TRANSPORTATION - Europe On a Budget - page 106

can purchase point-to-point tickets, but they also offer travel passes (similar to rail passes) for
fifteen or thirty days of unlimited travel. You'll get the best price on point-to-point tickets if
you buy in advance.
Megabus is a low cost carrier within the United Kingdom. They offer service to most cities
in the UK and they also have a few stops throughout Western Europe. It is fairly common to
find $2 fares if you book early. I took a 4.5-hour Megabus journey from Leeds to London and
I paid about $10 (and this was when the exchange rate was super high). I've found $4 tickets
from London to Edinburgh (about a ten-hour journey) for tickets booked more than a month
ahead—although ten hours on a bus might not be super comfortable. They're also starting to
outfit their buses with free Wi-Fi.
National Express is Great Britain's largest bus network with more than one thousand des-
tinations. Like Megabus, they also offer some super cheap seats to those who book early. They
sell travel passes for unlimited travel within a set time period (7, 14, 28 days), but it might
make more sense to just buy point-to-point tickets as needed.
iDBUS is a long-distance coach company owned by the French rail service that connects a
few major cities in Europe (most in France or Italy).
Student Agency connects many Eastern/Northern Europe cities with Budapest and
Prague.
Busabout is a “hop-on, hop-off bus service for backpackers/younger travelers. They run
a fleet of buses that follow predetermined circuits throughout Europe. A few different routes
cater to specific parts of Europe (Western Europe, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, etc.).
Each route has a number of designated cities where the bus stops. For example, the Northern
Loop goes through Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Cesky Krumlov, Vi-
enna, Salzburg, Munich, Stuttgart, and back to Paris (there might be an extra small town or
two on that list). The nice thing is that you can stay in each city as long as you want and you
can stay in whatever hostel/hotel you choose. Once you're ready to leave, you can simply hop
on the next bus and be on your way to the next city.
Busabout does limit your travel a bit, but they do stop at a lot of the places you'd probably
visit anyways (forty-one cities in total). Check Busabout.com for all their travel itineraries.
This could be an option for someone who might be a little intimidated by European train/
plane/bus travel. You're also going to be surrounded by other young travelers so that makes it
easy to meet new friends.
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