FOLLOW ALONG AS WE PREPARE FOR OUR TRIP TO EUROPE

I'm Headed Back to Europe in October and I want you to come along.  I guess I should actually say WE are headed back to Europe.  I am traveling with three 27-year-old ladies, one of them being my daughter.

Each of us has a budget of $1000. That may sound like a lot of money to you but it you go search for flights to Europe, you will find that just the plane tickets are over $1000. We are going to try to book flights, hotels, food, and transportation and bring it all in around the thousand dollar mark and I'm going to show you how.

So follow along as we book our flights and lodging.  See how we pack everything into small cases so we don't have to pay luggage fees and how we earned our travel money.  Let's get started.....

Here is the gang:

As you can see, only one person in the group that is earning their travel money solely from their regular job.  The rest of us has had to do "something extra" for our travel money which means you can do it too.  I know there are some people who may already work two or three jobs to pay the bills and say there is no extra money.  I was that way for many years myself.



I finally decided that I was not going to live that way anymore.  I cut off the satellite TV, got rid of my home phone, and started using coupons and price matching groceries. This instantly gave me an extra $200 a month!  Hmmm, where could I go for $2400 a year?

But I regress.. Back to the subject at hand.....

We purchased airline tickets from the USA to Europe with United Airlines.  We found a great deal on Secret Flying and quickly booked.  You can read about how to find cheap airline tickets HERE.

My daughter and Kim got their tickets for $385 while Holly and I had to pay $458.72.

We just booked our airlines around Europe through Ryan Airlines.  I have never flown with them before so .......we will see how that goes.  

Complete airfare costs:
UNITED AIRLINES - Dallas to Barcelona $458.72
RYANAIR - Barcelona to Rome $31.55
RYANAIR - Rome to Malta $40.56
RYANAIR - Malto to Barcelona $33.44

Total Airfare to three countries:  $564.27

As I mentioned in my post about "Secrets to Finding Cheap Airfare," if you want to fly to Europe (or other country) check out prices to all major airports.  Get there as cheaply as  you can, then fly to where you want to go.  You can save hundreds of dollars this way.  

Next, we will book lodging......stay tuned for more great tips and deals.

UPDATE:  Here is a link to our lodging along with the cost of each place.