How to escape to Europe for a vacation of a lifetime

Traveling to Europe from the United States has never been easier or cheaper. If you often dream about going to Europe to watch a game or on vacation, now is the time to make that dream a reality.

Several factors are in your favor for a European vacation this year. First, the strong American dollar means that Europe isn’t as pricey as it once was. Second, several international budget airlines have emerged that have caused prices to drop. Third and finally, once you arrive in Europe, you can find incredible prices for flights from city to city.

Altogether, taking a trip to Europe can be less expensive than a vacation within the United States.

Take it from me. I found some amazing deals last summer when I took my wife and three of my children to Europe for 30 days. We visited seven countries, traveled 12,000 miles on planes, trains, and automobiles, and had the trip of a lifetime. It’s hard to believe, but we spent less money than if we had stayed a week at a Disney World hotel and theme park just 140 miles away.

How is this all possible? Here are my golden rules for making an affordable dream trip to Europe possible.

Escape to Europe: Find the flight that fits your budget

Out of all of the costs of a European vacation, the most important one to master is to find an affordable plane ticket. Undoubtedly, the best tool to use is Google Flights, which is free.

To get the most out of Google Flights, type in a range of airports in your area where you’d be flying from. Also, enter in several choices for the destination airport. For example, for London as a destination, you should enter LGW (London Gatwick Airport), LHR (Heathrow) and MAN (Manchester). Wherever you’re traveling from and to, including several nearby airports will give you more deals to choose from.

Once you click the ‘Departure’ date option, you’ll immediately see prices listed for each day. The ones listed in green are good deals, while the prices listed in black are less so. By being able to view which deals look promising before you even choose a departure and return date, it lets you to see which dates offer the best savings.

The ‘Search’ results page is the heart of Google Flights. From here, you can see the ‘Best’ as well as ‘Cheapest’ options. You can also use the ‘Date grid’ and ‘Pricing graph’ to drill down to find the best days of the week to fly. The best feature is the ‘Track prices’ option, where Google will send you an email whenever the prices drop. You can also choose to only include direct flights in your search.

The more flexible you are with the dates, the more likely you are to find a deal. And if you don’t immediately find one, be patient. Airlines often run deals around different times of the year such as Black Friday, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, etcetera.

If you’re patient and want to keep your options open for amazing deals, bookmark Secret Flying. As an alternative to Google Flights, Skyscanner is very good, too.

Fly with a budget airline, if you want

As you look through the deals on Google Flights, remember that it’s not just the airlines you’re familiar with that offer the best deals. For instance, you can usually find great deals with international budget airlines such as TAP Air Portugal (to Portugal), French Bee (to France), Icelandair (to the UK), and Aer Lingus (to England and Ireland). Other than those, my favorite is Norse Atlantic Airways. I flew with them to London in 2023. It’s a no-frills airline (food, heavy suitcases, and seat selection are extra), but they almost always offer great deals. I’ve been able to find deals for as low as $400 (in the winter) to $600 roundtrip (summer) from Florida to London.

To be fair, the quality of service from most major airlines has dropped so much from what it used to be that there isn’t much difference between them and the international budget airlines. Most of them use the same type of planes. With Norse or other budget airlines, bring some food with you to eat on the plane, don’t worry about the seat selection, and pack lightly.

Speaking of packing lightly, before you take your departure flight, don’t go crazy when you’re filling your suitcase with clothes. Learn some packing tips, and — if you feel daring — take a backpack instead of a suitcase. When you take a backpack, it can use it as carry-on luggage. Plus, it’s easier to travel with it on your back instead of lugging your suitcase all over the streets of Europe.

When my family went on the 30-day European trip last summer, our only luggage was one backpack each. It saved us so much time zipping through airports when others were waiting for carousels to unload their checked luggage. And it helped us get in and out of planes, trains, and automobiles once we arrived in Europe.

If you don’t believe me, here’s a photo of our backpacks shortly before we dropped them off at a luggage storage location in Edinburgh, Scotland. The extra Primark bag was just for some souvenirs we picked up earlier on our trip.

So how did we do it? First, we had enough clothes for seven days. Every week, we found a laundromat in whichever town we were in that day. Second, I highly recommend the Matein backpack (pictured above on the far left). It has so many compartments inside the backpack where you can store shoes, clothes, etcetera. It even has space for a laptop if you need to bring one with you.

Other travel tips to take before heading to Europe

Once you’ve landed in Europe, you’ll find that public transportation makes it easy to get around — whether you want to take a bus, train, or plane. Buses will differ in every country, but Flixbus is certainly one to take a look at.

The high-speed trains in Italy and France are wonderful. The rest of Europe has great train service too. If you are planning on taking a lot of train journeys, definitely check out Eurail and BritRail as options. The train passes are only available in the United States, and they’re often much cheaper than if you bought rain tickets in Europe. I’ve used them both on previous trips, and I love the comfort of sitting on a train as we relax and enjoy the views out of the window as the trains speed through the countryside.

A huge advantage of traveling in Europe is how cheap airfare is from city to city. Last summer, we took a flight from Manchester, England to a city in southern Italy called Brindisi. For the flight of just over three hours, we paid approximately $25 per ticket on RyanAir. We saved so much because we found the deals on the RyanAir website. Plus, we didn’t have any checked luggage, so those backpacks saved us a lot of money too.

While RyanAir and other European budget airlines offer incredibly great deals, they’re not luxurious. As can be seen from my photo below, the seats don’t have much comfort, and legroom is at a minimum.

Just like before, Google Flights is a great resource to check for airline deals from European city to city.

Last but not least, when it comes to where to stay when you’re in Europe, I recommend Booking.com. If you use their app to make a booking, it’s cheaper than its website. Plus both the Booking.com app and website aggregate listings of hotels, apartment rentals, and bed-and-breakfasts into one.

Safe travels.