To travel across Europe and visit 4 or 5 different countries and 8 or 9 locations in two weeks you have to have well-honed research skills and a willingness to roll with circumstances beyond one’s control. You have to know how to locate, pay for, and print out airline and train tickets online. You have to know something about the airports and train stations and mass transit systems you will use in order to be on the go with an hour or two between connections. It’s possible to do this on a tight budget thanks to Ryanair and other low-cost airlines. Thanks to Air Canada this year it was possible to go round trip to Europe in the height of the tourist season for $1000 from the US via Canada. Not everyone knows that it is possible to hopscotch across Europe at $50 or $100 a flight. Ryanair is a cheap way to fly from one place to another in Europe. The more established airlines like Lufthansa sometimes match their prices. Like Southwest, book directly through Ryanair, not a third party. You can fly to Dublin from Toronto, explore Ireland at one’s leisure (or not), and then head elsewhere—in my case Pisa, a perfect point of access to Italy because the airport is small and manageable, only two kilometers from the train station, with fast trains to Rome in one direction, Turin in another, and Florence in another. Of course you will want to see the leaning Tower of Pisa and the Baptistery if you haven’t. It is easy to become paranoid about what might go wrong while traveling. There are times in which Murphy’s Law sets in with a vengeance. But I am grateful for the many times things go wildly right, especially if one is willing to live according to the principle that it’s not over until it’s over. On my way to Pisa from Dublin, by the time I reached the airport with an hour to spare I was mentally exhausted. I didn’t read my ticket carefully and I should have been turned away at the gate. I had neglected to carry out a necessary step. But the Irish are like Italians. They enjoy living according the anarchic truth that laws are made for man, not man for the laws. In place of the required visa check, a Ryanair employee scribbled his John Hancock across my tattered printout of a ticket okaying my departure. Because, he said, if he sent me back to do the check, I would have missed the plane. It is a pleasure to depend on someone who knows that the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Ryanair rocks!
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 09:01:37 +0000
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