Less than a day after publishing last week’s post, Tyler and I sat down to do some serious flight searching. With Google Flights’ Explore Tool cast to the big screen, we started poking around. We had several requirements to hit:
• The flights had to be no more than $500 per person. We’ve been fortunate with some of our recent flight deals – like the steal of a flight we got to Spain – and we couldn’t stomach spending more than that for this next vacation. I wouldn’t say we’re “budget travelers,” but the money we don’t spend on flights can be spent on other travel-related experiences. For example, our accommodations have generally gotten more expensive now that we have a toddler in tow!
• We had to leave the continental US. I say that as I am literally en route to Nevada, but we really wanted to go abroad again for this family trip. Considering we can’t return to New Zealand at that price point, we narrowed down our options to locations in both Europe and South America. We also looked at flights going out of both Tampa and Orlando, since that gave us some more availability within our budget.
• The location had to be new to us. We were definitely open to a new city in a country we’ve visited before, as I touched on with some of the options we’d been reviewing. However, we opted not to return to Copenhagen and Amsterdam since we’ve been there before, despite the solid flight prices available. Those locations are both wonderful, and I’d highly recommend them, but we wanted another chance to explore somewhere new.
Ultimately, we found some great deals out of Orlando to the Nordic countries, so we played around with the dates and availability there. What was super exciting for me was to find these price points even on multi-city flights, so we knew we’d get the chance to hit up at least two new spots. Which is how we booked this upcoming trip for the spring, flying into Stockholm, Sweden, then flying home from Helsinki, Finland. We’ll be flying Icelandair, so we’ll have quick layovers in Iceland both ways, but we couldn’t pass it up; our flights were only $382 per person!
I’m very excited to have this trip on the books and start planning our next adventure!
