DIY Europe Trip!

ok this post is dedicated to my cousin Steph who insisted that I have to give her all the tips for when she finally goes to Europe with her family :)

We have traveled nearly every continents of the world and I had always had a misconception that the hardest travel destination to plan would be Europe because of the following reasons:
1) Language barrier - what do you do when you get lost especially if you decide to hire a car and roam the foreign country?
2) Since there are so many countries cluster into one small continent, how do you actually cross borders without all the hassles?

So because of this, I was originally very reluctant to go on our own but rather book on a tour as free and easy. However, after doing all the financial calculations, I realised it would be much cheaper if we did it ourselves myself despite all the pain in organising it all to the micro detail.

So here are all of my very handy tips of exactly what I did and you can thank me later :)

WHERE TO START:
1) You will need to study the map of Europe and mark out which countries you would want to go in the given timeframe you have. I had originally thought since UK is separated by the English channel, you would need to fly out of UK to go to the other European countries. INCORRECT! You can actually travel to most of the countries by train (yes I think they've created tunnels under the ocean to get to the other countries!).
2) RAILWAY - If I could re-organise my Europe trip again, I would arrange my entire itinerary by TRAIN if I could. Because 1) it removes the stress of getting to airports and checking in on time etc. 2) Trains are so easy as you don't really go through customs, it's just a passport check to get in the platform and that's it 3) you don't have luggage restrictions which is always great when you load up on your Zara or Mango shopping ;) 4) You have beautiful views of the countryside of Europe as you travel along to your next destination 5) The carriages are extremely comfortable and they serve food with a bar inside too! One of my favourite train companies would be Eurostar. However, they don't travel to all the countries in Europe (only the main ones), so another alternative would be Raileurope whereby you can by a x amount of days/month pass to travel across any countries in Europe. Warning: Raileurope will need to issue you a physical ticket (not sure why they don't operate on e-tickets) and they usually only send to the European countries + US and not else where. So you might need to pay extra to be sent to your home country or to use a g/f's address in Europe for them to post it to.
3) PLANE - if your destination can't be reached by trains, then you will need to fly! For their cheap budget airlines, you can choose Easyjet (uk owned) or Ryanair (Irish). (warning on Easyjet: you can only carry 1 cabin luggage on board and they even count your handbag as 1 piece so make sure your handbag is super big or you put it away in your cabin luggage, Ryanair - many of their airports are located far away from the main cities. So even though you may save heaps on the airfare, you may waste a lot of money just to get to the airport! don't forget the stress of getting there too especially if you're already unfamiliar with the foreign territory)
4) HOTEL - we used booking.com which basically had all of the hotels around all the European countries in there and at very competive prices (similar to hotels.com for USA). For Paris, we were lucky to catch the Accor (Novotel hotels group) 50% off sale that they hold once a year due to their birthday sale. so we stayed at Ibis for only AUD$88 per night (2ppl) in the heart of Paris (which is SUPER cheap as Paris is very expensive!), one even had a bath too which is rare considering how crammed Paris is :)
5) Getting to Europe from Australia/Asia -  Here's the biggest tip to share - I discovered that it would be much cheaper to fly out of Europe from Singapore! This is b/c Singapore has many routes to all over the world and therefore competition would be greater and thus, a benefit for all consumers thanks to all the discounting.  So the place I went was Singapore's largest travel agent site - Chan brothers. They have a site whereby you can select all the routes from Singapore to wherever and it will spit out all the airlines and the airfare costs. Once you know which airline is the cheapest, you can then hop over to that airline's website and book directly with them as it tends to be at least a couple of hundred bucks cheaper. We had booked our tix from SG-London w Malaysian airlines for around AUD$900pp!
6) So how do I get from Melb/Syd.Perth- Singapore you ask? Easy! fly w Jetstar! They have Friday Frenzy sale every single Friday and I managed to find return tix for $400 incl of tax and incl of 20kg luggage! Yes that's like $200 one way! Super cheap! They also have their birthday sale which happens May every year (or in this year's case, it was June) whereby it's buy one get one free. I think I remember seeing price for $369pax  inclusive of tax & carry-on! Super cheap! This means all up, our trip to Europe was only $1300pp for plane tix alone! Now if I had flown Qantas/SIA which is Melb - London (Via Singapore anyway) it would cost at least $2.2K! no joke! so I had saved myself nearly $1K! All that unnecessary cost meant that I could use it to book all of my accommodation in Europe for the price of a Qantas/SIA ticket! yep! Smart thinking 99 :)
7) Another big tip is to like all the pages of airlines on Facebook that you would travel on. For example, I liked Jetstar Asia as well as Jetstar Australia so when they had their birthday sale, only Facebook fans get the sale at least 1 day prior to the public. This was very handy! Also you get to know what all the promotions are first hand.
8) Another big tip - when you're making your booking in any airline especially Air Asia or Jetstar, make sure you always check the prices for the single ways because if you just bought a return you would've paid in AUD for both ways. Whereas if you selected single and your route was for example KL to Melbourne, then if you had selected KL - Melb, you pay RM instead of AUD and sometimes it works out to be much cheaper!
9) Put all of your itinery in an excel document including hotel name/phone number/booking ref for hotels/railways/flights etc all on one page as it will be much more handy vs printing thousand pages of a different booking confirmations!
10) Make sure you memorise your passport number in case you lose it! Also photocopy it and send it to your private email address as well as your credit card details and contact number just in case someone steals it and you know where all the important numbers are - in your email where you can access it any where around the world!
11) Best time to go to Europe is typically early Summer.. around June-July or even Oct (NOT AUG which was when we went as this is PEAK season and everything is like triple the price esp accommodation!).

What are you waiting for? Start booking your ticket in advance, pack your bags and don't forget to buy me a souvenir once you're there ;) Bon Voyage!