Spain
Spain, this was one for the books for sure. This trip started with a friend coming up to us and talking about cheap tickets to eastern Europe over Christmas break. Now if you know anything about Elementary Geography, you’d know Spain is not in Eastern Europe. Well like I mentioned as my hint in our last blog here is where being flexible helps. Originally, the tickets our friends found were to the Christmas Market in Vienna (aww there is Eastern Europe), however when we went to book just a few days after the dream had been dreamt, the tickets had sky rocketed to about double of what we were going to spend. Of course Vienna would be great but not double the price great.
So we had a choice: move our dates, our departure airport, our destination, or in this case all of the above. We decided to go a few days later, over the New Year to Spain, and rather than leaving out of Omaha’s small airport, we road tripped to Chicago in the dead of winter. I know what you are thinking, “I would just pay the extra and save myself the road trip through the frozen tundra.” Well let me put it this way, our flights from Chicago were $440 per person round trip, the same flight from Omaha was $1,200. Now stop and think, between gas, food, and the value of your time would you rather spend $800 dollars more? Another thing we were able to do to save money is a fun trick some of you know with google flights, where instead of setting it to the exact location you want to fly to, you can use the “explorer” mode to discover prices to everywhere. Here I was able to put in the options to leave from Chicago and make our dates flexible before scrolling around the map of Europe. This allowed me to see that Bilbao, a tiny city many of you non-soccer fans have probably never heard of, was $200 cheaper than its larger city counterparts, Madrid and Barcelona. See how flexibility and a little searching can reap large benefits? With the money we saved by flying from Chicago to Bilbao, we virtually covered the cost of the rest of our trip.
Alright, I believe you get the point, now to why this trip turned out better than we could have ever imagined. The 6 of us, my then Fiance and 2 couples from our church made our way to Bilbao. Our route looked something like this: Fly to Bilbao with a stop in Munich, long enough to go and explore the city and get a bite of Schnitzel. Then we stayed one night in Bilbao before taking the budget airline Vueling to Seville.
Munich, Germany
Another tip is to attempt to fit everything you can in a larger backpack and just do a carry on. Some international flights allow free checked bags, however, almost every domestic and budget airline comes with heavy fees for checked baggage. By packing only carry-ons we saved somewhere around $200 per person over the course of our 4 flights on this trip. Also although trains and buses are everywhere in Europe and are often dirt cheap, don’t underestimate the idea of finding a cheap flight. Our flight from Bilbao to Seville was less than $30 per person!
Anyways back to the story, here in Seville we stayed in a Hostel as it was the cheapest option. The six of us rocking 3 bunk beds are some memories that won’t quickly be forgotten. We had the opportunity to go on a free walking tour. These are often offered by hostels and are a great way to see cities for no more than a small tip. We visited the Gothic Cathedral of Santa Maria, the burial place for Christopher Columbus, and ate our body weight in gelato. Along our tour we also were introduced to Plaza de Espana, home to the Exhibition of 1929. This beautiful building with carriages, and fountains, was a pleasant surprise and enough of a reason to join the free tour by itself. The next day was spent meandering around Seville, where we happened across the worlds largest wooden structure, Setas de Sevilla. This impressive structure has quite the view from the top at night and lights up different colors throughout your walk around it.
Our next destination was Barcelona, via an equally as cheap Vueling flight. Barcelona is an iconic city as many already know but aside from the amazing places like La Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, and the Gothic Quarter, there is a lesser known place where many locals go for a beautiful look at the city and the sunset. This hidden gem is known as, “the Bunker” and believe me it lives up to all of the hype. Aside from the skunky smell of some locals attempting to get their high on, this place offers an immaculate view of the city.
As this trip did take place during the winding down of Covid, our New Years celebration was canceled and we were forced to ring it in with games from the hotel room. But with friends like we had with us it was almost better than the party. The last few days were spent back in Bilbao and funny enough, I bet all 6 of us would agree the unplanned city of our trip was actually the best. This city felt far less touristy than Seville and Barcelona, it also had a surprising amount to do. In the times that weren’t spent stuffing ourselves with Gelato and empanadas, we found time to do a date night, where all couples went their own ways for the night. Not that it was needed but it was a fun change up to the normal routine of our trip and allowed us to do things maybe the others didn’t want to.
On Bre and I’s date night, we took a train ride to the far side of the city and walked across the Vizcaya Bridge, a well worth it thing to do, especially at night, but I would not recommend it if heights don’t come easily to you. We then found a local cafe to eat dinner, enjoyed a night stroll at the beach, and then headed back to meet our friends at the airbnb.
The last day we made our way to the island of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe, which unfortunately was closed due to a rock slide a few days prior. Thankfully the hike there and the view from the top was well worth our venture there. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful, aside from us gambling our two dollars in change away at a cafe that would have been the perfect amount to allow Bre to ride the bus without having to beg for money, but hey that's a story for a different day.
