Before studying abroad no one tells you how time consuming booking flights, hostels, train tickets, etc. is...well no one told me anyway! I found out for myself when I booked my trip for Fall Break back in October with three of my friends. We met up at one of their apartments around dinner (roughly 5 p.m.) and I would say we didn't end up finishing booking everything until around 12 or 1 a.m.
Believe me, that's not an exaggeration! - given that for Fall Break we booked three different countries!
It takes time to find affordable hostels and flights to book - especially when everyone is on a different budget. Also, you will do a lot of comparing between taking the train or flying, choosing a hostel that's a bit more expensive but close to the city center or a cheaper hostel a little further away from the main sites...yes these are decisions you will continue to make as you book your weekend getaways.
So nobody may have told me about how exhausting and time consuming it is to book trips while studying abroad, but thankfully some of my friends who have done this experience shared websites they used which I have found very helpful during the booking process.
These are the websites I have used while booking my weekend study abroad trips:
Booking Hostels:
Believe me, that's not an exaggeration! - given that for Fall Break we booked three different countries!
It takes time to find affordable hostels and flights to book - especially when everyone is on a different budget. Also, you will do a lot of comparing between taking the train or flying, choosing a hostel that's a bit more expensive but close to the city center or a cheaper hostel a little further away from the main sites...yes these are decisions you will continue to make as you book your weekend getaways.
So nobody may have told me about how exhausting and time consuming it is to book trips while studying abroad, but thankfully some of my friends who have done this experience shared websites they used which I have found very helpful during the booking process.
These are the websites I have used while booking my weekend study abroad trips:
Booking Hostels:
Booking Train Tickets:
Booking Flights:
These are the apps I have downloaded onto my phone for weekend trips:
- Air Europa
- Vueling
- easyJet
- Lufthansa
- SkyTeam
- XE Currency (shows you the conversion for any type of currency you are interested in)
I keep these apps in a Travel folder on my iPhone's main screen and the beauty of them is that I can check-in, check the status of my flight and have my boarding passes on my mobile device! (Our apartment doesn't have a printer, only the university, so it's nice to have everything on my phone to be scanned before boarding rather than worrying about where I placed the printed version of my boarding pass!)
Another app I have found extremely useful is Passbook. This app came with my iPhone and once you download your boarding passes they are all stored in Passbook allowing for quick and easy access!
Thanks to these websites and apps booking trips and traveling has been a breeze!
Another app I have found extremely useful is Passbook. This app came with my iPhone and once you download your boarding passes they are all stored in Passbook allowing for quick and easy access!
Thanks to these websites and apps booking trips and traveling has been a breeze!