From Travel To Photo – Chapter 4 – Planning your transportation to and in Europe

From previous chapters, we learned when is the best time to visit Europe,  for how long we should travel Europe and How to fix budget for Europe travel. In this chapter, we will discuss on ways to plan and book your transportation to and in Europe. As we all know by now, transportation constitutes up to 50 to 60% of your total trip budget to Europe. However, careful and well planning could still save you substantial amount of money on transportation. There are many ways to realize this, if only holidaymakers understand the logic behind it.

Transportation for Europe trip involves 2 main types, international and domestic. International transportation involves either flight or cruise to bring travelers to the European continent, while domestic transportation are all types of transportation means include trains, flights, coach, ferry etc., to connect travelers from one attraction to another, one city to another or one EU country to another. After finding the right time for you to visit Europe and having your budget fixed, you can now start to look for good deals. If you can’t find what you think is the best deal, just wait until one arrive.

1) International Transportation

Let’s discuss on ways to look for good deals on transportation to and from Europe, which is the first and most important part of your Europe travel. We take the most common mean, the flight. Here are a few steps to find the cheapest air fare to Europe:

• Check out Skyscanner – Skyscanner is an air fare searching engine that will search the most of the major airlines in the world for all direct and non-direct flights to your destination on any given date. You can have a rough idea on how those popular airlines are charging you for a flight to Europe.
• Get a rough idea on the most competitive air fares to Europe on your desired departure date, as Skyscanner sometimes may not show you some of the special deals from certain airlines.
• From the list of result, click on the cheaper few airlines to redirect to their respective official websites.
• Look out for any special deals on each airline’s website, such as early bird offer and any other promotion.
• Normally, other than the departure date you selected, most airlines are also showing the rate for a few days ahead or behind. From there you can know if there are cheaper flights on other days.
• Normally, they will highlight which is the cheapest available flight for that flight route.
• Spend some times comparing each one of them, and you will know which airline offers the cheapest air fare on that particular date.
• You may need to adjust your departure date, if flexibility is allowed.
• At the end of it, you have got the cheapest deal on your date of travel. However, if you think it could be cheaper, just subscribe to those airlines mailing list to receive emails on future promotion, if any.
• Please note that, normally, airlines open their flights booking as early as 12 months ahead, and are expectedly cheaper. Book as early as possible seeing that airlines are hiking their fares recently due to the increasing jet fuel cost.

If you are happy with the air fare you just found, go ahead and book it! Then you can proceed with domestic transportation.

2) Domestic Transportation

Booking of domestic transportation will tie back to your preliminary itinerary that you should have drafted by now. Domestic transportation that will connect you from one point to another within Europe could also be booked well before you arrive at Europe. Thanks to the internet era, all searches and bookings could easily be done online.

a) Travel Europe by trains

Let’s talk about the most common way to travel around Europe, rail transportation. Traveling around Europe by trains is the most convenient way which connect city centre to city centre, unlike flights where airport is distance away. You can also enjoy the breathtaking countrysides of Europe along your journey. Travelers can either buy single tickets or Rail Pass if you are uncertain on your itinerary and have months to spend in Europe. For budget and time conscious travelers, here are a few steps to find the cheapest single train ticket within Europe:

• Check out Rail Europe. Rail Europe is an online train booking website for most of the trains networks available in Europe.
• Get a rough idea on train tickets available, the cheapest price and time to your desired destination. Same as Skyscanner for flights, Rail Europe may not show you some of the special deals from certain rail companies.
• From the list of results, click to see the fare details to have a glance on the train service provider for that train. Hence, search and log on to the respective official websites. A few of the popular rail networks include TGV– France, Deutsche Bahn– German, Trenitalia– Italy, Eurostar– London/Paris/Brussels or Renfe– Spain.
• Look out for any special deals on each service provider’s website, such as early bird offer and any other promotion.
• Normally, other than the departure date you selected, most rail companies are also showing the rate for different time of departure. From there you can know if there are cheaper trains on other time in a day.
• Normally, they will highlight the rate if it is the cheapest available for that rail route, and they could be cheaper than what Rail Europe offers.
• At the end, you will know which train offers the cheapest tickets on any particular date.
• Adjust your travel itinerary slightly, either staying 1 day longer or shorter at your destination so to get maximum saving on train tickets.
• Depends on the seat availability and popularity, trains depart 1 day or even 1 hour earlier or later can cost 50% less!
• Normally, rail companies open their online train booking as early as 3 months before traveling, and they are normally cheaper, logically.

After gathering all the info on train fares and train network, you might realize that your preliminary itinerary is not viable and economical. So you have to fine tune your Europe itinerary, and also look for other means of transportation, such as either by coach or by flight.

b) Travel Europe by coach

Eurolines has coach fleets all over Europe and they are the cheaper options to connect neighbouring cities, albeit more times taken, if compared with trains. If you are traveling in East Europe, this could be an alternative to trains as rail networks in Eastern Europe are not as comprehensive as Western Europe. You may find taking an overnight coach from Berlin to Brussels cheaper than a day train!

c) Travel Europe by air

Otherwise, if you are traveling from one city to another with quite a distance, a few of domestic European budget airlines are also worth checking out, such as Easyjet, Ryanair, Air Berlin, Transavia or SAS. Again, check out Skyscanner to get some ideas on fares before shortlisting into a couple of airlines. Easyjet, Air Berlin and SAS are among the best domestic budget airline with good service and comfortable ride.

At the end of this chapter, you should have confirmed your transportation options and refined further your Europe travel budget. In the next chapters, we will discuss on the planning of our accommodations and places to visit, which will further affect our travel budget plan. Stay keeping an eye on the development of this e-guide or subscribe for future updates via email. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate guide to Europe travel

About The Author

Cecil Lee

The author is an avid traveler and photography hobbyist who loves to share with others his travel and photo-taking experience in many popular tourist destinations around Europe, Asia and Australasia. Read the exciting stories with many photos captured on his journeys.