Top Europe travel tips for holidays in 2013
Happy New Year 2013! The brand new year has started. With more than 350 days ahead of us this year, itchy foot travelers like us will surely try to slot in our yearly bank and school holidays with whatever vacation plans we could think of. Among other highly frequented countries in the world, Europe is perhaps the most dream about for budget travelers. Sorry but thanks to the weakening Euro, Europe is more approachable than ever before Year 2013.
Before starting to plan for a trip to Europe, here are some Europe travel tips I can share with you so budget travelers like us could realize our dream to travel Europe in a frugal ways. My mini guide to plan a budget trip to Europe elaborate it in details, but here is the summary for Year 2013.
If you are not sure which season is best for traveling in Europe, here are some ideas on the best and the worst:
- Easter Holidays (29th March – 1st April) – During this period, domestic travel is busy so hotels might be booked out easily;
- Christmas Holidays (21st December – 5th January 2014) – A school holidays as well and many shops are closed;
- Summer Holidays (24th July – 1st September) – School holidays and the peak season for domestic and International travels;
- Labour Day (First week in May) – Some European countries are celebrating this day with many shops closed.
- Spring season (March to May) – This is the season with colourful flowers and mountains but also plenty of rains;
- Autumn season (September – November) – This is among the best time to visit Europe as the sunlight is warm and rain fall is less;
- Summer season (June – August) – This is the peak season in terms of numbers of crowd as well as temperature but extremely long day hours preferred by many travelers, and
- Winter holidays (December – February) – The shortest daylight hours in the year and temperature is extremely cold, but tourists are lesser and accommodation and transportation cost are much cheaper.
After fixing the right time for you to visit Europe, you can safely book your flight tickets. Airlines normally starts offering cheap fares a couple of seasons before departure date. If you are planning to visit Europe in this Autumn, then you should start looking for good deals about now. Europe travel tips: To get started, check your regular home airlines first, which is normally cheaper. To have a hint on how much could flights to Europe cost, check out Skyscanner and the likes.
Traveling around Europe is best to be done by rail since they are efficient with city center to city center transfer, and are reasonably priced. Eurail offers major intercity rail options in Europe. Having said that, some distant cities with high mileage might be better off to reach by flights. Budget airlines in Europe is popular and if book in the right time, they are cheap!
Accommodation booking is normally the last part of your planning. After fixing your Europe tour itinerary with all necessary flights and trains tickets booked online, you can start searching online for hotels that best suited to your requirement. There are too many hotel booking websites around. Hotelscombined.com combines them all to let you glance through all available published rates. From there you can pick whichever booking website that offers the lowest rates and proceed to book them on their respective website.
Which tourist attractions to visit during the tour? Depends on your period of stay in each European city, try to cover at most 3 of your favourite sites on each day. There are too many attractions in any city in Europe but limiting yourself to visit only your most desired spots ensure you have sufficient time to experience them to the fullest. Always plan for quality travel instead of quantity. If you are visiting Europe for the first time, spend at least 3 full days on each city. Sometimes there are renovation works carried out to some of the tourist attraction which would be covered by scaffolding. In order not to be disappointed, make sure to check on their official websites for latest information.
If you are not sure what and how to go about in Europe, holiday planners such as Very Cheap Holidays could help you out with various travel packages to suit your whatever interest. If you wish to travel on your own, my mini guide could help you out or you can check through my stories on Europe to get some Europe travel tips. Happy traveling Europe this year! 🙂 – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog.
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.
You recommend Eurail but did you know that in a LOT of cases it is still a lot cheaper to simply book individual point to point tickets
Many moons ago the Eurail pass used to be great value for money and these days you have to pay for train reservations on top of the pass price and sometimes the pass doesn’t even let you go on the train in question. Eurostar, the major link to the continent is not covered and SNCF the French rail provider has just withdrawn so the scope of the pass is becoming ever more limited considering the hefty price tag.
I think readers should bear this all in mind and be prepared to research their route thoroughly as if you book up to 3 or 4 months in advance then you can get some super discounted fares.
- January 23, 2013