One thing that I know everyone is looking to figure out is how my fiancée and I pay for our vacations. It seems like every few months we’re trekking out to explore more of the world.

So, I wanted to share with you how we paid for things in Milano! So, here’s everything in pieces from the planes we took, the trains we hopped, the places we stayed, and the things we ate!

Traveling

Okay so the first thing is getting there, obviously. In order to get to Milano this time, we flew from Atlanta to Milano Malpensa. That sentence is misleading, however, because we had a total of 3 planes to catch each way.

Let me explain.

This trip was a rugged, how economically can we actually do this kind of adventure. So I researched and figured out how to get the cheapest international flight. The search engine I use to look for flights is called Skyscanner. It gets information from a lot of flight records and you don’t get pricier flights when you search around a lot, unlike Google which all but requires a browser history clearing for the best flight prices.

Now, for some probably arbitrary reason, the closest city to you will have more expensive prices for international travel than a further city. For example, when I searched flights from Atlanta to Milano today, I found around 1,300 to be the cheapest round trip flight. Now if I search flights from Miami to Milano, I can find tickets for about 1,000. It makes more sense economically to get a flight from your city to another city and then to your other locations.

Some other things to consider are the dates for your flights. It varies from location to location, but the day of the week that you fly affects the price of your flight. That’s why I use Skyscanner. They have a feature that lets you look for the cheapest flight days.

So for us, the best day to leave was a Sunday. We caught an early flight from Atlanta to Orlando. From Orlando, we flew to New York, and from New York, we took an evening flight to Milano. On the way back, it was a little more tricky, because we had an airport change in our London connection from Milano to Orlando.

Since we didn’t check bags and used as much public transportation as we could, the total for 2 people going from Atlanta to Milano was a little shy of $1500.

Getting Around Town

Once we got to Milano, we stayed for a few days so we got Metro passes. They are easy to use and get you exactly where you want to go. They aren’t very crowded, and they are definitely worth  the money.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this where I talk about where we stayed in Milano!