Getting Ready for the EuroTrip - 3 weeks and counting...

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So ready to go to Europe

I hope that the countdown is functioning properly - I'll be leaving for Europe in 3 weeks from today, on March 12th.

Here are some observations I've found while booking flights and accommodations for 11 weeks in Europe.


• The website skyscanner.com is amazing! I have looked for and compared flight prices on other sites, and this one is the best, hands down. If you know of better ones, please let me know, because if there's anything better, then I would love to hear that.



• Norwegian airlines has easily the best prices for transatlantic flights. Nobody believed me when I told them how cheap it was! Granted, I've never used them, and their customer reviews are barely above average, but I don't have any connecting flights, so I think I'll be ok. I'll make any comments about that once I get to London.



• By and large, hotels.com had been great at finding cheap hotels for most of my stays. In fact, my average price for hotels has been about $40/night. I also realize that Americans have higher expectations/standards for hotels than Europeans, so often we are disappointed by European hotels. I've been a few times, so I'm just happy to have a place with a bed, something to block out the light, and a good wifi connection. I'm currently experimenting with trivago.com, so if I find any better deals, I'll post about it.



• I love easyJet and Aer Lingus for intra-European flights. Ryanair is kinda blah, and I've never used TAP or Air Baltic, though I have booked flights with them for this trip. Air Baltic has been my biggest headache, though, since I've already had 3 flight changes even though my first flight isn't until April 30th. And now I have to call them internationally because they can't rearrange my flight via the interwebs. Norwegian has changed my flight time from JFK-LGW, but it was a favorable change for me. Still, I wish the USA would get some better discount flight options.





• Honestly, most of my trip has been planned by looking on skyscanner.com for the cheapest flights from the place I want to fly from and leaving the destination space blank - this means that it will look for flights to everywhere, in any country. Of course, it requires data from previous searches performed by me or others on their website to compare flights, but you can always look up destinations if you have a particular itch. Other than a couple of destinations where I'm meeting up with someone (which required specific destinations and dates), this has been a pretty easy trip to plan.

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