 | Flytrippers cofounder |
On Saturday, my girlfriend and I started our 4-week trip in Europe, and we’ll mainly be visiting 4 interesting cities. Like last summer, we’re visiting the best part of Europe, which is certainly not Western or Southern Europe (where most travelers sadly always go). We got here on a great business class flight (I had already told you about this points redemption).
For once, my trip looks a lot more like the “normal” trips most of you take, since I won’t be working remotely while traveling (as I do on most of my many annual trips). There are also quite a few things that are different from my other trips.
But as with all my trips, you can follow along live in my stories on my personal Instagram account. Flytrippers aims to help you travel for less through our 3 types of content, namely flight deals, travel rewards, and tips/inspiration/news.
Here’s an overview of my trip to Europe.
Reason for my trip to Europe
I’m sharing why I’m doing this trip, to get straight to the point right at the beginning.
Here are the 4 main reasons:
- Enjoy our annual summer vacation
- Completely disconnect from work
- Try a few new different things
- Explore new parts of Europe
Enjoy our annual summer vacation
My girlfriend enjoyed our summer vacation to Europe last summer (especially the business class experience😂), so we decided to go again. She really loves Europe, even way more than I do.
This is quite different from most of my trips, which almost always involve various factors. I’m not attending an event for once. I’m not chasing any travel rewards angle for once (there were many such trips in the past 2 years).
We’re just vacationing in the best part of Europe (Central and Eastern Europe). Literally all the experienced travelers I know (and I know many from the “visiting every country” community) prefer this part of Europe, yet so many travelers sadly always stick to the overpriced and overtouristed part.
Completely disconnect from work
It’s also unlike almost all of my other trips throughout the year, when I mostly travel solo and work remotely, as I shared in my post about my quest to visit every country in the world. This time I’m really on vacation, which doesn’t happen often.
I pre-wrote many posts for September, so Flytrippers will have content for you anyway. We will also introduce our new writer, and we’ll share job posts so that you too can join our team if you want to work from anywhere (or you can just share a testimonial).
Not working for 4 weeks is something I haven’t done since the Obama administration, and I’m not even kidding. I am a bit of a workaholic, and since co-founding Flytrippers 9+ years ago, I genuinely love what I do and don’t feel like I’m working anyway.
I’d normally work even during our usual vacations, even if they lasted just 1 to 3 weeks. I seriously have not completely disconnected from work in 9 years, so I think it’s really healthy to try and take some time fully off.
Try a few new different things
We also want to try a few new things that are a bit different than our usual trips:
- We usually go to Europe for 3 weeks; now we’re trying 4 weeks
- We usually move around a lot more; now we’ll stick to 4 cities
- We usually stick to hotels only; now we’re also including Airbnb
Regardless of the work/vacation angle, I normally stick to just 3 weeks even when traveling solo, to minimize my time away from home. This is 33% longer; although I have done a few 4-week trips on occasion, not working will certainly make it feel longer.
I’m not really into “slow travel.” It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s just that there are so many places and so little time. I’ve been to 76 77 countries, and there are only a handful of cities in the world where I’ve stayed put for a whole week. This will certainly be very different.
I’m also 110% on team hotels. I love hotels. Especially Marriott hotels I can get for free and/or where I can get VIP treatment thanks to my elite status (do NOT miss the current record-high deals). But my girlfriend wanted to at least try 1 Airbnb week, so that is what we’re doing right now (and maybe we’ll do another later in the trip; hotels are almost always refundable).
Explore new parts of Europe
As a very strategic person in general, even if I’ve been to almost all European countries, I saved quite a few great European cities for trips with her. Cities I know she’ll enjoy.
That way, when I travel with her, I can still explore new cities, even if I’ve been to way more places than she has.
Our 4 destinations this month are cities we’re both excited about, so that’ll be fun.
Last summer, we really loved Montenegro and Croatia, our main destinations. We also had a few days in each of our positioning cities for our business class flights, which were Munich and Copenhagen.
I’m hoping these 4 (and the short time in the 5th destination we’ll add at the end) will top that trip.
Itinerary of my trip to Europe
I’m sharing the general itinerary of my trip, to give you the outline of the destinations I’m visiting.
Here’s my itinerary on a map.
This trip will last for 4 weeks.
As you can see, we don’t yet have our return flight booked. That’s because we’ll probably also return in business class, and the last month is always when you’ll find the most availability to fly business class for less than economy class.
We hit the 1-month mark before our return basically when we were leaving, as it’s a longer trip than usual. So I’m now on the lookout for the best business class seat; it’s so easy when you’re flexible with the routing.
I planned a bit of a buffer at the end to also visit that positioning city. We might even shave a day off of our 4th destination if the positioning city ends up being an interesting one (AKA not Frankfurt; if you know, you know).
Here are the destinations I will visit during my trip:
- Riga, Latvia 🇱🇻
- ~ 1 week
- Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹
- ~ 1 week
- Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿
- ~ 1 week
- Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺
- ~ 1 week
- Positioning city (TBD)
- ~ 1 day
Riga, Latvia 🇱🇻
The Baltics are really the only subregion of Europe I had never been to, because I knew the quieter vibe and smaller cities would be something my girlfriend would be interested in for a trip together.
Riga is about the size of Québec City, and my girlfriend didn’t want to spend 4 whole weeks in huge cities. It’s also pretty affordable for Europe.
It has a stunning old town, amazing architecture, great food, and a laid-back atmosphere.
We are staying at an admittedly beautiful Airbnb in an Art Nouveau building (what Riga is known for), and we’re a 6-minute bus ride from the Old Town, so it’s great.
Vilnius, Lithuania 🇱🇹
I would’ve normally visited all 3 Baltic states at once since we’re here anyway. But we’re traveling slower, and I didn’t want to spend 3 of our 4 weeks in the same region.
So for our 2nd of the 3, we chose to go south to Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. It’s about the same size as Riga. We might also spend a few days in nearby Kaunas, the Baltics’ 4th-largest city.
It’s about a 3-hour drive between Riga and Vilnius, but we haven’t yet decided between a flight (still just $105 even a week away), a train (just once per day, surprisingly), a bus (faster than the train, surprisingly), or a rental car.
Vilnius seems like another beautiful, smaller, and greener city. The old town is also very well preserved, and as art aficionados, we like that the city is known for its art scene.
We’re staying at the AC Hotel Vilnius. It’s not the best redemption of Marriott Bonvoy points at all, but it’s decent at just 74,400 points for 5 nights (7,440 points per night per person).
Prague, Czechia 🇨🇿
I usually don’t love huge touristy European cities, but Prague is always voted as the most romantic and beautiful city in Europe, and you have to go there at least once.
By staying longer, maybe we’ll be able to avoid the touristy peaks by going out to visit early in the morning and taking things slower by spending more time in more authentic local neighborhoods.
Prague looks stunning, there’s no doubt about it. There’s so much to see. Also, my girlfriend loves zoos and animals, and the Prague Zoo is one of the best in the world, so there goes a full day!
We’ll might also do a day trip to the famous spa city of Karlovy Vary, and I’ll try to convince my girlfriend to also visit the other major city of Bohemia, Plzeň.
Budapest, Hungary 🇭🇺
It’s the only city of the 4 that I’ve already been to (twice, even). It’s probably my favorite city in Europe, so I wanted to show it to my girlfriend. It’s not so bad, at least the other 3 are new countries for me!
It’s the classic dilemma for experienced travelers. The same as when I choose my solo destinations (like this November). There are so many new places I want to discover, but I also want to return to my favorites. Hence why I don’t plan everything around my quest to visit every country.
We were actually supposed to go to Kraków, Poland. The royal capital has one of the best old towns in all of Europe. But in the end, to get something a little more different than this trip’s other destinations, we’ll go to Budapest.
Everything is so pretty in the Hungarian capital. There’s a certain unique energy. Ending there also makes sense; it’s Wizz Air’s largest hub, so it’ll be easy to find a cheap positioning flight from there.
Positioning city (TBD)
Again, it will all depend on our business class options. Literally every single time I’ve wanted to fly business class, I’ve always found seat availability.
Even with very fixed dates as we have now. So I’m not worried at all. I’m more worried I’ll be overconfident and wait for a perfect redemption when there will be a perfectly decent one! But if you are flexible on the routing, it’s definitely easy to find a seat.
Our inbound flight is the best example; of course I wasn’t looking for a redemption to Riga. We just booked whatever was available at the low price to get across the ocean, and we booked a positioning flight from there to Riga.
Normally, we’d visit the city where we land, like we did in Munich last year. But this year we found a seat to Frankfurt, and well, nobody really wants to visit that. Plus, this time we wanted a full week in each city, so it was a better fit to just fly to Riga a few hours after landing.
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Summary
My current trip to Europe will take me to just 4 cities in 4 weeks, in addition to maybe another one depending on the return flight options in business class.
What would you like to know about my current trip to Europe? Tell us in the comments below.
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Featured image: Riga, Latvia & Budapest, Hungary (photo credit: Martti Salmi & Zoltan Tasi, edited by Flytrippers)
