Out and About: Cheap Travel in Europe

Hello again! I've been out and about traveling in Europe and it's fantastic!

Recent destinations include Budapest, Vienna and even a little bit of Venice! They are all in within a day's drive of each other. Being from N. America, I have to ask myself where could I go between three VERY different countries and find such diversity in a mere 9 hours driving time? Certainly not in the Western United States (24 hours from Los Angeles to Denver, for exampe). So there are advantages of the near-by borders of these countries, especially when you figure the vast differences in culture and history between the Venician and the Austro-Hungarian Empires that lead to very different experiences and sites as you travel.

I must confess that I ran into a real conundrum in my quest for cheap travel in Europe. I wanted to get from Vienna to Venice as cheaply as possible. I didn't want to completely rough it for various reasons, so hitch-hiking and www.gorivo.com were out. I could have flown out of Budapest or Vienna, or even Bratislava and I looked at Prague too. My general target is to get a short roundtrip for $200 or less. So $100 each way is usually my target. I was pushed to 200 EUR and I still couldn't hit the target! I did see some pretty good deals on Wizz air and Ryan air from some of my cities (especially Bratislava and Budapest), but they were mostly to Milan, which is a good couple hours from Venice and I had an appointment in the mid-afternoon, which meant I would be flying in the night before and booking a hotel for another 50 EUR or more. I will say there was a flight from Brno, Czech Republic (about 80 km north of Vienna) a couple times a week, but my dates just didn't line up.
Remember one of the main rules of finding cheap travel in Europe or anywhere else for that matter, is FLEXIBILITY. In this case, I didn't have enough of it. I even checked buses, though I was dreading a 12 hour trip on the bus. Not significantly cheaper! Trains were more than 100 EUR each way per person, blowing my budget out of the water... I'm doing some of this by memory now, so please don't sue me. I ended up paying $180 USD for a car plus fuel and tolls, a night in a hotel and parking through Austria and Italy. This was my cheapest option but I'm not sure we made it for less than $200 per person (there were only two of us). Oh well. I mentioned flexibility. I had a chance (which I just didn't take because we have to let some things go in life) to go from Budapest to Madrid for 200 EUR roundtrip on KLM airlines, flying through Amsterdam! Yes, hard to believe isn't it? There's a good lesson that after you check (or maybe before!!??) all the cheapo airlines and discounters from their less-than-convenient airport options, go ahead and check all the main airlines and sites you would normally check. I was shocked. KLM was beating everyone and I could have added Spain to the list for 200 EUR for a weekend trip from Budapest!!

How do you get cheap travel to Europe? How do you find cheap travel in Europe between great destinations like Budapest, Vienna, Venice and Madrid? Now if I could offer you a little gadget that would help you never miss another good deal for exactly the destinations you need when you need them, you would definitely buy it wouldn't you? Well, I don't have one and I don't believe there is one. You just have to keep your eyes out. I suppose it would have helped if I had booked a ticket months ago, but if you would have asked me months ago if I would need a ticket to Venice, I would have told you "You're crazy!" If you can plan ahead, it may help. Then again people that bought tickets to Madrid months ago may have paid 300 EUR. Who knows? So keep it flexible and just make it happen. I will probably never have another chance like I did to see Venice from Vienna and all the other details worked out, I just needed the time and the transport to have a once in a lifetime experience. At that point, I have to agree with the credit card tagline: Priceless.