In collaboration with Adlibris.
Here we go again. Autumn and darkness are coming to Finland and we try to get through it by going for a holiday somewhere else. What we were looking for this year didn’t have any specific criteria, only that the place would have some more light than here, which is basically anywhere southern 😀
The kind of holidays we like to make with Klaus are focused on visiting new places, experiencing new cultures and immersing ourselves in a reality different from the one we live in Finland. So, you guessed, we’re not the kind of people who lock themselves up in a turistic resort and lay by the pool all day, even though we also like to relax and take things easy.
The destination we chose for this year is *drum roll* ITALY! The reasons for this decision are many, the main one being me missing my friends whom, by the time we’ll go, I won’t have seen in one year and a half. Also, Italy is quite a cheap travel destination that offers such a big variety of landscapes and cultures as very few places in the world can do: within a few hours train or car ride, you can literally jump from the towering Alps to the almost Caribbean southern coasts, passing through historic cities like Turin, Florence, Rome and Naples.
In this mini guide we’ll show you how we usually plan for a trip and our tips&tricks on how to save in the process.
IDENTIFY YOUR TRAVEL DESTINATION
This is the first decision one has to make when starting to plan a trip and, in my opinion, the 5 Ws apply very well for this step. Ask yourself this kind of questions:
What do you expect from this holiday? What would you like to visit? What is your budget? If you’re traveling with someone, what are the others’ ideas and opinions?
Why do you want to go on a holiday? Do you just to relax or also visit/hike/make excursions?
With whom would you travel with? Are you going to go adventurously solo or will you be traveling with your mate/friend/friends?
When do you travel? How much holidays do you have?
The answers to all these questions would lead right to….. Where?
SEARCH FOR FLIGHTS (AND SAVE!)
Once decided where to go, it’s time to start searching the flight (unless you decide to travel somewhere close or by other means of transportation). What we always do when searching for flights is doing so in the browser’s private mode. It’s a little trick that can really make you save money. When searching for a flight, your browser’s cache saves up the destinations you have saved and the airline or flight searching tool you’re using automatically knows you’re interested in that flight, therefore raising the prices only for that reason.
Another way to save you money in flights is searching by month and not by specific dates. Sometimes by leaving a day earlier or later than what you’ve initially planned, you get to save quite a lot. We usually use Skyscanner to search for flights and there you can select the whole month. Once you have identified the dates when the flights are cheapest, ask your boss for holidays for those dates, in case you’re employed by someone. Checking first the flights and then asking for holiday and not viceversa might make you save a great deal.
BE FLEXIBLE FROM WHICH AIRPORT TO FLY
I make you an example for this. In December we’ll be going to Italy for a little over three weeks. The nearest airport for us would be Oulu airport, from which all the flights are usually crazy expensive because, well it’s Oulu airport, right under the Arctic Circle. Now, flights from Helsinki are already way cheaper, but not exactly cheap. Then I remembered that Tallinn has an airport too. By making some researches, I discovered that both Ryanair and EasyJet have a Tallinn-Milan route! And the flights were way way cheaper than from Helsinki. Plus, we’ve never been in Tallinn so we thought that it might just work fine for us.
Being flexible on the airport leads us to the next point that is…
Well, you’ll discover in this post, where we published the other three tips for this mini guide and also you Finnish residents get to participate to an amazing giveaway! If you haven’t done that yet, subscribe to the newsletter to get the news from the blog directly into your inbox!
