Tips and Advice for Europe Tour- 2017
- bigyandixit
- Aug 3, 2017
- 5 min read
I had done a two month long Europe tour with eight people in the summer (June-july) of 2017. Hence i would like to share some experience according to my experience. I hope this blog would be helpful to the people who want to do a Europe tour in future.
Planning Planning Planning, and booking ahead.
If you missed to plan too there wont be a big trouble, You need to have a phone with internet and you can book online with booking.com or hostel world.com, there was a site called homeaway, housetrip too which was helpful and i found these site like Airbnb pretty expensive and the research takes the longest time *(Eyes hurt when googling in phone)* so figuring out the right information in right time is very crucial. If you are traveling in a group couch surfing wont work either neither mitfahren.
Regarding sim card we got a deal from O2 which was giving 10 euro sim card and 1GB of internet and 200 unit of phone call plus the most important roaming was free so it was good for our one month trip. You can always look for deals which include roaming in future.
As a tourist in Europe you would not feel so good, there is already a big hype on these city and the touristic pictures would never match the reality. On top of that you would be walking with a heard of Japanese or Chinese tourist. I found it more annoying than anything else didn’t had a feeling of exploring new places at all. #RunAwayFromTouristHeard … … .. But there is a big but … if you are lost your internet is not working then #FollowTheHeard !!!
If you always eat in a restaurant the expenses would be pretty high so if you can buy the food from a supermarket it might be a pretty good way to save money in eating but don’t want to miss the local delicacy too hence a balance is needed and if you stay in some houses with kitchen rather than hotel there would be an advantage to cook and eat your own food as well.
The entrance ticket in Europe are really expensive, Ask persons who already saw the museum or anything and then you can save some money in entry ticket too because these ticket are valid the whole day.
Finding out free toilet would also save you some money in Europe. In Italy they allow the tourist to come in restaurant for refreshments. So my advice is to plan a bit early, and the sign for toilet is “WC”- (Water Closet)
Ask a free map in the train station either a metro map or city map that would help a lot to plan your destinations in that city. #AskforFreeMap
City tour are really expensive we did few and lost a lot of money instead buying a day ticket and going around the city would save you a lot of money. #UsePublicTransport
The city tax in Italy is very annoying they charge 3 Euro per person per night and that would also add in your hotel expenses. I remembered i paid more than 150 euro just for this silly city tax.
Traveling with train is very comfortable and we used this flix bus and other European bus for our travel which made the trip expense lot cheaper other wise you would spend the most in traveling. Don’t miss the deals that they give for example flix bus is giving this interflix deal. Link: http://bit.ly/2w9pQH6
Try to use boat ship and other various means of transport which would spice your trip experience in Amsterdam we found some free trip ferries. And we traveled from Barcelona to Civitavecchia with a ship that gave us a very nice experience. We brought the ticket online and sometimes you don’t need to book any seat and still get a wonderful experience is a so called cruise ship. In Venice you can buy this 8 euro ticket and ride the boat till you get bored that would save you some money and it would also take you to some islands near Venice 🙂 Bonus !
Flohmarket and weekend markets are really nice way to do shopping for cheap and antiques and you get a lots of goods for a cheap price, but the disadvantage those are cheap products from Asia. Ask for tax free bills after shopping because you can get tax refund in europe. Globalblue charges 3 euro per transaction so if you put your credit card number and drop the envelop there in airport you save this money to get your hard earned money which you dont need to give to european goverment because you would use these items in your country. Am figuring out the way to get tax refund for Amazon.de right now. #TaxRefundInGermanAirport
Regarding Eurorail pass if you travel really much it might be cheaper option of travel but when we calculated it came to be pretty expensive for us that’s why we skipped the Eurorail pass.
If you are traveling in Germany there is a day pass or a weekend pass which would not be super fast but you would save a lot of money. “Schoneswochende karter.” In every country if you buy tickets in bunch like in France there is t10 tickets to save a little bit of money and in Italy and Czech-republic too some group tickets so you save some money. Watch out for Group offers if you are traveling with a group.
“Bunk beds” are pretty cheap option to sleep if you are traveling in group otherwise the hotel cost would skyrocket pretty high. Google bunk bed and city address for more information.
Regarding budget airlines we were group of people and while traveling when we checked the rates the local means of transport was always cheaper so at the time of booking we didn’t find any budget airlines and we didn’t used it too. If you want to do this route you need to plan the trip really early and still there are some quirks i guess.
In countries where there is different currency is little bit different like in Switzerland and in Czech republic we got confused and the conversion and other always wasted the money.
Making a friend who is local to this area or asking the information with the locals are the best thing and you should use it always to find more interesting information. Sometime its faster than googling.
Spending app can be very useful if you want to see the travel expense i used an android app called “Spending Tracker” first this was free and showed us some overview. it has a snapshot of what we spend at one point in the middle of tour so we can know easily how the travel and hotel expenses are even from the graph and shopping and eating out are both eating expense. So if you can save money in travel or in hotel cost then you can reduce a lot of your expenses in that way too.
Be careful when carrying the cash money, we lost more than 1500 euros. Paris is the place where you can find the most crafted thieves and they steal everything. They travel in a pack and they all were girls and they push when they need to take out something from your pocket and you won’t even notice when it happened. Metro are the most dangerous place of being robbed in Paris. Beware !! Beware Beware!! we got stolen but our insurance didn’t covered that part so we had nothing. So we had to return empty handed. And the second incident was in Venice too its a very touristic city and when people realize that you have money and then you can be robbed easily. France and Italy the risk of being pick pocketed are pretty high. Be careful in Amsterdam too because we saw a woman being robbed, may be due to free Mariwana the crime happens easily there. Use Credit card for safety !!
Our Trip Map that i made from google maps.
As a video artist i made a short video for my trip every frame a picture.
Click Link: http://bit.ly/2w9E8HT
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