Beautiful Tile Advertising Mural in Cordoba, Spain
The PLAN A TRIP!
The first thing we do when it is time to firm up the details of our travels is to purchase the plane ticket. To stay on the thrifty side of the $$$$ gauge, we consider several appealing locations in order to be flexible enough to take advantage of the best offers. We try various configurations of the trips we'd like to take and see how they compare.
Say you are interested in Rome, Barcelona, and Nice. Any of them would be fine if the price was right! Let's also say you can leave from either JFK (New York) or ORD (Chicago). We might try JFK to Rome, then Barcelona to JFK (we like to fly into one city and out another) . Enter that combination in the spaces provided on Kayak or 1-800 FLY EUROPE . Use the "multi-city" designation if it is an option. That very combination (today's date: 7-7-08) got us a price of $731.00 using the date of travel 3-19-09. Trying different configurations will give you as many different prices. Using the same dates and cities, just switching Barcelona and Rome, got us a price of $672.00. We saved $59.00 each by seeing Barcelona first!
Try as many combinations as will work for you over a 2 week period, and even try them at different times of the day. At the end of that time, you usually have a pretty good idea of what you'll have to pay to get the ticket. We purchase our plane tickets 5 to 6 months in advance; that seems to be the best timeline for getting a good fare.
Good Luck!
Tip # 1:
Don't drink your total
daily allowance of
5 cappuccinos before 10am!