3 Tips for Bargain Travel for Seniors
Yes, you can travel even if your budget is limited. But you have to be smart about it and invest some time to make the most of every vacation dollar.
Because hotel rooms are priced for business travelers, we have reported on how to find really nice but astonishingly cheap rooms to stay in–even in high priced cities like San Francisco and London. You can also check the Lonely Planet website for bargains, but many are targeted toward young people and may not be suitable for retirees. Their general information about locations, however, is terrific!
Now for some other ways to cut costs and travel well.
Travel off-season for fewer crowds
Visiting Venice in August is a nightmare. Tens of thousands of tourists swarm this small, beautiful city. Americans, Germans, Brits, and Japanese take over and many Venetians leave. On the other hand, visiting Paris in August is like stopping by a ghost town. Parisians are on vacation and many places are closed. But visit Venice or Paris in October or April and you will have a much better, friendlier, and far less expensive experience. NOTE: Venice now has visitor restrictions on the number of non-resident people who can enter the city.
While some travel advisors suggest traveling completely off-season–Europe in winter, Mexico in summer–believe me, it is much better to travel in the Spring and Fall. In most locations the weather is still pleasant and prices are lower than peak season.
I recommend that you go to a weather website and check out the average temperature and daily rainfall for any place you plan to visit–before you make your reservations.
Live like the locals do
You will have a much richer travel experience if you do things that locals do. You won’t just be seeing the sights, you will be experiencing the life of people in your vacation destination city.
Buy groceries in a neighborhood market and fix lunch for yourself to eat in a nearby park or while seeing the sights.
Ask local people if they have recommendations for restaurants or entertainment. You might be pleasantly surprised at how helpful they will be.
The chances are that you will learn more about the destination and the people living there than you would as a conventional tourist. The big bonus: you will have far more interesting stories to tell when you return home.
Search for free events and attractions
Almost every city on the planet now has a website or online newsletter with suggestions for what to do for free. They are often designed for locals and include the best free events. So go to your favorite search engine and search for “free events in _ _ _ _ _ “. Then mix up your vacation activities with both free and paid events. And be sure to look for special fairs or festivals in the region. You can always get there by ground transportation and get to talk with locals while you are at it!
A Real Life Retirement:
A decade ago, Marilyn spent 3 months living in Budapest in the spare bedrooms of widows in the old part of the city. The cost for her room was unbelievably low–and probably still is.
Her breakfast was coffee and a roll supplied by her hostess. Lunch was often a sandwich at a stand-up counter in a local cafe frequented by workers. Dinner was the one splurge meal of the day and even it was not expensive.
Because she was in the old city, a central location, she walked to museums and concert halls. In the 3 months she learned a lot about how Hungarians live and look at the world around them as well as seeing the sights including a visit to Budapest by the Pope.
If she had stayed in one of the big Western-style hotels along the Danube her vacation money would have been gone in less than 2 weeks.
NOTE: All names on this site have been changed to protect individual privacy. The stories are real, the names are not.