Affordable Travel | Travel Tips | Destination Photographer | How to travel for cheap

Let me start out with this - My husband and I have decided that we want to spend all of our vacation time and money traveling around the world. I have personally traveled to 14 countries and counting (my husband has me beat by a few more countries than me), and I'm only 23 living in the middle of the United States.

Both my husband and I feel like we're pretty great when it comes to traveling to a different country. While traveling is our absolute favorite thing to do, I'm not going to pretend like it's really easy breezy. 😜 ( I think that idea often gets lost a lot in the romantic idea of traveling).

I've had my passport stolen 24 hours before my plane took off. I've missed so many flights - who knows how many times I've slept in an airport. My bags have gotten lost. I've had emergency plane landings.

Traveling is not for the weak.

So here are my affordable travel tips:

1. Book your hotel / plane ride as a bundle. You save money when you book the packages together. We personally often use Kayak.com. Our trips to Europe from the Midwest often are around $650-800 per person for a week stay in a hotel and the flights round trip (in the off season - which leads to my second point...)

2. Travel during the off season. For one - it's cheaper by a couple hundred dollars. For two - less tourists = all the lines are short. The only lines I've ever waited for in another country was the Eiffel Tower (20 min. wait) and the Louvre (30 min. wait) in January. (Each of those touristy areas are 2-3 hour wait times in peak season).

3. Use public transportation. While we are in each country, we try to use the public transportation as much as possible. We also walk - A LOT. So much walking. But that's how everyone in the world lives (except for the United States). Both walking and using the public transportation makes you feel a little more local - whether that's riding the trains or buses. Plus who has the money to Uber everywhere?

We purchase a week long "tourist" ticket for the trains and buses, and we have the ticket mailed to our house.

4. Buy some meals at a grocery store. As much as we love good food, you would be surprised by how draining it is to eat out for every meal, so we purchase sandwiches or packaged salad mixes for some cheap meals. My husband especially likes to visit the grocery stores in different countries - he likes looking at all these new and novel items each country is known for. While in Paris, we bought baguettes for snacks/dinner some nights, just because that's how much I love fresh bread.

5. Ryan Air flights (specifically for European travels). Oh my word, those flights are the cheapest things I've ever seen, and I don't want to mislead you in anyway. You do get what you pay for, but if you're trying to save money those flights are the best. Last time we were in London, we decided to fly to Dublin for the day - yes, I just said fly over for the day (say whaaaat?). We booked an early flight to Dublin and an evening flight back to London, for $20 a ticket. Since we were only traveling for a day, we didn't even take a carry-on (which made the ticket so low).

6. Booking a tour in a tour bus. That sounds so cheesy as I type that out, but we really had the best deal in England. Since it was January - there were little to no tourists in England, so we had the bus to ourselves. I think there were about 8 people total on the bus ride to Oxford, Shakespeare's house, and Warsaw Castle. There was even a boxed lunch included in the $65 price tag per person. Since we didn't have a car, or a license to drive.... we couldn't have gotten a better deal to travel all over England, tickets to each place we went to, and have lunch.

7. Eating at restaurants off the main touristy areas. When we ate out, we never ate around the touristy parts of town. If we were close to a tourist attraction, we would walk several blocks into the neighborhood, and we always found the food to be amazing, less crowds, and less expensive. Local food is so good!

8. Free Attractions - Most museums in Europe are free or discounted for "Youths" (anyone under 26). Take your ID to show at ticket offices, and if it's not free it's significantly cheaper.

9. Use Airline Miles - We have now booked two international trips completely "free" by using different airline miles and points two years in a row. Reading the fine print on those "deals" can really help speed up the process of gaining rewards miles.

10. Use Travel Insurance - It's less than $100 per person and depending on which kind you get, it helps with delayed flights, airport mishaps, and peace of mind while inside the country. It's a lot less expensive than the flight you might have to book last minute because something went wrong.

Our next trip is to Italy!! We are headed to Rome, Positano- Amalfi Coast, and London, England. Where should we go next?