Flying to Europe is cheaper than flying within the United States at times. As an example, I will walk through a booking right now as I want to go to London for a week-long stay. You are free to use Skyscanner, Kayak, or your preferred method but let me walk you through mine.

Step 1: Google Flights (https://www.google.com/flights/)

It will give you a round trip by default. I always choose 1-way flights for instant updates and allows for me to return out of a different location. For example, flying into London may cost $160 and flying out of Paris could be 190. This helps when backpacking and seeing many countries.

For this exercise I will do two one way searches to get my round-trip dates. Round trip only populates when you click two dates. Unless you have set days, flexibility saves more money.

I see January 19 as a date that works for me for $160.

Now swap the order of destination and departure.

I like the January 26 for $210 which makes my round-trip flight from Friday to Friday after for $372. Next step is to click round trip and put in the dates January 19 and return January 26 which brings up $372. Then click the 372 twice to get the flights and then it gives you an option to book.

Here is my total price

Now that I have my dates of arrival and departure. I start looking for a place to stay.

Step 2: Book a Room

There are plenty of options to book a room/hotel/hostel. For a great social environment a hostel is great when traveling alone. When going with a friend or more, I find it better to book an apartment. Hotwire is also reasonable when you book by location and play Hotel Roulette. If that is not comforting then Airbnb is now always my first choice. I usually only travel with a carry on so look for an apartments with a washing machine and a kitchen. Certain cities are good at certain meals like Rome is great at Dinner and Barcelona is great for lunches. But some places are not known to have great breakfast. So, I cook my own breakfast if all they have is toast on their menu.



I booked the two most expensive items in a trip. Now if I travel with a friend who is paying half the room. My total cost from Jan 19-26 in London is $626.40. You can easily get a room for $30-40 dollars and split that cost bringing your total to just under $500. Now you are free to travel with more people making it even cheaper but this is how I book a flight and room.

Extra Tips:

Flight-prediction tool like Momondo’s Trip Finder.

Feel free to play around with it as it is a rather great tool. https://www.momondo.com/trip-finder/

Use hubs as launchpads.

Take a flight into a big city like Paris, London, Barcelona then take a cheap flight to another city. Sometimes they are only 9 Euros.

Pack light.

Take only an authorized carry-on and a small backpack/personal item. This helps with not paying luggage fees which can add up. If your apartment has a washer then you can wash as often as you like.

Get in the boarding line early.

If you are in the front, they usually are more relaxed in letting you through without checking your bag size and charging you fees to check in your bag.