Reflections on World Travel

You Really CAN Afford to Go to Europe: 6 Things You Should Know

A week in Paris can be cheaper than a weekend at a theme park!

You can ride around London on their tube system for an entire day, have a nice lunch and a pint at the pub, and stay in a cute neighborhood near Camden Yards for less than one ticket to the Magic Kingdom.

I’m a travel writer, and I think it’s safe to say, a seasoned and savvy traveler.

I’m also a naturist, and love to travel to naturist places, which often means I’m headed for Europe whenever time and circumstance permit. MEDIUM just sent me an email proclaiming that I’m a Top Writer on Travel. Thanks MEDIUM! (Or the anonymous bot that made that delineation after only two months on the platform.) I think that designation is overstated, but I’ll take the accolades just the same.

But here’s the rub. Since Europe is so frequently my target travel destination, (nude beaches in the summer; thermal spas in the winter) I write a lot about European travel, knowing full well that many readers roll their eyes and mutter under their breath, “Sure. That’s great, if you can afford to bounce to Europe for the weekend.”

It helps that I live on the east coast within a viable drive to several international airports between NYC and Washington, but even if you’re coming from San Francisco or Denver, getting to Europe may not be as daunting as you think. Here are a few tips you should consider before you throw your hands in the air and settle for Epcot instead.

If you can travel off season, there are great airfares to be found.

Want to visit Paris in July? It’s gonna cost you… big time! And it’s going to be hot, crowded, and devoid of real Parisians who all close up their shops and go to the Mediterranean for a month. But if you can wait until mid-September, or even better, the beginning of February, it will feel less like a theme park and airline tickets will be a fraction of the cost. I begin every airfare search on Google Flights, which provides lots of comparative data along with the best options for the best price. You can even track a destination within a date range and they’ll send you an email every time the fare changes. How much difference does this all make? Ticket to London in July? About $1200. Same ticket in early December? About $400. (Ticket to Orlando any time? At least $400!!)

There are a lot of airports in Europe, and pricing is wildly uneven.

Just like in the US, different airports have different fare structures at different times of the year. I recently bought a ticket to visit my daughter in Paris for next month. Round-trip to Paris Charles de Gaulle on the date I needed to travel? $1300! Fly into London, meet a friend for lunch, then take the Eurostar (3-hour train ride) to Paris? $700, including the train ticket. There are lots of hacks like that. For example, Frankfurt is always cheaper than Munich. Brussels is usually cheaper than Paris, and Madrid is usually cheaper than Barcelona. My personal barometer is the ability to add a day or two to my trip, see another city, pay for two nights’ accommodations, and still break even in the end. And the train trip is usually great as well.

Be aware also that airfares are calculated on competition and market conditions, not on distance. That’s why you can often change planes in Munich on your way to Berlin for half the price of simply flying to Munich. Same flight, plus an extra flight, for half the cost? Does it make sense? No. Does it happen? All the time.

Do you have a strategy for maximizing your credit card points?

We started going to Europe annually when our youngest child was about nine-years old. We had little disposable income back then, but we did need to buy things every month that could be paid for with a credit card. Groceries, gasoline, our electricity bill, home and car repairs. So we found a credit card that had a nice sign-on bonus of frequent flyer miles, then started using that card like a debit card for every transaction we could. It’s amazing how fast those miles rack up, and credit cards companies often have double and triple mile promotions to get you to use their card.

But here’s the catch! We link that credit card to our checking account with autopay, so the credit card is paid in full each and every month! No carried balances, and thus, no finance charges. If we had to use a credit card for a large, unexpected expense that we couldn’t pay off in the same month, we’d use a different card, as any carried balance would result in a finance charge on all the charges for that month. At that point, you’re paying more in fees than you’re gaining in flight credit.

Someday, I’ll write an entire article about miles, points, and credit cards, but for now I can tell you that this strategy paid for our three children to fly to Europe for free every year. I still use that strategy so my wife can join me on business trips where I always pay to accrue miles while she flies for free. It’s an art and a science.

Self-Catering is affordable and creates a “real” travel experience

We were doing the AirBNB thing long before AirBNB existed. That required ordering guides from the bookstore or scouring travel listings in magazines. Now, with VRBO, AirBNB, and a host of others, affordable lodging is right at your fingertips. We always read the reviews carefully, and frequently choose a cheaper place farther from the city center but easily accessible to a subway or streetcar station. In Riga last summer, we could ride anywhere in the city for less than 60 cents per ride. Ten minutes on the tram and you’re right in the thick of it all. No traffic. No parking. Less stress.

And even if you want to eat out every night, having a kitchen for breakfast and lunch makings can save you a bundle of money. In France, we stock up on the staples, then run out each morning for fresh baguettes and croissants. Net cost: $5 to feed a family of five. Breakfast in a Marriott hotel for one person? $26! There’s no comparison.

Trains and local public transportation in Europe are actually a thing.

If you fly into Frankfurt, you can walk out of immigration, across the concourse, over the sky-walk to either the local rail station where a clean, speedy train will take you to the city center every seven minutes, or go to the long-distance train station and catch a train to anywhere in Europe, departing within an hour. If you take the downtown option, there will be a streetcar or subway station in front of the train station so you can likely get anywhere else you want to go simply by walking 100 meters. Amsterdam? Same. Paris? Pretty much (Dumb airport, though!) London? Huge airport and a longer walk, but we recently flew to London, met friends for dinner, went to a show on the West End, then caught the overnight sleeper train to Scotland. Never rented a car. Never climbed in a taxi or an Uber.

In most European cities, the system works because people use it, the government subsidizes it, and they know travel needs to be relatively seamless or people won’t use it. Many Europeans don’t even own a car, so they rely on frequent, efficient local transportation, especially to and from airports and train stations. And now, you can find everything you need to navigate a particular system on the web or your smart phone. Yet another MEDIUM article in the making.

The dollar is incredibly strong against the euro right now.

Watching my 401k has been unnerving at best during the last year, but as it happens, things aren’t much better in Europe, and thus, the value of the Euro (and the British Pound) has declined sharply over the past two years. In 2020, It would have cost you $1.24 to buy one euro. (Or in other words, 100€ was equal to $124. Yikes!) Last week, it was LESS THAN A DOLLAR to the Euro. The two currencies have been riding neck and neck for most of the year. Effectively, this means European travel is essentially 25% off once you’re on the ground. And… since people who work in the hospitality industry are adequately compensated for their efforts, tipping remains rare and unnecessary, so a $50 meal is actually $50, not $67 when you add on the tip.

So, you can ride around London on their tube system for an entire day for $6, have a nice lunch and a pint at the pub for less than a Happy Meal, and stay in a cute neighborhood near Camden Yards for less than one ticket for one human to the Magic Kingdom for one day. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

(And by the way, I know London is officially in Europe anymore, but you get my drift.)

My mom used to live near San Francisco, which is essentially equidistant from with London or Lisbon. Visit mom or have lunch in Portugal? Especially with “Europe on sale,” it’s way more viable than you may have believed.

I write about naturism, travel, and other parts of the human experience simply for the joy of writing. Totally worth it. But every time somebody spends time reading one of my stories, I earn a few cents to help pay the overhead costs of being a blogger. It’s only a few dollars a month to subscribe to Medium, which gives you access to thousands of authors and their work. And if you subscribe by clicking through the link below, I receive an incentive for that as well. Support naturism and thoughtful writing. Subscribe to MEDIUM… below…

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