born to be a travel agent

Weather is still crummy outside and somehow I feel like it's given me license to work on things other than my day job. So today, I focused on nailing down some critical components of our trip to Eastern Europe in June.

I've been researching for a long time already, and have built itinerary after itinerary. Once we booked our flights from the US to Prague, I got to work on revising the itinerary again and ended up with a decent plan for seeing Prague, Budapest and the Croatian coast in 20 days.

So with only our flight to and from Europe confirmed, I still had a lot to figure out on the how's, when's and where's of getting from place to place. Through my research I got educated in the world of discount airlines. Seriously, some of these flights were priced at just a couple of Euros. The catch? They only fly certain days and usually it's only a couple of flights a week.

I had mostly been worried about getting us back from Dubrovnik (at the end of the trip) to Prague so we could catch our connecting flight back to the US. No luck in the discount airline department and on Croatian Airlines, it was pricing out around US$750. I just can't bring myself to pay that much considering that our flights across the ocean are virtually free due to years and years of racked up airline miles.

Then I started thinking about other transit options. There are trains. We could take night trains between Prague and Budapest and then Budapest to Croatia. Still doesn't fix my costly Dubrovnik to Prague issue at the end of the trip. I was feeling pretty defeated.

And then the epiphany. Who says I need to stick with the order of the cities? I wonder if I would have better luck with the discount airlines schedules if I switched things up a bit?

And voila, the clouds parted and it all became crystal clear.

There's a discounted flight from Prague to Dubrovnik on June 9, and a discounted flight from Dubrovnik to Budapest on June 19. That would give us 9 days in Croatia, which we could then head up to one of the Dalmatian islands for a few days and still make it back to catch our flight out of Dubrovnik. I still haven't solved for the discount flight from Budapest back to Prague. That particular discount airline hasn't started selling tickets yet for June, but based on the current flight schedule, I'm optimistic that I can go discount airline all the way.

So here's the exciting part. You want to know how much we've spent on flights so far?

Total cost for all three airline tickets (me, Richard and Rick)

• US to Prague: Frequent flier miles (Paid ~ US$150 to cover taxes and fees)
• Prague to Dubrovnik: US$306
• Dubrovnik to Budapest: US$114
• Budapest to Prague: TBD (Discount airline should around US$100+)

Now that I have most of the airline tickets confirmed, I can now focus on the accommodations. We've picked out a Penzion (discount apartment) in Prague that we're going to stay at with my other friends who are going to be in Prague at the same time.

And through some recommendations in an online forum, I found a great, family-run apartment in the heart of Budapest. And lucky for us, they have openings for when we're there. I just paid the deposit and we've got that locked down.

Now, all I need to do is zero in on where we're going to be spending our nine nights in Croatia and start researching the things we want to see and do in each city.

I hope these next five months just fly by. I should also start thinking about the packing list, how I'm going to blog my trip report while I'm away. You know, the important stuff.