My European Adventure BOOKED!

 EURO TRIP HERE WE COME!

Yes I have officially booked all of my flights and hotels for my European Adventure for August. I will be traveling from mid August to early September (almost 3 full weeks eeeekk I am excited).

Below is my itinerary and details on how and what I booked for each destination. I will be blogging from each location when I am in Europe, so I thought I'd talk about the planning stuff now to focus those blog posts solely on food, culture and activities.

International Flight - I booked a multi-destination flight through Air Transat at a cost of $855 per person. We are flying into London and flying out of Barcelona International Airport.

London - We are planning to stay for two nights. We booked our hotel through expedia.ca and got the Holiday Inn on Kings Cross 3.5 star (which is suppose to be an accessible area) for $200 a night. A bit pricey but I believe we will save money on our transportation there, since we will be in a prime location.

We will then be taking the Eurostar train at $60 dollars a ticket, and heading over to Paris (2 hour train ride).

Paris- We are staying here for 3 nights, and booked our hotel at an incredible deal through priceline.com. We bid $135 a night for a 4 star hotel near Champs elysees and got Le Meridian Etoile. This hotel I believe goes for around $300+ a night, so we definitely snagged a big deal here. I would suggest using priceline wherever possible, especially if you know the core area you want to be near. Some European destinations on priceline you can not completely isolate the areas you want to bid at and are a bit broader, so where you can narrow down on priceline I would suggest using this site. You always get a big bang for your buck.

Flight to Venice from Paris was booked through Easyjet Airlines at a cost of $80 per person. I am a bit skeptical about this airline as it sounds like a joke (easyjet - it has 'that's what she said' all over it)

Venice - We booked the Best Western Albergo in San Marco, Venice. We got the room for $132/night (staying for 2 nights) through expedia.ca.

Booked train from Venice to Florence at a cost of $60 per person, through euro rail website.

Florence - We booked a B&B apartment in the Duomo region in Florence for $82/night called Locanda de' Coimpi, it has over 72 reviews with 100% recommendations on Tripadvisor. We booked this hotel also using expedia.ca.We saved big here, and will hopefully allow us to take advantage of the prada, gucci, and armani outlets!

Booked train from Florence to Rome at a cost of $60 per person, through euro rail website.

Rome - I won't take credit for this booking. One of my friends (the couple friends that are joining us on this trip), they did extensive research on the areas in Rome. Well actually they just went on Tripadvisor to determine the top rated hotels in Rome, and booked a boutique hotel called Campo de' fiori. We were able to get an apart for $450 for 3 nights. We booked the hotel on booking.com which is a sister site of priceline.com.

We are then ending our adventure off on the beaches of Barcelona, by taking a flight through Vueling airline from Rome to Barcelona, which cost around $63/per person.

Barcelona - Las Ramblas was the suggested area many of our friends and family gave us as the area to stay near. Luckily priceline.com had the option to select this location along with a 4 star rating. I bid $125 per night and got the Gran Silken Hotel.

TWO KEY TRAVEL BOOKING TIPS:
1) I would strongly suggest before booking any hotel to read guest reviews on tripadvisor, specifically look at what people are saying about the location and service. If the hotel has great service but everyone is saying it is 20 minutes out of the city core (take into account the incremental transportation costs you will face). I did this with all our hotels to ensure we were booking in the right spots.

2) The other suggestion I have is to use mapquest or google maps to determine the distance between the hotel to the airport or train station so you know what costs you will incur when it comes to taxis (or water taxis when it comes to Venice).

Stay tune for my posts in August as I hop from one country to the next! Super excited to share this adventure with you all.

-9to5travelgirl