How you can save both time and money

European vacations aren't cheap, and spending your time standing in lines or making avoidable mistakes only makes them more expensive. Over the years we've developed dozens of strategies that help us save money, save time, and get more out of every trip. Here are the techniques we use every time we travel to Europe. Our goal is to make you travel smarter, not harder and get more value from your trip.

Saving Money

buy airline and train tickets early
Check for open-jaw flights
Do not check bags
Travel in off season
Senior discounts
Public transportation
Stay in smaller boutique hotels
Stay in university areas or areas a bit outside the tourist areas
When paying by credit card, if asked to pay in either dollars or local currency always pick the local currency
Get hotels with a good breakfast offering but don’t sign up for them when you boo
Sign up and pay for only breakfasts you want for that day.
Eat in the less-touristy areas
Buy snacks, sunscreen, bottled water at grocery stores
Many pastry shops also sell sandwiches for a fun picnic in the park
Shop around for hotels

A real example

Our trip to Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan was set up as a once in a lifetime trip, meaning that we wanted to see EVERYTHING in on trip. Our expectations were that we would not be back to Northern Italy for many years and we didn’t want to miss anything that would nag at us for years to come.

This is a tough call for June travel and the way we achieved it seems a bit backwards. We booked everything we wanted to see through tours. Granted this cost a bit more than if we had bought the tickets directly ourselves. However it saved us SIGNIFICANT amounts of time that we would have spent standing in lines during the summer heat and because the tours bypass standing in line entirely you are able to schedule multiple activies in the same day.

And the promised savings? Airfare, hotels, transportation, and meals that we would have had to spend on a SECOND trip to northern Italy. We spent more on tours—but we avoided needing a second trip. In the end, that decision saved us far more than the extra cost of the tours.

Should you buy a Eurail pass?

A Eurail Pass is excellent for travelers who value flexibility, such as backpackers or people making last-minute plans. Our trips are carefully planned around hotels and attractions, so buying individual tickets well in advance has almost always been less expensive for us.

The average tourist must plan ahead to be certain to have hotel reservations at a reasonable price, particularly during the peak season. Having hotel reservations determines when you need to travel. Flexibility is not very useful at this point. If you know the origin, destination, and date of travel it is usually cheaper to book each train trip in advance rather than rely on a Eurail Pass.

Touring the city

Feel like you have walked all over and your feet need a break? Do an internet search for “which bus line in Berlin Germany for sightseeing” (substitute your location for Berlin). This should give you the number of the public bus line that passes many of the local spots of interest and from there you can determine where to catch it. Riding through an unfamiliar city may show you things in the surrounding area that you had not seen as well as allow you to rest your feet – this is especially true in London if you can get the front seats of top level on a double decker bus.

🧳 Don’t Be Surprised

Many cities have ordinary public bus routes that pass major attractions. They cost a fraction of a hop-on/hop-off tour and give your feet a break at the same tim

Spend money where it matters.

Sometimes paying a little more saves a lot of frustration

Hotel near a metro station
Reserved train seats
Airport hotel before an early flight
Skip-the-line tours
International phone plan

Biggest Mistakes

Booking flights too late.
Buying Eurail without doing the math.
Staying too far from transit.
Paying in U.S. dollars.
Exchanging money at every opportunity.
Trying to do too much in one day.

Saving time

Efficient traveling means more time doing things rather than wasting time waiting around, backtracking, getting lost, trying to find a good place to eat on your own.

Internet access is critical for access to transportation, great places to eat
Tours are efficient
Paying with credit card
Exchanging money and actually paying the bills wastes a lot of time
Trains for less the 5 hours trip, fly for greater than 5
Check business and shop hours
In some countries it is common for some retail shops close on Sundays or operate on limited hours
Some countries it is common to shut down or slow down for two to three hours starting around 1:00 pm (more frequent in smaller more rural communities).
It is common for museums to be closed on Mondays.
Global Entry/TSA PreCheck
There are services at major airports that you can hire to walk you through Customs and skip the lines

TIP: Sundays may be a great travel day.