How to See Another City for Free During your Vacation! The art of the "Stopover"...
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So this week I'm traveling, yay!! I planned a trip to Amsterdam, I have never been and can't wait to touch down and check the city out. I have heard so many good things about it!
But in the meantime I wanted to tell you all a quick story about why I love doing stopovers while I'm already traveling. Stopovers are like trip inception, you know, a vacation inside of a vacation. They're great, because they are usually super cheap (or free!) and a great way to see multiple cities, places, and things during a trip.
Story time! During this current trip to Amsterdam, I totally planned on purchasing airfare to London, spending the day and flying back during the trip. I found super cheap flights from Amsterdam to London ( like $80 round trip), and was waiting to buy them. I am often a last minute person, I will wait until I'm on the plane on the way to a city to book a hotel cause, you know, there will always be hotels and I love flexibility in my trips.
On my way to Amsterdam one of my flights got delayed, which was going to cause me to miss my connecting flight. I was flying with American airlines (I love them), so I went to the counter to get back on track and put on a later flight. The later flight was stopping in London where it had a short layover, so I asked the lady at the counter if I could spend a day there and resume my flight to Amsterdam later. Her response was, "We won't pay for your hotel, but yes! If you want you can go a day later!" So basically, I got to see London for free!
A lot of airlines offer this while you're booking flights, here is a list of airlines that offer free Stopovers:
Air China
Iceland Air
Emirates
Hawaiian Airlines
Japan Air
Air France
Turkish Airways
And many more. These days most airlines and sites where you can search for flights have a multi city option where you can add a short stopover. Sometimes adding in a stopover will make your original flight even cheaper. Even if you don't see it listed you can always ask, the worst that can happen is a no.
If you can't work out a free situation with your airline to do a stopover, if you are from the US it is super cheap to travel around Europe once you get there. The reverse is true for my friends from other countries, once you get to the US, you could find a cheap flight to check out other cities.
My Stopover in London was amazing, it left me wishing I had more time so I will definitely be going back! I will tell you all about it in my next post. Have you done a stopover? Where did you go and what did you do? Leave a comment below!
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