Doing something spontaneous
Today, I leave to go travelling for 10 days through Europe. Unlike the majority of people who do this, my trip wasn’t planned; I booked my Interrail pass on Wednesday at midnight, as well as my flight to Italy (where I’ll be starting my travels).
Spontaneity isn’t something I’m an expert in; I like to plan, but I also like to wing-it sometimes if I feel adventurous. As scared as I am, I am also excited; this will be a trip I never forget.
There are so many reasons why people aren’t spontaneous, the most common two will be work and/or money. Admittedly, I’ve never been more glad that I’m on a zero-hours contract (note to employers: it works both ways), and having recently been paid I have just enough money to survive my little escapade.
From my little adventure-planning, I’ve recently learnt:
• The cheapest option of accommodation isn’t always the cheapest: for my last two nights, myself and the person in with are staying in a 4* hotel. Using websites such as lastminute.com and secretescapes.com, I was able to book this 4* hotel for 55p more than a hostel would have been. This is slightly more than the hostel, but the hostel would have been a 6-bed dorm, whereas the hotel room is private.
•Book all hostels/accommodation in advance and try and book those that include breakfast/a meal as many will be full if you leave it last minute.
•If you’re travelling alone, most hostels will do gender-specific dorms, especially for females (sorry, guys)
•Last minute flights can sometimes be a lot cheaper than booking in advance. My flight, booked only a few days ago, was over half the price of all the other flights and significantly less than what it would have been booking in advance (only £125 including luggage). But, if you want to be even riskier, many airlines will do much cheaper flights on the day. However, I wouldn’t advise this as it may also be more expensive or you may end up on the wrong side of wherever the hostel is.
I shall be writing after each place to give anyone planning a trip to these places more knowledge of what it’s actually like.
