By Fran Flight Finder and Italian globetrotter with a passion for remote destinations and snacking. Currently based in Brussels, she'll tell you where to find the yummiest fries in the city.

After spending a whole week traversing the entirety of Europe, it turns out that travelling overland, all the way across the continent, requires a (really) good backpack, lots of patience, and a whole load of preparation.

With plenty of tangled travel plans, sleepless nights, and missed connections, it soon became clear that we were very unprepared for Europe’s surprisingly tricky border crossings.

So that you can be better equipped, we've put together a few tips and tricks for an effortless European escapade—no tears necessary.

Let’s get started with some basics…

1. Always keep your passport on hand

Yes, this may sound like a pretty obvious tip, but even the most seasoned among us suffer from passport panic. Personally, I had a (metaphorical) heart attack when I arrived at the border of Bulgaria and didn’t find my passport in any of the 4 bags I had rifled through, emptied and re-packed again on my bus seat.

Of course, all of this could have been avoided if I’d kept my passport as close as my phone when travelling. Plenty of passengers make this mistake and leave their passports packed safely away under the bus in their hold luggage, but that slows down the whole process. And it really annoys the bus driver.

2. You are not immune to delays or cancellations

Delays are already extremely common when travelling overland. Why? Well, traffic. And things get even trickier when you add border patrol to your route, considering that each border crossing (leaving the EU and then entering a new country, or the opposite) takes at least 45 minutes.

In stark contrast to UK/Western Europe, Eastern European bus companies tend to add up to 2 hours extra to the trip duration. Allowing for any delays and queues, and technically arriving at your destination at the listed time. For instance, if the driving time from Budapest to Belgrade is usually 4 hours, your bus trip will show up as 6-6.5 hrs long.

I’d recommend booking your bus to depart early in the day if you can, as those leaving in the late afternoon/evening tend to experience more delays. Over-planning can also be a mistake—you never know what’s going to happen during your trip. And never book transportation with short connections if you're planning to move in quick succession, like we did.

3. Take any perks with a grain of salt

When we read that our Serbian/Bulgarian buses would have Wi-Fi, sockets and even snacks, we were positively surprised. Well, it turns out it wasn’t quite the truth…

Out of all the buses the team travelled on, just the one between Zagreb and Belgrade had sockets. On this particular bus, the driver practically laughed in our faces when we asked about Wi-Fi. And a working toilet? Forget it!

You'd guess that bathroom breaks would be planned for, right? Wrong.

Some buses did make a stop at service stations along the way, which allowed us to stock up on snacks and drinks (great to survive those 3+ hours delays), but others went straight to the border.

This was the case for our Serbia-Bulgaria connection. Inducing a very public breakdown when I realized I had no more coins to access the last bathroom before Bulgaria.

I knew it was going to take a long time to cross both parts of the border, and immediately regretted not taking my opportunity in the previous service station.

Learn from my mistakes—visit the loo at every chance you get! It’s also a good idea to keep some coins in the local currency in case the only toilet available requires payment.

Oh, and you can kiss the chance of finding toilet paper and a working tap goodbye! Good thing I stocked up on tissues, soap sheets (yes, you’re reading that right), and hand sanitizer to share with everyone.

Read more…

We’re back with round 2 of sale-season wisdom from our expert Flight Finders. Here’s what to expect from our favourite (and not so favourite…) airlines this Black Friday.

And if you missed last week’s edition, you can find the full round-up here.

Virgin Atlantic

Like British Airways, Virgin Atlantic have embraced Black Friday as a bridge between their other big sale periods in late summer and starting on Boxing Day.

Last year, they pulled a fast one on us by coming through with premium economy price drops a few days after their initial sale launched. So, it’s worth checking in with them throughout the week to see if they pull something special out of the bag.

Our safest prediction would be on deals to the Caribbean, with a good chance of cheaper flights to large US cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston and Orlando.

Ryanair

Let’s hope they rewind to 2021 with a classic ‘BOGOF’ sale! We’d be surprised if they don’t just stick to winter dates, as they have previously. Their sales usually include most of their routes, so you should be able to get a discount on the destination you’re after.

Singapore Airlines

We’re hoping to see a little more than what they delivered in 2022, but we’re not expecting much.

Hopefully their Manchester to Houston route will be down in at least the £450s (which we’ve seen a couple of times this year). We also saw a whisper of cheaper tickets to Australia in June, but the dates were very limited.

Maybe they’ll finally bite the bullet and give us what we really want: some decent drops on South East Asia and lots more trips to Australia!

Emirates

We’re not hopeful. If you like flying with a swankier airline, it’s worth checking if they announce anything, but the chances of a big Black Friday sale are pretty slim.

By Olivia Flight Finder and San Diego native. When she’s not at her local coffee shop writing about slow travel, you’ll find her hiking or road tripping along the West Coast.

They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and that includes Detours!

Texas is so big that we decided to split it into two entries, so here’s the second. Today we’ll be touring the southwestern side of Texas, from El Paso to Austin. Check out last week’s edition for Amarillo to Houston and everywhere in-between.

This is the wild west — ghost towns, cattle ranches, and wide open roads. A huge chunk of the state is covered in the Chihuahuan Desert (named after the same Mexican state as the dog) and provides a home to bighorn sheep, pronghorns, and peccaries.

One of the coolest ways to pack in the sights is to take the River Road along the Rio Grande and up to Marfa. It’ll take you through some pretty unforgettable scenery in and around Big Bend National Park, lined with rocky cliffs, canyons, and vast, untouched desert.

And with ghost towns like Shafter and Terlingua on the route, you definitely start feeling that old west history among the dusty ruins.

History continues into San Antonio — home of the Alamo! This is where Texas won their battle with Mexico and declared themselves an independent country. They’d later join the US to become the 28th state, but Texans are still proud of their history as mavericks.

Today’s San Antonio is known for the Riverwalk, which would almost seem more at home in Venice than central Texas. The stone pathways alongside the San Antonio River take you past restaurants serving up Tex-Mex and BBQ, as well as several museums, shops, and missions.

A bit further up the road, we find Austin. Best known for its live performance scene, Austin has a longstanding history of local music, especially country, blues, and Tejano. Musicians flocked here to gain visibility and experience performing live, and the tradition lives on in the Austin City Limits TV show (going strong since 1976) and accompanying festival.

Not restricting themselves to just musical talent, they also host SXSW. This annual celebration is jam-packed with more live performances, as well as film premieres, keynote speakers, start-up pitches, and tech demonstrations. So if it’s hip and cool and artsy, you just know you’ll find it in Austin.

And what better way to round off our great Texan adventure than by hitting the ( naturally heated) pool with a Mexican martini. So long, partners!

All the important (or silly, or strange) travel news from across the web this week.

• The trend of the ‘ ScareBnB’ is on the rise, as more travellers actively seek out haunted holiday homes for their trips. Creepy!
• It turns out that a travel influencer’s life isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be. Who’d have guessed?
• There’s a (another) new travel trend around the corner. Move over wellness retreats, now we’re on to sexual wellness retreats. Ooh-err!
• And finally, The Guardian have collated their stories about some of the greatest explorers ever to have lived.
  From Gudrid Thorbjarnadóttir, who found the New World 500 years before Columbus, to Matthew Henson, the pioneering African-American Arctic adventurer, you’ll find hundreds of years of inspiring travel tales to keep you going this weekend.