Learnings from my Europe trip this month
·2 mins
- If we visit a single country at a time, it becomes easier to optimize for and understand the public transportation situation.
- A 10 day trip plus ~2 days of travel sounds like a good idea.
- Train tickets:
- The official website to book train tickets is SNCF Connect in France and SBB in Switzerland.
- Another one, likely a travel agency, is Rail Europe. In at least one case, we found cheaper tickets here compared to SNCF.
- EU Rail passes can also be a good option.
- Tickets can be pretty expensive closer to travel time. Book at least 1-2 days earlier.
- Book hotels and apply for visas, both as early as possible. Helps getting good prices.
- It’s often cheaper to book directly with a hotel compared to going through websites like booking.com.
- This time, I didn’t plan much before arriving here and that wasn’t a great idea. I should’ve briefly checked online what activities are available in every city we visit, so that we could book the more popular once earlier.
- Search for 1, 3 etc. day (travel) passes. Can be cheaper sometimes.
- Also, check for country specific train or travel passes. Can be cheaper.
- Pack light: it helps a lot.
- Don’t cheap out on cellular data as it gets used up quickly. Google Maps eats a lot, so download offline maps through wifi. (For e.g., 6 GB is barely sufficient for a 20 day trip, assuming there is wifi in hotels.)