Some of the stories that grabbed our attention this week:

Brussels and Bruges

Back from his trip to Belgrade for the Eurovision song contest, Alex of Spendthrift Shoestring jaunted off to Brussels on the Eurostar to see how the city has changed since his last visit in 2002. We enjoyed his musings on the city’s neighborhood and vibe, having just visited Brussels in March.

And yes, Alex, we also have a fondness for the Use-It fold-out maps to Brussels (and five other Belgian cities). These map-guides are, according to their creators, “no-nonsense, non commercial, made by locals,” and thus offer some candid (and amusing!) advice. When we visited Bruges, we “Used-It” nightly to find the city’s cool restaurants, bars, and cafes. You can print your own guide off from their website.

European Ferries

BudgetTravel.com reminded us yesterday to consider taking ferries between European cities. Ferries offer a fun and cheap transportation option around much of sea-lined Europe, including the Mediterranean, destinations from London, and around the Baltic. Overnight boats can also provide a savings, shaving off one night’s hotel bill. An overnighter from London to Amsterdam, for example, can be had for €59, including your own private bedroom and shower.

See also: our article on budget cruises in the Baltic.

Free concerts at Notre Dame

Olivia, in “High Culture on a Low Budget,” emerged from her studies this week to note that Notre Dame’s 7,800-pipe organ is revved up most Sunday afternoons (around 4 PM), for free concerts. It is, according to Olivia, “the opportunity to hear some ultimate organ jams” for nothing. We be jammin.’

Ryanair’s extra baggage

Thank the skies for Hilary at “Less than a Shoestring” for straightening out those pesky Ryanair fees this week… again. After all, no week is complete without a Ryanair pricing shift! The airline’s baggage fee structure is enough to scare you away from bags altogether (which could be their intention, but isn’t very practical when you, you know, travel!).

Highlights include: Priority boarding is no longer gratis for those who take advantage of online check-in. Checking one bag will cost you €10 (and you still have to pay the €5 check-in fee as well), and then an additional €20 per bag thereafter (max three). Oh well, at least the ticket was “free.”

Have a great weekend, Cheapos!

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In the spring of 2006, I was able to score some super-cheap tickets on Ryanair for a last-minute getaway to Barcelona from London, where I was living. It had been a great weekend, made possible by my low-cost flight. I booked a 6 PM flight in order to extend my holiday as long as possible, pushing off the reality of the next morning’s workday. As long as I was in Barcelona, I was on vacation!

The tickets were basically free—I only had to pay the airport tax. The catch? I had to fly into and out of two less-than-central airports, London’s Stansted and Barcelona’s Girona airport. It was worth it, right?

What follows is a diary of my flight experience en route from Barcelona to London.

4:30 PM: I arrive early at the airport for a 6 PM flight. We all know you have to get to the gate before the other passengers in order to snag the best seat.

5:00 PM: Shortly after check-in, an announcement is made. The flight has been delayed an hour.

Ok, some extra time to score a panini at Girona’s atmospheric café. (In the above photo, do I look like I’m ready for take-off?)

Tip: Stock up on food, just in case. Girona’s airport café closed at 9 p.m. I’m glad I grabbed a sandwich when I did. Others would not be so lucky.

7 PM: A second announcement. The flight has been delayed for another hour. All assembled groan and pull out iPods, books and approved electronic devices. One nearby traveler starts clipping his nails over a waste basket, violating all manner of social codes (are clippers even allowed on airplanes?).

8:15 PM: A third announcement. Drum roll, please: The flight has been delayed for another two hours. The announcer says, with a tinge of exhaustion in her voice, “We hope to leave by 11. Thank you for your patience.” The thought of work the next morning was beginning to make me vaguely nauseous.

Around 10 PM: Boredom sets in. All other flights have taken off. The airport feels empty, save the other poor souls flying to Stansted. With hardly anyone around, I attempt to fit myself, horizontally, into a row of seats in any way that could lead to sleep. I am not successful.

Above: Nothing happening under flourescent lights.

Tip: Bring back-up diversions. That could mean catching up on your trip journal, watching all the TV shows you earlier loaded up on your iPod, making progress on that novel, or even flipping through some celeb mags. In short, have something to do. I had packed “Madame Bovary,” which only helped put me to sleep.

11:30 PM: All other flights have left the Girona airport, and there’s still no sign of our airplane. The 20 Stansted-bound passengers are told we will not take off until after midnight. No excuse is given.

Tip: Make friends…if there are any out there. At some point after midnight, I found myself chatting with a couple from Los Angeles. A bottle of vodka became open. (Glad they took advantage of Duty Free when it was open…hours ago.) I pass up a shot (work seems ludicrously close), but others around happily partake. The mood lifts… and distorts.

1:30 AM: We take off, nine hours after my arrival at the airport.

Tip: Know when to go! Turns out there’s more than one good reason not to check any luggage on a budget flight. If you’re delayed, you could risk missing the last bus out of the arrival airport.

2:30 AM: We arrive at Stansted and immediately there’s a mad dash for the bus to London. And for good reason: The last one leaves the airport at 3 am (and sometimes earlier, depending on reasons I couldn’t quite understand). If you miss the last bus, you have to get a taxi, which can cost upwards of £60, or wait until 7 am when the buses start up again. I make the bus.

3:30 AM: I’m dropped off at Marble Arch on Oxford Street. What’s my name? Who am I? And how do I get a taxi? Work the next morning was, well, another story…

In the end, this experience didn’t deter me from flying on budget airlines. Over the next year, I’d often take cheap flights, including easyJet and Aer Lingus, for quick getaways. But I learned something about flexibility that long night in Girona.

Read another Cheapo’s tale of a long night in Stansted. Got a good airport story? Leave a comment or send us a note.

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Today Ryanair announced three new routes. Two (Cork-East Midlands and Cork-Glasgow) will kick off on December 13. The third will run between Malta and Treviso near Venice. The airline doesn’t offer an official starting date for the Malta-Treviso route, though we found a €.01 fare in early January.

The kicker? That eurocent balloons to €47.13 once taxes are taken into account.

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On Wednesday, Aeroflot abandoned their effort to purchase a significant stake in Alitalia. Also on Wednesday, Ryanair’s bid for Aer Lingus was blocked by the European Commission. Ryanair has already confirmed that they will contest the European Commission’s decision.

Is it time for Ryanair and Aeroflot to reconsider bravado as a strategy? Perhaps, but we doubt the two carriers will take this caution to heart.

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Today, Ryanair fires off another salvo in its summer price war with easyJet by offering three million one-way flights for just £10 apiece, including all taxes and charges. The three million promotional fares are good for travel in July, August, and September.

Meanwhile, through Wednesday, easyJet continues to hawk £14.99 one-way flights good for travel between June 27 and August 15.

Ryanair provides a nice list of point-to-point promotional fares, along with various applicable restrictions. Because we like actually locating touted low promotional fares—versus merely knowing about their technical existence—we appreciate Ryanair’s route pricing lists. EasyJet, note the utility of said front page fare lists.

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Through midnight in Western Europe, Ryanair’s crazy absolutely free flights remain bookable. The airline is now providing a link from their homepage to a PDF listing remaining promo flight availability. We’re not sure how regularly the flight availability list is being updated, but we do like having some of our research work done for us for a change.

Meanwhile, easyJet kicks off its Edinburgh-Milan route today, with a lowest roundtrip fare of £42.98.

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It’s time, yet again, for a moment of reflection on the performance of a few low-cost carriers over the preceding month. For the first time we’re including Monarch’s stats in our comparative essay. Why? Well, because Monarch sent us a nice little email a few days ago with their April stats. Low-cost carrier publicists, take note.

For the fourth straight month, SkyEurope beat Ryanair in increase of numbers of passengers flown. Against April 2006 numbers, the number of passengers carried by SkyEurope last month ballooned 44.7%, against growth of 19% for Ryanair and growth of 16.4% for Monarch.

SkyEurope also trounced Ryanair in April load factor percentage increase (that is, the average number of seats filled), with a load factor increase of 7.4%, against a 2% drop in seats filled by Ryanair (and a 4.9% drop in seats filled by Monarch.)

Despite this, Ryanair filled marginally more seats than SkyEurope did in April: 83%, against 82.1% for SkyEurope and 80.2% for Monarch.

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Ryanair announced today that they’ll fly three new routes from Stockholm’s secondary Skavsta airport: Skavsta-Marseille (as of May 7), Skavsta-Venice (as of May 23), and Skavsta-Alghero (as of May 24.)

In line with their expansion/contraction move last week, the airline will eliminate three current routes in and out of Skavsta as well: Skavsta-Brussels (ending May 22), Skavsta-Gdansk (also ending May 22), and Skavsta-Kaunas (ending May 23).

Though the last of these cancellations doesn’t really surprise us—we flew between Skavsta and Kaunas in January on half-empty flights, both ways—we’re missing those rapacious Ryanair route expansion announcements.

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Ryanair announced today that as of May 7, they’ll fly four new routes: Frankfurt Hahn-Faro, Frankfurt Hahn-Fez, Frankfurt Hahn-Marrakech, and Marseille-Bournemouth.

The shuffle isn’t all about expansion, however. May 7 will also see the end of 11 Ryanair routes, including Barcelona-Faro, Liverpool-Tampere, Marseille-Rome, and Frankfurt Hahn-Krakow.

Meanwhile, there’s a buzz and a half in the LCC blogosphere surrounding Michael O’Leary’s announcement that Ryanair expects to fly between the several secondary airports in the US and its European bases by the turn of the decade for as little as $12 for a one-way flight.

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photograph courtesy of Andrey Terekhov

Here are a few things we’re anticipating excitedly.

1. Maribor. Yesterday Ryanair announced that they’ll begin flying from London Stansted to Slovenia’s second city (see above) in early June. Maribor, which sits on the Austrian border, is a very charming place. Its Old Town is quintessentially Mitteleuropa and it’s a great place to do some serious wine drinking, to boot.

2. Kazakhstan’s stars. Wallpaper’s April issue, out March 15, promises “real” Borats—namely, an overview of Kazakhstan’s domestic celebrities. We can’t wait. We’re anticipating a mix of stern ex-Soviet newscasters and insanely cool architects and graphic designers.

3. Intersky’s Friedrichshafen-Dresden €19.98 fares. Through Sunday, the low-cost carrier with the best brand name around is hawking tax-inclusive fares between their Friedrichshafen base and the Saxon city of Dresden. There are only 999 flights available at this fare, good for travel between March 21 and July 31.

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