He’s decided to join us in Munich for Oktoberfest (as I’ve mentioned, we are meeting my parents, some of their friends and some of our friends there) and needed to find somewhere to stay. Hotel prices are pretty inflated and many are booked up, so at a minimum he was looking at either about 500 euro for two nights’ accommodation or staying way on the outskirts to get a better rate. Another complication in our search was that we already have reservations at a nonrefundable, fully booked-up hotel, but he was hoping to stay near us so that he wouldn’t have to be wandering around trying to find his way back to his hotel on his own. Especially after a few liters of beer.

Enter the idea of hostels.

There was actually one right next door to our hotel that was an insane €47/night for a dorm bed. It would have been perfect except for reviews saying things like “smells like a frat house” and “laptops got stolen” and “filled with drunk men and we feared for our safety” and “RUN AWAY!”

So maybe not.*

We ended up picking a hostel based on basically the same criteria Chris and I use for hotels — location, price and reviews. For the sake of convenience, we were particularly concerned with finding one close to our hotel (even if we did give up on the one RIGHT NEXT DOOR) and ended up finding one about a kilometer away. It certainly didn’t end up being as cheap at the horrible-sounding one, especially since Brett decided to shell out a little extra to get a room in the six-bed dorm instead of the 12-bed, but he’ll still be paying about half as much as he would in a hotel.**

I’m really hoping that he has a great experience since it’ll be both his first time in Europe and his first time in a youth hostel. We’ll see! At the very least, hopefully jetlag and beer help him sleep through any potentially noisy bed(room)fellows.

*Despite this, he actually did still consider it because €92 for two nights? I mean, that’s cheap. And it was SO CLOSE to our own hotel …

**Worth noting that hostels would normally be more than 50 percent cheaper than the hotel, probably. The youth hostel price was inflated because it was Oktoberfest; the bed he’ll end up paying €117 for would normally be €34 per night.

Oktoberfest 2010

The post Hunting for hostels first appeared on Babies With Backpacks.

The post Hunting for hostels appeared first on Babies With Backpacks.