5 Tips To Visit More Places For Less Money

To see the World is many people's dream, but more often than not I come across people who feel trapped in their limited budgets which only allow them to visit a small part of all the places that their bucket lists have been collecting over time. Somehow, for many people, the list of "Places to go" just keeps on growing, while the budget stays limited and frustration starts showing its ugly face.

If you are reading this and nodding, keep on reading because chances are the tips below will help you make the most of your trips without having to break the bank. Or, if you are going to break the bank to satisfy your wanderlust, you will hopefully get more for it.

Tip 1: Take advantage of stopovers to visit more destinations

Many regular and experienced travelers prioritize direct flights due to the convenience of not having to change flights, plus the obvious fact that they will arrive at their destination in a shorter time. Many times, people are willing to pay more for direct flights in order to get those convenient aspects, instead of going for cheaper flights that would require them to change planes somewhere in the middle.

But, if you are eager to see plenty of destinations that you somehow always have to postpone visiting, why not take advantage of such stops to change flights? Could it be that we have been overlooking such a huge potential this whole time?

I started thinking about this a long time ago when I was booking a flight from Stockholm to Lisbon, to go visit my family during the summer. Suddenly, when I was comparing the different flight options, I started looking at the expensive direct TAP flights and thinking: "Wait a minute, why would I pay more to go directly to Lisbon, if I can visit another city on the way?". When I went from Stockholm to Sri Lanka there were no direct flight options, so I had to go to London first and I enjoyed walking around the city a bit while I was waiting for my intercontinental flight - what if I could do it on purpose? What if I would actually go out of my way to find a connection flight which allowed me those sweet hours of exploring in between flights?

It was like a 💡 lighted-up in my mind. Suddenly, each and every flight felt like a double opportunity.

This is the flight I ended up booking between Stockholm and Lisbon. Arriving in Prague at 4.25 pm on the 15th of August and departing to Lisbon the day after at 4 pm, I had practically 24 hours of layover in Prague and I really felt like I hit gold. What was supposed to be just a routine trip back to Portugal to visit relatives, turned into watching the sunset at Charles Bridge and finally seeing the World-famous Astronomical Clock in Prague. Even though Prague deserves a visit that lasts way longer than 24 hours, the opportunity to take a sneak peak wasn't to be missed out on.

If you would like to find such flights to get the opportunity to explore several cities on one trip, do the following on Skyscanner: switch your filters from "Direct" to "1 stop" on the left of the page. By clicking away both "Direct" and "2+ stops", you will be shown the 1 stop flights only.

You will find there are many flights with 1 stop that will allow you only a few hours of stopover, which is pointless for the purpose of visiting a city. Scroll over such flights until you find a flight with a long duration, like the image above on the right: Lisbon to Berlin, with a duration of 23 hours and 20 minutes.

This example would allow you practically 19 hours at your connecting city, which in this case is London, like you can see below.

On top of that, you would pay 45€ instead of the 98€ that the cheapest direct flight would have costed you. With that price difference you would be able to pay for an Airbnb for the night in London.

Tip 2: Prioritize destinations that are close to other places on your bucket list

If you have an endless bucket list of countries to visit, make sure to analyze which destinations give you the best possibilities to combine several places at once. For example, you might really want to visit Vienna in Austria. Combining a trip to Vienna with a trip to close-by Bratislava is the easiest thing, making it a 2-in-1 trip. It might sound unbelievable but in just 1 hour you can go from Austria's capital to Slovakia's capital, since they are the closest capitals in Europe (apart from Rome and the Vatican). After knowing this, it sure sounds like a missed opportunity to go to Vienna without taking the short trip to Bratislava, right?

Even other capitals that are further away from each can be worth combining, thanks to the great fast-train connections available. For example if you visit Paris, you can catch a train that will take you to Brussels in less than 2 hours. If you are looking for a cheaper options to travel between these relatively close capitals, you can catch a bus that will take you from France's to Belgium's capital in 4 hours.

If you are going to visit Copenhagen, did you consider crossing the bridge and visiting the swedish city of Malmö? A regional train will get you there in around 40 minutes. Or, if you're not so much into modern Malmö, how about a 1.30 hour bus ride to the cozy student city of Lund?

There are tons of such opportunities out there, so if you have some time on your trip to include another city make sure to check which interesting cities are nearby.

Tip 3: Don't focus too much on capitals

Many capitals are admittedly the crown-jewels of their countries. When you think of visiting France, you would probably feel weird by planning to visit Bordeaux or Nice before you have seen Paris, even if those are amazing cities as well. If you are planning on visiting The Netherlands, you are probably pretty eager to see Amsterdam before you start thinking of all the other cute places to explore around the country. That is all quite understandable, thanks to their beauty and uniqueness and due to the fame that such cities have gotten.

Not to say that the capitals shouldn't be prioritized in some way due to their special status and (often) their potential, but I strongly believe that it is not good when travelers start focusing way too much on capitals, almost like it only "counts" if you have seen a country's capital city.

I have even felt that visiting only the capital left me with a (perhaps) inaccurate image of the country I had just visited, since sometimes capital cities are not as representative of the country's culture and don't offer many of the special things that travelers can experience elsewhere in the country. Take Portugal, for example, having a gorgeous capital: Lisbon; and a totally amazing second-largest city: Porto. I love Lisbon and having lived there for 4 years left me with a special feeling for it, probably for the rest of my life. But I strongly believe that, at least for some travelers, Porto would be a better choice for a first contact with Portugal.

Depending on what kind of traveler you are, make sure to do your research on what each city has to offer, in order to choose what fits you best - no matter if that city is the capital or not. If you decide to go to a city that is not the capital, you can probably experience more for less money, since prices are sometimes (not always) lower outside the big capital cities.

Tip 4: Give day-trips a shot

Ever since I started traveling, I have been focusing on exploring the cities I visit as much as possible. Usually there are plenty of monuments, museums and other places of interest to see in the city centers and the immediate areas nearby the center, so the whole trip gets filled with that. But when planning my trips, I started realizing that there were great suggestions online of interesting places to see nearby the cities I was visiting. Many times I ended up not going out of the cities in order to see those places, because I didn't have enough time to make it work, but during other trips I made sure to make time for those excursions - and I sure didn't regret it.

I soon realized that, if at all possible, expanding a trip by one or two days in order to make time for day-trips was totally worth it. I won't claim it's a good idea to go on a day-trip if you only have a weekend in Paris, but there are plenty of times when sacrificing one day of the trip for the sake of making that day-trip happen is totally worth it. My experience is that those day-excursions give a whole different perspective of the country you are visiting and a whole other depth to your trip.

Tip 5: Prioritize cheap countries

This might sound like an obvious one, but choosing to visit countries where things cost less will certainly help you keep your costs down and visit more for less. This is something that most people know, but don't necessarily think of. So, if you have been overlooking less-hyped countries and prioritizing the ones where everyone on Instagram seems to be going, perhaps your wallet has been drained precisely because of that.

I have always loved cities like Paris, London and Rome. Everything in those cities fascinated me, so I prioritized them in my travel plans. Like I have written before, one of my trips to Paris was very frugal, so that wasn't a trip that had such an impact in my wallet. The same can't be said about London, for example. Sure, I could have chosen to keep that trip very frugal as well, but the most interesting things there costed money and I made the conscious decision to pay for such activities in order to experience the trip in the way I felt I should. Even though I don't regret any of it, I now realize how much more traveling I could have done with that money - if I had prioritized that.

If you feel like expensive cities are an absolute must, at the very top of your bucket list, by all means go ahead and enjoy the amazing adventures ahead. If, on the other hand, you don't have specific destinations that have been itching your wanderlust, consider exploring cheaper destinations in order to get more done for the same amount of money.

Here are some cheap European countries to travel to:

• Romania - On Airbnb, a whole apartment in Romania's capital, Bucharest, would cost you around 30€/night, while a private room could cost around 20€/night. If you are willing to stay in hostel shared rooms, a quick search on Booking.com reveals that as little as 7€ will get you fixed for the night. Public transportation and meals are cheap as well, making Romania a perfect country to visit if you have a small budget.

• Poland - If you want to visit a cheap country full of History and an amazing culture to offer, Poland is a great choice. Booking.com shows that you can stay at a Hostel at the capital, Warsaw, for as little as 6€/night. If you are willing to spend a bit more on accommodation, you can get an apartment all for yourself for less than 30€/night or a private room for less than 20€/night. You can expect to get by with very little while you explore as well, since meals and public transportation is priced according to the country's generally low costs.

• Lithuania - With low salaries for European standards, the prices in Lithuania are adjusted to the population's budgets, making it another great country to explore on the cheap. For as little as 10€/night, you will be able to book a bed at a Hostel at the center of the capital, Vilnius. A public transportation ticket will cost you less than 1€ and if you want to use unlimited trips on public transportation you can get a daily ticket for just 5€.

• Portugal - Even though Portugal is not amongst the absolute cheapest countries to visit in Europe, it might very well be the most affordable of the trendiest travel destinations in Europe. As little as 10€ can get you a hostel bed for the night in Lisbon and you will be pleased to see that Portugal's gorgeous capital still offers low-cost meals and public transportation, in comparison to other countries in Europe. If you stay away from the most touristic places, you can find traditional restaurants where you can get a good meal for as little as 6 or 7€.