Our Low(er) Cost Trip from
London Heathrow to Trieste, Italy

Curtis and I are always looking for ways to travel just a little bit cheaper, without giving up basic comforts. On a recent trip to the Balkans, we decided to try Ryanair. I had first heard about Ryanair, a low-cost airline in Europe, in 2004 and had wanted to try them ever since.
 
The biggest issue we’ve had with the airline is that it flies out of smaller airports, and it’s not real convenient. We finally decided to bite the bullet. We flew into London Heathrow from D/FW and arrived in time for breakfast. We’re really big fans of an English breakfast, so we stopped at The Globe in the Arrivals Hall. We had hot tea, fried eggs, toast, grilled tomatoes, hash browns, and of course what the English call baked beans (what we call pork and beans). If you’ve never had pork and beans on toast, you are missing a treat! This breakfast is one we recreate at home fairly frequently.
 
After breakfast, we just had to walk to the Central Bus Station to wait for the bus to Stansted Airport where we would catch the flight on Ryanair. The Central Bus Station is an easy walk and is on the Heathrow Airport grounds. You can catch many local and long-distance buses from here. It’s the busiest bus station in the UK, so we were able to get some people watching in while we waited for our bus to arrive.
 
After an hour and a half ride, we arrived at Stansted. This airport is crazy busy! It is the base for Ryanair, as well as a number of other low-cost carriers. It’s the 4th busiest airport in the UK, and the day we were there was no exception. We had our Visitor in Transit Visa checked, got through security, and made the long walk to the departure lounge where we waited for our gate to be announced. We could tell by the people around us that this is the low-cost carrier airport. There were many students, young people, and more blue-collar than white-collar travelers. Great people watching!
 
So the gate was finally announced and we got on a train to take us to our gate. They wait until shortly before the boarding time to announce the gate, so you don’t have a lot of time to mess around. We had paid a little extra for an assigned seat on the flight, so we had priority boarding. Really the only reason we did this was because, as usual, we were not checking any bags and wanted to make sure we had room in the overhead bins for our luggage.
 
We had about a 10 minute wait on the tarmac before we boarded. Luckily we had good weather and didn’t have to stand outside in the normal London rain. We watched other people’s luggage being loaded, so we weren’t bored. All in all, the experience at Stansted was good.
 
As expected, the airplane itself was basic. It had plastic seats, no seat pockets, and vinyl cushions. The safety cards were stuck to the back of the seat in front of you. But we had a lot of leg room, which is important for the tall husband. And joy of joys, the seats didn’t recline so you didn’t have to worry about the person in front of you crashing back into your space unexpectedly.
 
There was no included food or beverage on the flight, but the flight attendants are also good salesmen. First, they sold hot food and drinks. Then they sold lottery tickets. Then they sold duty free items.  They were kept busy with all their selling on the two hour flight.  Then, after a hard landing, we were in Trieste!
 
It took about an hour to rent our car and get out of the airport in our cute little Alfa Romeo, and we had a little trouble getting to our hotel because of all the one-way streets and road construction. I finally hopped out to check in at the hotel while Curtis circled the block. After checking in I met him back outside, grabbed the luggage, and sent him with a map to find parking.
 
We got a recommendation for a pizza restaurant from the hotel desk. It was only a short walk, and it started sprinkling on the way. We still sat outside to enjoy our pizza (Quatro Estaciones, oddly with only three seasons for Curtis, Caprese with tomato, olives, basil and capers for me), beer (for Curtis) and wine (for me) and it starting raining in earnest while we were there. We didn’t care; we relaxed and ate and drank and marveled at the joy of being in Italy once again.
 
Once it stopped raining we headed back to the hotel. We were in bed by 9pm, which is really late for us on the first day of a European trip! We had been up for thirty-one hours!
 
Taking the trip to Stansted and then flying Ryanair to Trieste was worth the savings. We really didn’t have a lot of down-time between segments; we’ve found the more down-time we have the more tired we get. So we’ll be using Ryanair again in the future when it works into our overall plans.

 

Wine with a view.

Wine with a view.

You can never go wrong with Pizza in Italy

You can’t go wrong with pizza in Italy