If you’ve just dropped a truckload of cash on your flights to the UK, you’ll be wanting to find some more cost effective ways to travel to other parts of Europe. In this post we’ll give you a few hints and tips to help you get the most from your hard earned cash on your trip to the UK and Europe.
Budget airlines
North America has JetBlue, Southwest and Frontier. The UK and Europe have Ryanair, Easyjet, Wizzair plus lots more. These budget airlines offer a cost effective way to explore Europe. It’s easy to pick up a cheap round trip fare for under $100 between say London and Italy or London and Spain. If you are travelling to Italy or Spain, you might want to also look at getting a pre-paid Italy SIM Card or a pre-paid Spain SIM Card before you head off on your vacation.
However, sometimes these budget airlines fly to out of the way airports (for both the departure and arrival), so make sure you do your research to find out what it will cost in transfer fees to and from the airports.
For example, many Ryanair flights depart from Stansted Airport in London. Stansted is quite far from central London, and will cost you about $35 for a round trip on the Stansted Express Train. However, the train leaves every 15 minutes to and from the airport, and takes around 50 minutes.
Factor into your plans the time and cost to travel to different airports. You might find it better to pay extra for your airfare if that means you depart and arrive at a more convenient airport.
High speed trains
North America misses out entirely on true high speed train travel. The same is not true for the UK and Europe.
In the UK, Mr Richard Branson was not content enough just to run his successful airlines, so he bought an entire high speed railway system! Travelling at around 125mph, you can travel on Virgin Trains between London and many popular UK cities such as Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester. Book well in advance for deep discounts.
If you’re travelling across to Europe, the high speed Eurostar train service will get you from the centre of London (Kings Cross St Pancras station) to the centre of Paris (Gare du Nord) in under 2.5 hours. This is true high speed train travel at almost 200mph! A flight probably costs about the same, and takes about an hour, but factor in the time spent travelling to the airport, arriving two hours in advance etc, and you’ll find a Eurostar trip to be quicker and much less stressful, and you won’t have to worry about how much hand luggage you’re carrying! If you are going to head over for a trip to Paris, you might want to consider getting a pre-paid French SIM Card for your cell phone before you leave home — you can buy one here in the USA.
Car rental
The UK and Europe are serviced by the major car rental companies of Hertz, Avis, Europcar, Alamo plus many more. You’ll find rental cars to be good value for money. One peculiarity though is that many rental cars in the UK and Europe are manual gear/stick shift, so make sure to filter in your search results if you can only drive an automatic. Expedia is a good way to get great rental car deals, which include all the necessary insurances.
Staying connected on your cell phone
Travel can be stressful. You’re always checking departure and arrival times, checking which gate you’re leaving from, or navigating on Google Maps. Fortunately you can buy a UK and Europe SIM Card before you leave from My UK SIM Card and have it delivered to your home or work. It comes with 12GB of high speed 4G LTE data, minutes and texts, and works in the UK and across most of Europe.
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