Hello again!

At the end of my last post I mentioned that I had my own European trip to plan…well it is finally done! Part of the reason why I wanted to go to school in England were the possibilities for travel. The diversity of the countries nearby is immense, so just traveling an hour or two will bring you somewhere totally new. When my sister and I decided to go on a European vacation, my mom warned me that it takes hours to plan…she was right.

 

Zurich, Switzerland

Starting off I went to Pinterest for inspiration about places we should go. We had an idea that we wanted to go to Switzerland, Norway, and Ireland, so I just typed those in. Wow are those countries beautiful. I pinned some pages about things to do and especially the ones that pointed out the FREE things to do in each place. I took note of the cities that came up the most and decided to look deeper into those places. This is how I chose to go to Zurich and Lucerne in Switzerland, Oslo and Bergen in Norway, and Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye in Scotland.

 

Bergen, Norway

Now you may notice that I have stopped using the word “we” and started saying “I”. That is because somehow I ended up doing all the planning…literally all of it.

Next I decided to get super organized and made an excel spreadsheet. I just used one of the suggested trip itinerary planner templates they create for you. I saved it on my OneDrive, so that my sister could see the changes that I was making as I did it. My sister lives in Oregon, so face-to-face communication wasn’t possible. I needed to just get a general idea about how we would be traveling to each place and where we would be staying. I ended up finding some really helpful sites for planning that you should take a look at :

Trains: http://www.raileurope.com/train-tickets/

The train page will let you book trains all around Europe ranging from large trips across countries to small trips like between a main train station and the airport. You can add them to a shopping cart and purchase all in one go which was also super useful. We used trains for traveling within each country.

Hostels: https://www.hihostels.com/

We decided, as we are students, hostels, instead of hotels, would suit us just fine! Hostels cut costs and allow you to meet other people doing the same things you are doing. Like most people, I like to stay in nice places, so I was hesitant to stay in a hostel. During the school lead trip to Paris, Antwerp, and Amsterdam last year we stayed in hostels that were amazing. Way above my expectations. Hostels are a great choice for students as price per night is more in the $35 range as opposed to in the hundreds. This website is similar to the train one and lists hostels across Europe and lets you purchase many all in one go. You can read reviews and they are all certified.

Planes: Planes are a bit difficult as the prices and the flights vary. There are options such as RyanAir  and EasyJet that offer ridiculously cheap flights ($25 from London to Zurich), but everything costs extra and they don’t go from main airports. If you want to travel super cheap that is the way to go. However, because we were going to travel from Seattle to London and then directly from London to Zurich, we didn’t want to deal with the added complications after a 10 hour flight. We chose to go with Scandinavian Air which goes from main airports and is cheaper than other big airlines.

 

Lucerne, Switzerland

It was at this point that we saw the estimates for the cost of the trip that we decided to cut Scotland out of this part of the trip. As I would be spending the next year in England and my sister would be spending the next month there as well, we decided that if I have a weekend free that we would just take a plane or train up to Scotland. It is super easy to do, you just need the time.

Once that was figured out, I needed to make sure the timing of each journey matched up. For instance, getting from Seattle to London flight and terminal to the London to Zurich terminal. It wasn’t too difficult actually as there were quite a lot of options.

Finally, I booked everything 🙂 Train tickets arrived in the mail. Plane reference/confirmation numbers have been recorded. Hostel deposits have been paid. It was so nice to have everything sorted and complete.

 

Oslo, Norway

For our last preparations, we are getting my sisters phone unlocked, so she can get a UK sim card and are going to the bank to order Swiss Franks and Norwegian Krone. We need money as we enter the country in order to pay for taxis and the rest of the hostel payment on arrival. I am also bringing my UK chip and pin card with me. For reference, chip and pin card is just a debit/credit card with a chip in it that you push into a card reader instead of swipe it like we do with our cards. A lot of places will allow swiping as well as chip and pin, but some don’t so you don’t want to be caught without a way to pay.

Hope this gives you a bit of an outline and guide to traveling on a student budget. Come September I will be off traveling for two and a half weeks!

Holly