2025 Travel Plans

Greetings to 2025, a new year and a new travel theme for our ‘From Blue to Green’ adventures!

For us, this will be a year of budget travel with a personal challenge to travel as far and as widely as possible for the least amount of money!

During 2024 after a great deal of careful thought and consideration we decided upon a change of lifestyle and in December we brought a house! Yep, after 11 years of a low cost minimal home life, living cheaply in an apartment and directing much of our income towards travel we both felt ready for a change.

As we are upscaling our home life the compromise will, for probably the next couple of years at least, be a downshift in the money we spend on trips. Thankfully, I’m fairly confident this won’t mean too much of a compromise. Many a time have our past travels revealed that often, the best experiences have been the budget ones… the amazing home stays over the expensive (but dull) hotels. The quirky and unique little bed and breakfasts over the large global brands.

Throughout 2025 I’m hoping to share some tips on low cost travel and to explore how and where to find bargains to demonstrate that a lower budget doesn’t necessarily mean less adventures.

2025 trips booked so far:

• A week in north east Italy with my friend Bridget
• Balkan 3 capital city solo adventure
• A ‘3 country’ week travelling from Barcelona to Andorra to Toulouse with Bridget

I’m keen to explore some of the corners of Europe which I haven’t been to and which are very accessible to most people who live in the UK with thousands of low cost budget flights spanning the continent.

Initial tips

The first tip is to book with a budget airline although you need to check carefully for extras especially for taking luggage. They are fine for a couple of hours and costs are kept low if you don’t need speedy boarding or to pay for your choice of seat either.

The second tip is to book outside of the main tourist season, the low or the shoulder season when prices are lower. This is often preferable for me as this also usually has the added bonus of far fewer tourists.

And the third is to book mid week flights which are almost always cheaper!

Italy 2025

Keen to explore a different part of Italy, and taking tips 1 and 2 into account, for the first holiday I’ve booked return flights with RyanAir together with a week in a 4* hotel with breakfast included for just £230 per person! This is with the tiny free luggage allowance only so it will be quite a challenge to fit a weeks worth of clothes and other essentials into a 40x20x25 cm backpack!

3 Balkan Capitals 2025

For the last couple of years I’ve had two long weekends visiting Balkan capitals, one in 2023 to Belgrade and another in 2024 to Skopje. Both times I based myself for 3 nights in the city and booked day trips to other places. Doing it this way and paying for the day trips was relatively expensive.

For 2025 I’ve independently booked a 5 night solo trip where I stay in Tirana, Podgorica and Sarajevo (3 European capital cities I haven’t visited) and the plan is to travel between each by local bus. I am anticipating this 5 night trip will be about half the cost of either of the 3 night city breaks mentioned.

3 European Countries 2025

The third trip planned for 2025, again was booked with a budget airline and with the intention of using public transport to travel from Spain to Andorra to France to keep costs down. I have already booked the accommodation for Bridget and myself in each of the three cities and booking early gave us more options. And these are midweek Tuesday flights!

I’ve been to Barcelona a couple of times before but both times were many years ago and I didn’t get to see the Gaudi architecture on either occasion. So I’m looking forward to a two nights in this vibrant and cosmopolitan city where hopefully I’ll get some better photos… and certainly better than the rather ropey one I found of the Sagrada Familia (above).

I’ve never been to Andorra or Toulouse so I’m excited to visit both. Combined with Barcelona, the towering mountains of Andorra and the French city of Toulouse should provide diverse and contrasting elements to this trip!

Chris and I have a couple of ideas for joint holidays but we don’t have anything booked as yet. We are no strangers to low-cost travel and visited tropical French Polynesia while on a budget during our year long travels in 2016. We kept our costs down by staying in a low cost AirBnB and doing free activities such as cycling (bikes were free with accommodation) and snorkelling off the beach.

Thanks to a hefty credit card spend in 2024 which resulted in another Virgin reward, we could offset this against a Virgin flight if we are flexible about the dates and book far in advance. To make the most of this, we would need to get onto it fairly soon so this might be an early January task…

Anyway, as I sit in our shiny new house on New Years Day watching heavy rain battering our garden and practically jet washing the patio, I am thrilled with the prospect of a year of wallet friendly travel and the excitement and anticipation it brings. And what else to do but to grab a coffee and have a cosy sofa day of travel planning and researching!

“Treasure every moment… life is short and goes by quickly… do what you enjoy doing and make the most of it whatever your circumstances!” (My quote)

Happy 2025 🙂