Typically on this European adventure, I have our flights booked at least a month in advance which allows us to get good fares on our travel. Here are a few of the travel planning websites I use regularly to plan different aspects of our trip.
How to get there:
Momondo.com- This website is great if you are flexible on travel day and want to check what day has the cheapest flight. You can see below it's an easy, clear visual to see the days with low or high prices. You can also ask to receive price alerts so you know if a particular search is changing. This is helpful, although if the price goes up, it may only serve to make you kick yourself for not having bought earlier. I've only used it for flight searches, but they do search hotels and cars as well. Another helpful feature is you can filter by departure and arrival times as well as duration of flight. I appreciate this so I can filter out the wacky 20 hour flights due to long layovers. I've also become picky and I refuse to get four kids to the airport for a flight earlier than 7:30am and I don't want to arrive in a foreign city later than 9:00pm. By being flexible on what day we travel, we can usually get great deals.
Momondo also has a great search "anywhere" feature. This helped us early on decide what were the cheapest cities to fly into in Europe. Not only can you choose any global destination, but you can also specify Europe, which we found helpful. We didn't care much where we landed as long as we got across the ocean! Here's an example of flights from San Diego to Europe in May 2020. You might have thought Amsterdam was cheap, but what about Prague!
Skyscanner.com- Another website that checks for cheap airfare. While this one also can show a price comparison chart (you have to drill through the website a bit to get to it), I really like their calendar view that can help me see a month's worth of flights. For example, below, it highlights that tickets during holy week (Greek Orthodox Easter is on April 19, a week after the Latin church's Easter on April 12) are much higher than the rest of the month. Skyscanner also has the ability to remove results from particular airlines if you want to avoid the traditional airlines who are expensive or the super cheap airlines who offer sketchy service. They will also give you price alerts if you want. Dave also likes Skyscanner because after living in Edinburgh he feels he's using a hometown company as they were founded in Edinburgh.
Omio.com- This is another comparison website about how to get from here to there. I use it primarily for prices for trains and buses. I like that I can get prices for six passengers (some train websites limit you to purchasing/research for five passengers maximum). It can also help me know which train station to depart from as I can say the departure city in general and it chooses which station will connect to my destination.
Rome2rio.com- This is my absolute favorite when you just don't know how to get from here to there. For example, we plan to spend several weeks in Sicily but the cheapest, direct flights to Copenhagen leave from Rome. So I bought the Rome tickets figuring we can see Pompeii and Mt. Vesuvius near Naples on the way. But how to get from Sicily to Naples and then Rome? Well, Rome2Rio succinctly shows how to take train, bus, flights or driving. Their prices are approximate, but I appreciate that if they show driving, they estimate the cost of gas so you can add this to the rental price. (Wish I'd known ahead of time about the toll prices in Portugal...toll roads easily shaved 1-2 hours off our long drives but tolls added up to about 60 Euros!)
Google.com/flights- I used to use this before I found the other sights. It's ok, but for some reason I found it hard to navigate back to sometimes. It still offers price tracking, charting prices by month, and searches all nearby airports. If it's an interface you prefer (cleaner, doesn't open other pop-up windows), but all means go for it.
Rentalcars.com- We used this on several occasions to find the cheapest rental car option. I appreciate that I can sort it easily to find the people carrier vans we need (for six people plus luggage we require a 9-passenger van). Even so, we still have to look past the 7 passenger or 5/7 passenger vans that I can't filter out. This website also lets us know what amount of luggage will fit in. The 9-passenger vans (like the Mercedes Benz Vito) come in different lengths that can hold either 1-2 suitcases or up to 6-7 suitcases). And sometimes it helps us realize that a car is just too expensive to have in this area (as below for Sicily!). If we're planning a little weekend trip from someplace we're living for a while, we can get by with a few backpacks and can fit in a smaller SUV-style car with three rows of seats.
Other rental car sites
We've also used Europcar.com and Expedia.com. With any of them, read the fine print so you aren't caught unawares of extra charges. Frequently at pick up we've had to pay the second half of the rental cost or at drop off we've had to pay for the additional driver fees or airport fees. In general, any site you use you just need to play around with different options. For our trip to Portugal, we knew we'd need a car for our group of eight since trains take twice as long as driving between Seville and Lisbon or Lisbon and Madrid. We played around with renting in Seville or Madrid and returning in Madrid or Barcelona and it turned out to save us over $500 to have Dave pick a van up at the Madrid airport and then bring it to Seville for the start of our road trip. Another time going from Nice, France to Strasbourg, France we could only find a van that offered limited miles. By renting for an extra day, Dave was able to make the allowed mileage be enough for our trip and we just waited an extra day to return it.General thoughts on cheap airlines
It's best to choose short, direct flights. This minimizes chances of delays and hassles with lost luggage or flight cancellations. Budget airlines don't fly into and out of every city, so pay attention to how many hops you'll have to do if you choose certain itineraries. For example, if we finished our tour of Spain in Barcelona we could then fly direct to Athens (hard to do from most European cities). If we flew from Madrid or Seville we would be forced to connect through some other city and the travel time would double or triple. Check what cities budget airlines fly in/out of and what days...then plan around it. We could only fly cheaply from Fes to Seville on Sunday or one other weekday. Keep in mind this can change seasonally...I couldn't find the same Fez-Seville flight we took in January in either February, March or April! Even though we are paying to check luggage, flying is the cheapest way for us to move around. Train tickets times six are also typically more expensive than renting a van. My goal is typically to pay under $400 for all six of us flying, including one checked bag each (which is usually for their "family plan" ticket). Do make sure you're following the guidelines/rules for the budget airlines. It's always more expensive (usually double the price) to buy the checked luggage later. We've appreciated that for the ones we've flown so far (RyanAir, EasyJet, Volotea) the luggage weight is calculated as a whole for all your baggage so if one bag is overweight another underweight bag can average it out. Dave found out the hard way that RyanAir requires you to check in 2 hours ahead of your flight. He had to pay $55 for late check-in one hour before his flight. We also found Volotea doesn't even staff their counters more than three hours before the flight so arriving early didn't pay off then.Note on price alerts for flights...they may be misleading because they are for the cheapest ticket option possible...typically with a small carry-on only. We fly with checked luggage so their prices aren't accurate, but it's a good barometer for if prices are going up or not.
What are your favorite websites for travel planning? Feel free to leave your answers in the comments section!
Thumbs up for momondo. Great site.
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