Cheap Flights to London Fall 2011

Cheap Travel to Europe is here and it's open season! Published fares are dropping as we head into the colder part of the year and any of us can have a chance to jump a flight to Europe at good prices. Not fantastic, but good. There are rumblings about prices dropping, but some of them are nothing more than the airlines trying to stir up the rumor mill. A big Delta "sale" I saw turned out to be Business Class fares starting at $1600 and some each way... What? If you read me often, you know that I'm not looking for "deals" on biz and 1st class flights. I am looking to get away for the minimum amount of money, even if that means I have to stand up like a city bus (Yes, it has been discussed by Ryan Air in the media... are they serious? I don't know).

So with all that in mind, I checked flights today for cheap travel to Europe from the Right Coast (Boston), to the middle coastal city of Chicago (it's on the coast of a lake...), to the West Coast... hmmm. Los Angeles is just easy. I looked from Tuesday to Tuesday October 11-25. That gives me three weeks advance and should be a quiet time of year for travel. I was lured to the internet by US's claims to be having big sales to Europe on air tickets, particularly London. I was disappointed to find nothing really from them. I did find that Virgin and BA seem to be having a nice little bidding war that could benefit all of us who want to travel a little bit cheaper. Especially if you like non-stop flights. Really if you do the math, with all the fees for stopping in airports and taxes, this often saves money these days, as well as wear and tear on your body (do I sound old yet?). At least two airlines want your business from Boston to London and will let you fly midweek for under $700 by $1. This is really good when you start to consider what the dollar is doing on international currency boards (think "falling?"). This is only EUR 516 (and the people in Europe may be paying 700 Euros for similar flights) or 451 British Pounds. Virgin Atlantic's website states them as 500 US Dollars plus fees which then comes in at $699 also.

Chicago is only a little more expensive at $815.40, so if you live West of Boston, don't dispair. In fact, you won't find any flights from Chicago to Boston for $116.40, so you might as well just check your bags all the way to London and forget the gymnastics of trying to get flights out of the east coast in segments. When the flights to London for $350 start popping up, though they may not any time soon (I hate saying "never") then you can mess with all that. Now, just jump a flight to London midweek from O'Hare for only 600 EUR. Too bad you're probably not getting paid in Euro's right?

If you are trading in the cold pacific waters for the colder Atlantic waters and flying from L.A. to London, don't get in the water! Just kidding! I'm just saying what I would and wouldn't do in the case that I was in or near London this week. You can do pretty much whatever you want, I hope you just get a good deal going there and that you have some ideas for indoor activities or like the rain and clouds or both From Los Angeles I'm seeing non-stops on United, Virgin and BMI, British all for US $827. So mile per mile, the LA flight is the cheapest one. It also looks like good service on those long flights and mostly 777's flying if that matters to you (I like the new planes). Once again about 600 EUROs. Is this is good time to go? I guess it depends on you. Do you have the cash and time off? If so, rates are low enough to go. If not, just wait until they drop to ridiculous prices and hope that you can still get time off. Either way, I wish you happy travels and most of all, Cheap Travel to Europe.

Fall refers to prices on Cheap Travel to Europe

Of course it will be cheaper to fly to Europe in the Fall! All the kids are back in school, not to mention the teachers, administrators and professors and college students! The airlines need some people in the seats. If you are waiting for some cheap travel opportunities to come to Europe, this is great news right? Just jump on your favorite site or call your travel agent (I know, they really do still exist despite the cuts) and see how low they can go for your next week or weekend away. The crowds are dying down in the popular places and things are getting a little bit more normal and traffic will be greatly reduced if you decide to travel during these months. The weather is never guaranteed, especially places like England, Scotland, Netherlands or Scandanavia, so even summer trips to various destinations often produce cold memories! In fact in many places, you are likely to get as good or better weather in your destination of choice during the months of September and October. November can be very cold in mountainous areas or northern climes, but this summer was too for many. If you are going to places like Turkey or Greece, I think these are brilliant places to visit in the fall and avoid the high summer temperatures and crowds at destinations like Athens, Santorini, Corfu, and Southern Turkey or even Istanbul.

It's not all sunshine and roses though, even in Southern Europe. Many of the discount carriers that make air-travel in Europe so cheap cut down or change their routes quite significantly during the winter. Germanwings, ryanair and easyjet, amoung others, will have a daily or four times weekly flight reduced to one day a week or even canceled completely until next summer! FLEXIBILITY will continue to be a key to getting cheap travel in Europe during the Fall season. You will have to look at a week at a time and try to see if they still have flights going and pick your days of the week accordingly. Can you get cheap flights to cities like Zagreb, Graz, Katowice, Ancona, Barcelona, and even Scandanavia? Absolutely. You just have to look. Many destinations will have a mid week and a weekend flight remaining on the schedule so you can do 3 or 4 days in a destination or a whole week if you prefer.

Now, however, is a good time to book the cheap stuff before it fills up. For the trans-atlantic flights, it's possible there will be some last minute deals as the planes don't fill up, but this may leave you spending a few days exploring a gateway city, rather than paying for flights to continue on which have filled up or become expensive at the last minute. Ryanair sometimes gets cheaper at the last minute, but Germanwings tends to charge more days before a flight. Look around and see what you find. That's part of the joy and challenge of cheap travel, though, right? It's a bit like a box of chocolates... but that's a sentence that belongs somewhere else. If you get an extraordinary good deal, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know how you did it!

Out and About: Cheap Travel in Europe

Hello again! I've been out and about traveling in Europe and it's fantastic!

Recent destinations include Budapest, Vienna and even a little bit of Venice! They are all in within a day's drive of each other. Being from N. America, I have to ask myself where could I go between three VERY different countries and find such diversity in a mere 9 hours driving time? Certainly not in the Western United States (24 hours from Los Angeles to Denver, for exampe). So there are advantages of the near-by borders of these countries, especially when you figure the vast differences in culture and history between the Venician and the Austro-Hungarian Empires that lead to very different experiences and sites as you travel.

I must confess that I ran into a real conundrum in my quest for cheap travel in Europe. I wanted to get from Vienna to Venice as cheaply as possible. I didn't want to completely rough it for various reasons, so hitch-hiking and www.gorivo.com were out. I could have flown out of Budapest or Vienna, or even Bratislava and I looked at Prague too. My general target is to get a short roundtrip for $200 or less. So $100 each way is usually my target. I was pushed to 200 EUR and I still couldn't hit the target! I did see some pretty good deals on Wizz air and Ryan air from some of my cities (especially Bratislava and Budapest), but they were mostly to Milan, which is a good couple hours from Venice and I had an appointment in the mid-afternoon, which meant I would be flying in the night before and booking a hotel for another 50 EUR or more. I will say there was a flight from Brno, Czech Republic (about 80 km north of Vienna) a couple times a week, but my dates just didn't line up.
Remember one of the main rules of finding cheap travel in Europe or anywhere else for that matter, is FLEXIBILITY. In this case, I didn't have enough of it. I even checked buses, though I was dreading a 12 hour trip on the bus. Not significantly cheaper! Trains were more than 100 EUR each way per person, blowing my budget out of the water... I'm doing some of this by memory now, so please don't sue me. I ended up paying $180 USD for a car plus fuel and tolls, a night in a hotel and parking through Austria and Italy. This was my cheapest option but I'm not sure we made it for less than $200 per person (there were only two of us). Oh well. I mentioned flexibility. I had a chance (which I just didn't take because we have to let some things go in life) to go from Budapest to Madrid for 200 EUR roundtrip on KLM airlines, flying through Amsterdam! Yes, hard to believe isn't it? There's a good lesson that after you check (or maybe before!!??) all the cheapo airlines and discounters from their less-than-convenient airport options, go ahead and check all the main airlines and sites you would normally check. I was shocked. KLM was beating everyone and I could have added Spain to the list for 200 EUR for a weekend trip from Budapest!!

How do you get cheap travel to Europe? How do you find cheap travel in Europe between great destinations like Budapest, Vienna, Venice and Madrid? Now if I could offer you a little gadget that would help you never miss another good deal for exactly the destinations you need when you need them, you would definitely buy it wouldn't you? Well, I don't have one and I don't believe there is one. You just have to keep your eyes out. I suppose it would have helped if I had booked a ticket months ago, but if you would have asked me months ago if I would need a ticket to Venice, I would have told you "You're crazy!" If you can plan ahead, it may help. Then again people that bought tickets to Madrid months ago may have paid 300 EUR. Who knows? So keep it flexible and just make it happen. I will probably never have another chance like I did to see Venice from Vienna and all the other details worked out, I just needed the time and the transport to have a once in a lifetime experience. At that point, I have to agree with the credit card tagline: Priceless.

Cheap Travel Europe: Central Europe

Hi all,

So I am getting ready to do some cheap travel in Europe! I hope that you are also getting ready. Going to Europe or travelling around in Europe can be the trip and experience of a lifetime. I wish you all the best and happy trails in that endeavor. This is a great year to find cheap travel in Europe and possibly offers some opportunities because of the world economy and specifically in some locations.

I think there are still many deals and you can definitely still find cheap travel in Europe. You just have to know where to look. My general opinion is to go East and go South at this point to find the best deals. In some cases (particularly Greece) go East and South. The recession is still affecting much of the world and this economy is going to push some prices down if you know where to go. I don't think some of the mainline "West" destinations are feeling the squeeze enough yet to lower their prices significantly. Honestly, I don't know if the South and East are either, but their prices have never been as high as out West. Having said that, I think that Spain and Portugal definitely need to have a very good year considering their tough position economically. Greece continues to struggle, but the beaches in Greece have always been a great place to find cheap travel accommodations and that will simply continue. Southern Italy is similar if you know where to look.

The Adriatic coast of Croatia and Montenegro will also continue to be great places to find cheap travel and accommodations this summer. Both of these have been re-discovered since the Balkan war and are getting busier and busier and the prices have gone up a little, but the availability and variation (i.e. selection) have gone up dramatically as well and these locations continue to offer excellent value to the budget conscious traveler. If you are looking for upscale places at good prices and haven't booked yet, I would definitely check out Croatia and Montenegro... Cheap travel to Croatia is available on several airlines, including, RyanAir, Easy Jet and Wizzair. Montenegro is also opening up and offers use of the Euro in the economy there.

But perhaps the new "new destination" that hasn't completely been discovered yet, though I know that Lonely Planet has started to catch on, is ALBANIA. Albania is not for the no-touch freight traveler who is looking for an upscale vacation with no snags. For that matter, go West young man on that one (stay in London or Dublin if you want). But for the traveler who is willing to look for cheap travel and explore new areas, this country has very beautiful beaches at rock bottom prices. Just a short ferry ride away are the Greek islands, but if you stay on the continent you will find excellent prices and gorgeous natural settings. Go away from the cities to find this! This is a former communist country that was very isolated during the old days and their public systems (read sewers) are not advanced, so please don't go to the beach right near a major population center. You'll be disappointed. Having said that probably scared off a few more people, which means that the prices will be great for you when you arrive.

If you want to get more excellent deals, I recommend Romania and Bulgaria. These two EU members only joined recently and the economies have not caught up yet with the West, so the services there are much cheaper. This means that you will find cheap travel and accomodations without much trouble. This is especially true in the countryside. You can also buy real estate here quite cheaply, but that is another topic for another day and probably another writer.

Serbia also is a beautiful country (though you won't get a seaside place there) with some rough politics at the moment. The people there are very hospitable and the politics don't affect that. The prices are very reasonable, possibly even more so because it's on the top of so few lists as places that really need to be visited right now.

If you're already in the neighborhood, Macedonia and Turkey are also beautiful places with very reasonable prices. They haven't caught the Euro-lust that so many places have. The prices remain very good and you can find good lodging and cheap travel.

In all these cases, if you want to take a bus around and you ask a bit, you will find SUPER CHEAP TRAVEL deals. Honestly, I don't have patience for that and am able to find good airfare deals to all but a few places with just a bit of research.

You will find that while these are good options for Cheap Travel in Europe, the populations are very friendly and hospitable and will be glad to see you.

Get ready for cheap travel in Europe this summer!

Greetings on a rainy day. That's what Spring is about, though, right? To get some moisture that makes the plants start growing like crazy and then we start to get beautiful weather and can enjoy a great summer. And hopefully this summer will be full of travel, right? It would be interesting to see if school was out during a different time of year if summer would still be the high travel time. I bet for many it would. You just don't go to the beach in December in most places and really enjoy it like you can in the warmer times of the year. Since we are focusing especially on Europe, that is really true. Swedish sea kayaking in November anyone? Didn't think so.

The high season means it's more difficult to find cheap travel to Europe, but not impossible. Since it's pretty late to try and get a jump on the game, if you are still planning to travel to Europe with cheap fares, you might have to be little cunning and patient now. Last minute travel deals will pop up depending on how poorly things are going for the travel companies. The economy is starting to shows signs of recovery, but this is not guaranteed and it's likely that the companies aren't going to be too hard-nosed about giving good deals to try and scare up as many customers as they possibly can this summer. Having said that, you have to keep your eyes out for some good deals, possibly some signs of frustration or desperation. In my recent checks on the "low fare" carriers of Europe--you probably know who they are, but if not, read through some of my other posts and I name a few--I am not seeing that they are desperate AT ALL. In fact my recent cheap fare in and out of London is a thing of the past. A pre-season give-me. They are definitely asking for more money this summer, with only a few exceptions.

Is all lost? NO WAY! Hold on a bit and buy some last minute tickets and I think you will find that there are going to be many good deals out there. This requires, of course, patience and flexibility.

So if you're going to Aunt Nellie's wedding in the old country and you absolutely have to be there on a particular date and you are planning on getting a super cheap airfare, you need to raise your price expectations and start looking like crazy to get the best fare you can, otherwise you may be needing to fly first-class to get a seat and that will definitely cost you about triple.

I have walked into an airport and looked at the board and tried to see an interesting place where I would like to go, but don't have to if the price isn't right. If this is you, you definitely have some exciting days ahead of you, because I think the airlines would rather have your money than have an empty seat and nobody bragging about getting a good deal...

Also, because the airlines that have made their name with cheap fares in Europe are starting to become more mainstream (and thus more expensive), the traditional airlines are seeing a chance and dropping some fares to lure people who don't want to pay 40 more Euros to bring a bag and 5 more to drink a coke on the flight... There is an opportunity to get very reasonable airfares with some European airlines who are giving out cheap flights to lure customers back from the bargain brands.

If you are new here, take a look back at some of the other entries here on my cheap travel to Europe blog and see some of the strategies and try them out for great deals and I wish you the best of luck and success finding cheap travel to Europe this summer!

Cheap travel to Europe on a busy weekend

Hello again!

Just got back from a great trip to England. Of course I got some cheap airline tickets and basically stayed with friends for next to nothing.... I have also mentioned couchsurfing.com in the past for a way to stay cheap, though I found a place through friends of friends this time... Not to bore you about me, but I basically bought flights for the week I could go and found out later that the ROYAL WEDDING was that week! Why is this a big deal at all? Because conventional wisdom would say that cheap travel to Europe, especially London would be hard to find on such an occasion, right? Apparently wrong. Yes, I did buy my tickets about 2 months early and planned ahead a bit, but our flights weren't jam packed and I would venture to guess that cheap travel to Europe wasn't too big of a challenge last week. But maybe I'm just lucky--it only rained two days out of seven when I was in London!! It's not high season yet, so tickets were cheaper and it's a great gateway city, London. My main problem was finding decent meals and paying for public transportation in one of the most expensive cities in the world, not to mention that the dollar isn't exactly worth much these days against European currencies. My other big challenge was finding people who could speak English (I'm not joking!). One of the few people I spoke with whose native language was English, I really had a hard time understanding until I figured out that both three and four start with an "f" for him!! Overall, though, cheap travel to Europe and especially cheap travel in Europe is not too difficult to do. I flew no-frills and took my own water on board to avoid paying big money there, but hey, the bathrooms are still free! Although some airlines are talking about charging for them in the future, most notably Ryanair (super cheap travel within Europe). My friend just got a decent flight roundtrip in May and returning July, so there are still some tickets to be had if you follow the directions out there and on here about getting cheap travel to Europe.

The best attractions to see in Oslo

Oslo happens to be Norway’s capital and also its largest city, but these are not the only things it is known for. Oslo’s museums and parks are definitely world-class and always worth seeing. 

The Akershus Castle, in particular, stands as a landmark in Oslo. You shouldn’t miss it for anything. The castle used to serve as a prison during the second world war, but now it plays host to the Resistance Museum depicting the occupation of the Germans in Norway. Take time to visit the dark dungeons, banquet halls and staterooms that are housed within the castle – you will be awed, for sure. Come summertime, the castle grounds are used for many outdoor events.

Experience true Norweigan heritage at the Norweigan Folk Museum. Set amidst sight-captivating surroundings, the Museum features many things that characterize Norweigan culture and heritage. Here you’ll find the wooden stave church dating as far back as the 11th century as well.

The Kon-Tiki Museum is worth seeing, too, if only to see the balsa-log raft used by Scientist Thor Heyerdahl during his voyage from Peru Polynesia. But there’s plenty to experience in the museum, as well – artifacts from East Polynesia, Peru, and Galapagos, and lava statues from the Easter Island, among others. Make use of the interactive touch screen guide to help you get around.

Other notable museums to see in Oslo are the Viking Ship Museum which contains the world’s three best-preserved Viking ships, the Munch Museum featuring the many artworks of Munch, including his best work, The Scream, and the Barnekunst Museum also known as the International Children’s Art Museum.

Done with Museum hopping? Visit Radhuset, Oslo’s City Hall, referred to by many as Norway’s pride. Not every one thinks that way, though, so see for yourself what you make out of the murals, frescoes, sculptures, and wood carvings.

Spend time to see Slottsparken, too. Slottsparken is a park surrounding the Royal Palace. Witness the changing of the guard at 1:30 pm, and see why it is always such a big deal.

If you happen to visit Oslo during summertime, don’t fail to see Vigeland Sculpture Park which features granite, bronze and iron sculptures of the cycle of life as envisioned by Adolf Gustav Vineland.

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