I am dreaming of Paris

I am dreaming of Paris in Spring and Venice and London and Madrid too. I can't seem to think small when it comes to traveling. In fact, I would postpone purchasing a new car in favor of a grand European tour. While my dreams are big, my budget is not. This will be my second "grand tour" of Europe and once again I want to spend as little as possible.

I went to Europe 2 years ago paying my way primarily with airline miles. This time, I didn't have enough miles, but I still got a really good deal on airfare. I started looking for fall sales offered by various airlines. Delta was offering Madrid for $269.00 each way -that is a deal! However as I mentioned before, I dream big so I wanted to go to Madrid and then take the train to various other places and Delta was coming out to be too much. So I started trying out different itineraries. It turned out that flying to Madrid was the cheapest, but coming back from London allowed me take the detour through Paris. A train ride from Madrid to Paris is 13 hours and a train ride from Paris to London is only 2 hours. In the end, I was able to get my fare for $405 each way! Still a pretty good deal.

Some useful tips on saving on airfare:

If booking for multiple people -open separate browsers and get them each to the point of payment and pay separately for each ticket. Airlines will sometimes offer better deals to solo travelers and not a family/group.

Rework your itenary if traveling to several destinations. I found that it was cheaper to return from London compared to Paris.

Look at leaving during the week as airfares are cheaper during those times.

Of course it goes without saying, go off-season. I like this better anyways because I get better fares, better hotel rates and I get to sightsee without being overly crowded.

Use miles to purchase tickets from the US to Europe (the more expensive part of your trip) and pay for inner Europe travel on budget airlines. My previous trip to Europe (Paris, Milan, Venice and Istanbul) cost me only $600 when I used mileage for the ticket from the west coast to Paris.