While much has been written about the advantages of study abroad programs, what’s normally overlooked is the opportunity for students when studying abroad to do extensive traveling on a tight budget.
This past year, my daughter spent her spring semester studying in Bath, England. And although she loved Bath, thought it an extraordinarily beautiful city, and enjoyed her international course load, what she lived for were the trips she was able to take during her short breaks.
The first thing one finds surprising when visiting Europe, is that unlike traveling within the US, the distances are relatively short traveling from country to country and the airfares you can secure are surprisingly cheap if you don’t mind traveling with a budget airline. Her airline of choice was Ryan Air. I took a quick look at the Ryan Air website today and saw a flight to Dublin from Bristol for eight pounds and one from Bristol to Milan for fifteen pounds.
My daughter actually found that more times than not, rail fares were higher than air fares for the same trip. She always selected the cheapest fare available. She booked four Ryan Air flights, the cheapest being three pounds to Dublin. The other two airlines she used were Easy Jet and Vueling Airlines that were more expensive by a considerable amount. When there were no flights available, she booked a rail pass using the Great Western Railway. Surprisingly, the cheapest of the rail fares she booked was forty-three pounds, the most expensive eighty-six pounds.
Depending on the city, day and time of travel and how early the trip was booked seemed to create a large difference in the actual fare, the same scenario when booking here in the US. Whenever and wherever she traveled to, her choice of lodging was always a student hostile. A hostile she stayed at in Dublin cost twelve pounds. That seemed to be the average for most.
Her point of origination to her destinations was always Bristol, England which is about thirty minutes from Bath by rail. Using her two breaks during the semester, she travelled to London, Edinburgh, Wales, Dublin, Rome, Venice, Madrid, Alicante, and Paris. After the semester ended, she traveled to Zurich, Switzerland where her roommate had family and invited her to stay for a week.
While traveling abroad as a student, keeping track of finances can be a challenge – And if not monitored, can spiral out of control. In order to keep that from happening, I set up an excel spread sheet where I logged all my daughters expenses as they came in through her debit and credit cards on-line. She was careful not to spend more than she had earned from a summer job.
