➸ How to save money on flights

The other day I helped a friend finding a cheap flight to Los Angeles. And with a few hacks he saved about 400€ !! And today I wanna share these hacks with you guys - because saving money on flights is easier than you think! 

- Never book on the weekends -

My first rule is NEVER to book on the weekends, especially on a Sunday. The prices are higher on the weekend, because more people have the time to book their holidays. The best days to book flights are on Tuesday or Wednesday. 

- The thing about cookies -

My second tip is to delete your cookies before checking out the final price. On a lot of websites your searching history is tracked and the more you looking for something, the higher the prices are. I especially noticed that on websites for rental cars. 

- The seasons -

Know the seasons! When you can, always go right before or right after the high season. The prices are way lower and there often are special deals from several companies. And most times the weather is just fine. Or sometimes another season like spring or fall can be wonderful, too. For example, when you're heading to New England you should do it in the fall to experience the beautiful fall foliage.   

- Special Deal Websites -

There are a lot of cool websites, where you can find special deals. They collect error fares and other special prices on flights and hotels, even whole holiday packages. 
When you're from Europe or heading to it, you should definitely check these ones out: 
➸ flynder.com
➸ Urlaubspiraten.de
➸ Urlaubsguru.de

- Look around -

My next tip to save money is to look up the different low-budget airlines in the area you travel to. When you travel around in a certain area it can be cheaper to book them separately from your long-haul flight. What brings me to my next point: 

Sometimes long-haul flights departing from another country, are cheaper than departing from the nearest airport. So check the flights departing from the countries around you and book a separate flight from a budget airline to get there. Like you wanna travel to Los Angeles, you can travel with Eurowings to London and from there with Virgin Atlantic to LA. 
Of course this also apply for the other way around: the long-haul flight to one country with a separately booked connection flight is cheaper than flights booked with one airline. For example: if you wanna travel to Australia book a flight to Asia and from there with an low-budget airline like jetstar to Australia. 

"Zug-zum-Flug"

When you book directly on airline page keep your eyes peeled for "Zug-zum-Flug" tickets ("with the train to the airport") - you get your train ticket for free and don't need to drive with the car to the airport. So you can save gas and the parking fee. But I don't know if these tickets are available in other countries than Germany. Here in Germany a lot of airlines have a cooperation with the German railroad company "DeutscheBahn". 

I really hope you can use some of these tips! They are all tested in real life by me :) If you have any further tips please leave them in the comments. 

➸ Polaroid Love.

On every trip I go my Polaroid Camera always follows me. Of course by now this is a huge trend and a lot people got a one. However, for me taking polaroid pictures is something special. I’ve wanted a camera like this since I have been a little kid. Then in 2008 Polaroid announced they were going to stop producing cameras and the foto paper because of insolvency proceedings. The dream to take pictures, which were printed right away seemed to be gone! BUT! YAY, in 2010 polaroid cameras were back with the Polaroid 300 and the Fujifilm Instax Mini. In 2014 my dream came true and I got my very own one. 

But what is the thrill about this kind of pictures? Why spending so much money for the instant film packs? I like that you have just one shot. You think about how to take his picture much more carefully. You can’t take 20 in row and decide which one is the best and delete the rest afterwards. Also you have it in your hand on paper, you see how it is developing until it is an actual picture and you don’t have it just on your phone. 

I use my shots on moments which are special to me like my birthday party or unique and memorable places.

Here are my favorite shots I took so far:

Porto.

Sunrise, Acadia National Park

Harry Potter Studios, London

Lake of Constance

Indian Summer, White Mountains

Cannon Mountain, New Hampshire

Lisbon 

Singapore

If you wondering mine is the Polaroid 300 in red.

                    

➸ How to Road Trip

I’ve done quite a few road trips in my life. Along these trips I collected some cool and some really simple tricks to make your life much easier and avoid unnecessary argues.

Google Maps

 When you have a rental car you have 2 options to save money on the satnav. The first one: you bring your own one, but make your sure the maps you need are on it. The second is very simple, too. Just download the Google Maps app on your phone and turn on the location service. This is even working when you have no internet/Wi-Fi connection. You can’t use the navigation to a certain direction. But you see a blue point, which is showing your current situation and the co-pilot can navigate the driver to the right place. This is how we travelled the whole way through New England.  

Organisation
Make sure you put all the import stuff and things you need a lot in constant places in the car. So you avoid searching for hours for your belongings and the panic that you lost something. Everybody knows where what is and is happy.

The Entertainment

Sometimes the radio has no reception or it’s nothing on, you want to listen to. Therefore, make sure you packed your aux cable and have some cool music or audio books on your phone. (By the way my favourite road trip songs, you find here)

Eating on the go
Pack some plastic cutlery and Tupperware. So you can eat the remains from the day before or cereal on the way and you can spend less money in restaurants. And make sure you have always some snacks and enough to drink with you. Sometimes the next supermarket is longer away than you expected.

Car games
There are so many! We like to guess the towns where cars are from by their plates. In Germany the first 1-3 letters stand for a town where the car is registered. Sometimes you discover cities you never heard of before. Or we list the federal states of the US with their capitals. These little games keep our mind busy and make time flies by in for example a traffic jam.

The route

I love to plan things, especially our holiday trips. So it’s cool, when you know which route you’re going on your road trip, but leave room for some stops in unplanned locations. You can discover cool and unexpected things. Also when you have time take the longer route, not the highway, but the road through little villages or along the coastline with a breath taking view … often road is the longer road the more beautiful road.

➸ Some Facts about Airplanes

In the post “My secret hobby – plane spotting” I told you about my weird obsession with planes. Therefore, I wanted to share some little facts I found out over the years.

Take-off and touch-down speed
A lot of people are surprised when they hear about the speed of an aircraft during take-off and landing. Here are two examples:
 Boeing 737 with two turbines:
Take-off: 230km/h
Touch-down: 200km/h
The famous double-decker A380 with 4 turbines
Touch-down: 230km/h (290t)

Is it possible to lock up an airplane?
No it’s not! For safety reasons there are no locks on the doors of an airplane. But how you can provide anybody to break in? Of course on airports there are securities and cameras. But you have also the option to put on a sealing label.

Contrails
Contrails result mostly from water, which froze to ice crystals. To let that happen it takes a very cold surrounding and dry air. Therefore, contrails develop often from a height of 8km.

The distance between planes
In the air there has to be a distance between airplanes from 5,6km to 14,8km. When the airplanes are about to land and are string like a pearl necklace, the distance needs to be about 5,6km.

Fastest Airplane

Lockheed SR-71A Blackbird with 3529km/h (or 2192,819 mph)

The longest Non-Stop Flight
Until 2013 the longest non-stop flight was operated between Singapore and New York City. Can you imagine a nearly 16000 long flight? Crazy! At the moment the 3 longest flights are:
Dubai – Panama City by Emirates, 13800 km
Dubai – Auckland by Emirates, 14200 km
Doha – Auckland by Qatar Airways, 14500 km

The Shortest Non-Stop Flight
… is operated by Logainair between Westray and Papa Westray, Sottland. This flight takes nearly 2 minutes and only 2,8km.