I have been much more productive then I actually planned to be during this break. So productive, in fact, that I haven’t even went on any day trips like I had planned to in the beginning. So far, I’ve spent most of my days working my butt off on my resume and personal statement, getting caught up on blog posts, running errands, and planning. I’ve also occasionally gone on some walks around town, cooked some dishes and watched a little TV with my roommate. Although I haven’t travelled like I planned to in the beginning, I am still excited about one thing that I managed to do: book my flight and plan my 5-day trip to Italy that I will be taking in a couple of weeks.
I am so excited that I am finally able to cross a few cities off of my list of places to travel in Europe, even though I haven’t travelled to nearly as many places as I would have liked to. Right after Paris, I knew that Italy was the next place that I had to go to; just because it’s ITALY. During the first week of May we happen to have a day off of school because of a national holiday, and then the schools in Jávea have the next two days off because of a local holiday, and Friday is my day off; so I knew that with 3 extra days this would be a great time to take a trip. I plan to spend a little time in Milan and Florence and then spend the majority of my time in Rome. I am dying to see Venice but I don’t think that I will have enough time to travel to that part of the country. Maybe I’ll save Venice for a future trip.
Anyway, as I talked about here, one of the reasons why I love Europe so much is because, compared to the U.S., it is relatively very cheap to travel between different European cities. One of the reasons why it is so cheap to travel is because there are different budget airlines available such as EasyJet, Vueling and the airline that I have a love-hate relationship with, Ryanair.
Ryanair is a low-cost Irish airline that was founded in 1985. In the last couple of years Ryanair has rapidly expanded and it has become one of the most popular airlines in Europe, especially among younger travelers. Ryanair started off as an airline going between Ireland and England and it is now an airline that operates in more than 25 European countries and over 100 cities.
The reason why I love Ryanair is because, if booked at the right time, you can get a one-way ticket for as low as 10 Euros (or 13 American dollars) which is amazingly cheap. My tickets from Spain to Italy ended up being less than 50 Euros. For this price, I couldn’t even buy a plane ticket to get anywhere in the United States. Of course every ticket isn’t that cheap; some can be as high as 300 Euros, but if you book a ticket to the right place at the right time, it can be very reasonable.
Although I love the prices of the tickets, that is about the only thing that I actually love about Ryanair. There are a handful of things, however, that I hate about this airline. The first thing that I hate is the waiting time. Ryanair prides itself on having the most on-time arrivals and departures of all the airlines in Europe. In my experience travelling with Ryanair, this has been true (expect on my flight back to Madrid from Paris) bus this is because passengers are told to be at the gate a whole 2 hours before each flight! I have never been a patient person and the idea of having to be at your gate for almost two hours before your flight just to sit there and wait annoys me. In addition to this, there aren’t any reserved seats on Ryanair (unless you pay an extra fee to reserve your seat online) so if you want to get a good seat, or if you want to sit with your friends or family members, you have to arrive early to get a spot in the front of the line. The seats are literally first come, first serve.
Another thing that I hate about Ryanair is the baggage allowance. On Ryanair you are only allowed one free carry-on item that has to coincide with the weight and size requirements that the airline states. If you have a purse or umbrella you have to place it inside of your one carry-on item. And, unlike most airlines where the flight attendants look at your baggage and are able to tell whether or not it will fit in the carry-on compartment at the top, Ryanair most of time has the passengers test their luggage by having them place their backpacks, or small suitcases, in a box that isn’t really even representative of the space in the overhead compartments. This is also done right before, and sometimes even during, the boarding.
There are other things that I hate about Ryanair, like the fact that you must print out your boarding passes before getting to the airport, the fact that most of the airports partnering with Ryanair are farther away from the center of the cites (you sometimes have to take an hour-long bus ride to get to the center) and the fact that you basically have to pay for everything while you are on the flight; but I suppose these are some of the things that come along with travelling on a low-budget airline.
Although the amount of things that I dislike about Ryanair far surpasses the one thing that I do like, I will continue to be a Ryanair customer for as long as the tickets are cheap. Ryanair and I will just continue to have a love-hate relationship with each other.
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