How to travel for the price of a pizza

I travel a lot. People often tell me how lucky I am to visit all these places, and some of it is luck, but most of it involves going onto the internet (which I know for sure you have access to by virtue of the fact you are reading this), finding a cheap flight and then typing in some details about yourself and clicking a few times. It’s the kind of process anyone under about sixty should find very simple but most grandmas will have an absolute nightmare with and end up booking a £4000 multi-stop flight from Malawi to Uzbekistan despite never having heard of either. So this article is for you grandmas out there, not that I want to spoil Malawi’s blossoming pensioner-tourism scene.

In the Ryanair heydays of 2010, days when only a fabled Visa Electron card would negate exorbitant booking fees and the website looked like it had been designed by someone from the Victorian Ages who had never used electricity before, I flew to 8 countries in 8 weeks with them, paying no more than £30 for any given flight.

The most notable of these was a laughable ONE POUND flight out from Stockholm to Oslo, laughable mainly because it cost a whopping 100x more than the return flight, which inexplicably cost 0.01 pounds. One Penny. A coin so worthless that people literally throw them in the bin rather than being weighed down by the bronzed face of our Sovereign. Truth be told, on the day of the flight, we actually declined to go after a brief conversation more akin to deciding whether to go to the supermarket:

“Aren’t we meant to go on holiday to Oslo in a couple of hours?”
“Yeah but like…it’s cold outside. Think I’m gonna leave it. Was thinking we could just have a night in, play some FIFA, that film with the guys who can move super fast is on.”
“Fair. I probably won’t bother either then. Do you mean Inception? I’m not really up for FIFA though, it’s too easy to beat you.”
“Haha shut up I beat you last time! And no it’s not Inception, that’s about people who can go into other people’s dreams. This one is about some virtual world where they can all move really fast.”
“Ohhhh, you mean The Matrix? Yeah that’s a good film. The sequels were terrible though.”
“Yeah that’s the one! Although I think it may be the second one that’s on tonight.”
“Ok, well maybe I’ll appreciate it more now I’m older, I saw it like ten years ago. Anyway we can discuss that later. What were we originally talking about again? Oh yeah, Oslo. Screw that.”

These days I wouldn’t throw away a flight quite as nonchalantly, but being a bit savvy and a bit flexible can still get you unbelievable prices. Not only that but since those heady times, Ryanair have actually done away with all booking fees, card charges and compulsory insurance. You stay three or four nights, usually enough to have a decent grasp and a fulfilling experience of a new city (AKA GETTING CRUUUUNK EVERY NIGHT!!!!!!!111).
There are four main ways to work the system.

1. Choose a weekend which isn’t a national holiday anywhere, some kind of dead zone like the start of January where nobody really has a reason to go anywhere and are still hungover from New Year’s. Ideally, travel on Thursdays and Mondays, as Fridays and Sundays are always more expensive. Saturdays can sometimes be unexpectedly cheap so don’t rule them out, unless you are an orthodox Jew of course.

2. Go to the part of the website where you can see the destination lists for your nearest airport. They have them in order of cheapest price for certain periods of time. This isn’t always entirely accurate but gives you a ballpark idea of the places that have the lowest prices. Hint: Google places you haven’t heard of to make sure you are going where you think you’re going; there are a surprising amount of places that sound like they should be resorts on the coast of Portugal but are actually ghost towns in the landlocked wilderness of Romania (I’m looking at you, Otopeni. Worst beach holiday of my life).

3. Make sure after choosing your flights that you proceed straight to the end of the process. Do not buy insurance, if the plane crashes you’ll die so it won’t matter. Do not rent a car, they drive backwards in “Europe”. Do not pay for checked luggage, you are only going for three days. Do not purchase speedy boarding or reserve a flight seat, the whole plane is going to arrive at the same time so it doesn’t matter where you sit. Do not book a hotel, and please do not buy in flight credit for those weird little sachets of powdered vodka that they sell. Do pass go.

4. Prepare to wake up really early or arrive somewhere really late, at an airport over an hour away from the city, in surroundings that look like you have gone fifty years back in time to the middle of Poland during the Cold War, rather than two hours forward in time to your intended destination of Barcelona.

It’s as easy as that, and nothing gets added on at all. For example, I have just seen flights to Berlin on the 3rd January for £14, which is a good day to go because they will already have mopped up all the sick from NYE but that quaint fairytale Northern European Christmassy feeling will still be lingering. A couple of nights living it up in Berlin, do you even have friends close enough that they would notice you were gone? I sure don’t.

The devil on your shoulder says book it now! Think about the adorable photos of you pretending to fellate a Bratwurst, the hilarious stories about accidentally bringing up our victory in WWII and the fact your overall spend out there would probably be lower than on a big weekend at home in London. The angel on your shoulder, however, says don’t rush into this purchase. Look at all these other great things you could get with fourteen pounds:

– A round of three pints at the average London pub
– A round of four pints at Wetherspoons provided its Monday-Wednesday and you only drink Carlsberg
– A round of two pints at a craft beer pop up brewery housed inside a closed-down Wetherspoons
– Go to Pizza Express and get a non-discounted luxury pizza with a larger Romana base and two additional toppings
– Order a medium half-half Dominos with a side of garlic bread on a 25% off deal
– Go to the cinema on a Wednesday and treat yourself to popcorn OR a drink (size: small)
– Go to the cinema not on a Wednesday, but don’t get popcorn or a drink
– Go to the cinema on any day, don’t actually buy a ticket for a film at all but treat yourself to a large popcorn and drink combo
– One zone 1-5 anytime one-day Travelcard for London public transport (actually costs £3 more than the flight)
– Play a 1-hour game of 5-a-side football at Powerleague, controversially lose it, get mad, demand a rematch and pay for another hour. Also lose.
– The new album on CD for any given band (I haven’t bought a CD since 2008, nor have you, but let’s assume they still cost the same)
– A quarter of one gig ticket to see Miley Cyrus live
– Half a T-shirt from Urban Outfitters
– Two-thirds of a haircut from that Greek place down my road
– 4/5ths of a Dan Brown book
– A whole stone

The choice is yours.