Top Tips for Affordable Extreme Day Trips. The Latest Trend In Travel!

Back in November, I flew out for my first extreme day trip. Travelling with two girlfriends, the trip was inspired when one of my friends discovered the ‘Extreme Day Trips’ Facebook page and decided she wanted to give it a go. I never say no to anything, to we booked our flights to Cologne/Koln. (You can read all about our day at Cologne’s Christmas markets here).

It was a fun but totally exhausting day, and an experience I’ll definitely try again. We’ve done a couple of very short breaks with the boys (where we stay in a country for just one night) but I haven’t tried an extreme day trip with kids yet. That will be my next mission!

So what is an extreme day trip? And what are my top tips for making the most of it if you decide to give it a go? Here are my top tips!

What Is An Extreme Day Trip?

If you’re not already familiar with the concept, an extreme day trip really does exactly what it says on the tin! It’s a day trip that’s considered extreme because you fly in and out of a different country for a day trip.

Extreme day trips tend to be more popular in Europe than in the U.S. mostly because geographically European countries are so close together, so you can fly to another country from the UK in just an hour or two.

Low cost airlines such as Ryanair and Wizz Air also make this a much easier and more affordable proposition: they are well connected and insanely affordable.

The whole concept of an extreme day trip is extremely fast paced. You want to see as many sites as possible in as short a time as possible. To make the most of your day you need to book the first, early morning flight out of your closest airport then fly back home on the last flight, which is usually a late evening flight.

Tip 1 – Choose Your Destination Wisely

Budget often drives location: I like to get my flights for under £30 if i’m choosing a last minute Ryanair break (that’s how we ended up in Warsaw last January! The flights were a steal!) so some people suggest you should just look on the Ryanair website and book the cheapest flights.

However I have a different approach. Some airports can be miles outside of the city (or even in a different city to the one they’re named after altogether) and this means hours of your precious day trip are wasted on transfer time. So I saw look for flights where you’re flying to an airport that’s IN the city with minimal transport time. Cologne is a great example of this: we took a direct 15 minute train ride to the city centre and the tickets cost pennies.

Other cities that have short transfer time from airport to city centre (making them ideal for an extreme day trip) include: Nice, Malaga, and Amsterdam. We were in Naples last month, and that was also just a 15 minute shuttle-bus ride from the airport, so would be a great choice for a city day. (I would go to Naples for the day again just to eat pastries and pizza!)

If you want a beach break then try Salou (a 15 minute transfer from Reus airport) or Ibiza (less than a 10 minute taxi ride from the airport to Playa en Bossa beach).

Tip 2 – Pack Lightly

Because this is a day trip you won’t need to carry a lot of stuff with you, and you should aim to ensure your backpack/handbag is as light as possible because you’ll be carrying it around all day with you.

I carried a comfortable cross-body bag and in it I had my phone, wallet, and passport (the essentials you can’t travel without!), powerbank so I could charge my phone, headphones for listening to music on the plane, paracetamol, Gaviscon, and Imodium (showing my age – these are just in case supplies!), lipstick, lip balm, handy wet wipes, and a miniature perfume for freshening up. I know other people carry more, but that was all I needed!

However although these are extreme day trips and 9 times out of 10 you’ll be home by bedtime, it’s worth noting that delays can and do happen. For this reason I also slipped a clean pair of knickers in my back, so that if we ended up having to stay overnight due to delayed/cancelled flights I could at least have fresh underwear.

Tip 3 – Sleep on the Plane

Make no mistake, these are LONG days. And you’re going to spend anywhere between 18-24 hours out the house before you can crawl back into your bed again. It’s worth it, but it is exhausting.

So my third tip is to rest where you can. Have an early night the night before you fly, sleep both ways on the plane. I also made sure that I didn’t have a heavy day planned for the day after the trip: we walked more than 30,000 steps so my mind and my body were both exhausted and glad of the rest!

Tip 4 – Have A Loose Plan

If you only have one day in a city, you want to make the most of it. I’m a big fan of going with the flow, but for this kind of trip I recommend having at least a very basic, loose plan.

If you’re flying to Barcelona for example and you’ve always wanted to see La Sagrada Familia then book tickets before you arrive: they sell out fast and you’ll only be disappointed to go all that way to miss out. Then the rest of your day can be built around that one anchor activity.

For us, we knew we wanted to see 2 of the Christmas markets in Cologne, so we made sure we knew where they were, what times they opened, and how to get between them. A little bit of planning will make your whole experience much easier.

On the other end of the spectrum, don’t overstretch yourself by booking too many activities. One or two is plenty! Then you can use the rest of your time to be spontaneous, explore the city and (if you’re anything like me) indulge in the local cuisine.

A Great Budget Option

I think one of the reasons people find Extreme Day Trips so appealing is because they’re so wallet friendly. We paid less for our flights to Cologne than we would have for a train ticket to London (which I think says a lot about the rail network in the UK)!

And opting for a day trip means you don’t have to worry about the additional costs involved with finding a hotel, as well as the meal and entertainment cost that obviously go up the longer you stay in a country.

I didn’t spend much more than £100 on my extreme day trip, and that included flights, food, souvenirs, and other transportation. I would have spent more on a train ticket and dinner had we stayed in the UK. So from this perspective, Extreme Day Tripping offers a great way for people to see the world on a budget, and for people to travel who might otherwise not have been able to afford to.

Final note: I know that taking short haul flights can be high polluting, and this was definitely something I thought about when booking our trip. If you have environmental concerns then it is also possible to take an extreme day trip via train, especially if you live in or around London. You can easily reach Brussels, Paris, and Amsterdam for day trips. When we lived in London, Mike and I regularly went to Paris for day trips via Eurostar, so this is more than achievable and a much more sustainable option.

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