Best place to look for european city breaks?

Chris_Nowak

Is there anyne here who takes lots of city=breaks? Is there anywere particuler you look for them being advertised?

jonesMUFCforever

I prefer to book cheap flights first eg EasyJet from Liverpool to Amsterdam or Jet2.com from Manchester and then find a hotel.

Most cities are easy to get to by public transport or taxi from the airport, again using Amsterdam as an example a train from the airport straight to Central station in the heart of the station is I think 4 Euros or so.

I never buy (anymore) direct from companies advertising city breaks.

I think the biggest saving I made was last year when Virgin atlantic wanted £3400 to fly 4 of us to New York for a 4 night city break.
Using Expedia I paid £1420 all in!!

I know NY is not in Europe before anyone says anything. I am just pointing out the savings you can make by booking stuff yourself.

The only downside of course if anything goes wrong then you have to sort it out yourself and not rely on a travel rep.

fiscalfreckles

^^What he said!!!

Don't book a package, you are much better getting budget airline flights,and then your accommodation separately - loads of websites like hotels.com.

Just check that you can easily get from the airport to the city centre - most places this is not a problem eg, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam.

Tripadvisor has a useful forum for any specific questions, but take the hotel reviews with a pinch of salt, most are posted by wingeing Americans, so you get a disproportionate amount of bad reviews versus praise!

terryw

Yep I take loads of city breaks. About one every three weeks!

Always find flight first. Use flightchecker (thanks Martin) or https://www.skyscanner.co.uk.

Then hotel via price comparison site I like https://www.travelsupermarket.co.uk. Sometimes
https://www.Thomson.co.uk. have good deals.

Try to go through quidco to save and few quid and use nationwide debit card for currency rather than exchange booths or trav checks.

Check out public transport from the airport to the hotel via the net. As often as not, this is coppers compared to the taxi.

Never seen a good package for years with the possible exception of special offers on Eurostar via newspaper promotions.

Get searching and good luck

terryw

By the way, come back when you have decided and some nice MSE will offer the gen on airport to city and possible money-saving tips there. Probably.

RedBern

agree with above. We go a couple of times a year to european cities, done Riga, Vienna, Prague, Budapest etc. Sort flights out first and then set a budget for rooms - if you have a look in a brochure and get an idea of what is a reasonable price for a room - and then have a look on TripAdvisor. Contact the hotel direct by e-mail and ask have they any offers....

and if anyone's got suggestions for Venice in May - all suggestions for rooms under 100E a night gratefully received......

babyblooz

this all sounds very good advice, it's just what I need to give me the push to do it all myself, thanks for that!

tingtong

RedBern wrote: »

agree with above. We go a couple of times a year to european cities, done Riga, Vienna, Prague, Budapest etc. Sort flights out first and then set a budget for rooms - if you have a look in a brochure and get an idea of what is a reasonable price for a room - and then have a look on TripAdvisor. Contact the hotel direct by e-mail and ask have they any offers....

and if anyone's got suggestions for Venice in May - all suggestions for rooms under 100E a night gratefully received......

We stayed here last year and would recommend it:

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g194822-d233890-Reviews-Best_Western_Bologna_Hotel_Mestre_Station-Mestre_Veneto.html

It's just outside Venice, takes less than 10mins on the train (1 Euro each), the station is across the road.

We paid about £60 a night (per room) including breakfast. Also, they were renovating all the rooms so it will be like new now. Great value if you don't mind

firework

oooh tons of lovely helpful advice on here, thanks everyone. been fancying doing a euro city break for a while now but didn't know where to start... i do now. thanks again everyone.

Jersy

generally speaking I agree with the above. however bargins can be had with travel agents, espcially if your booking late and/or not too choosy what city you go to. eg I got prague for 105 all in flights and hotel to prague, pretty central hotel as well


but generally booking seperatley is cheaper