Latest news with #daytrips
The Independent
08-07-2025
- The Independent
What are your top day trips to escape Paris?
Q Could you recommend a couple of day trips from Paris? K Jones A Versailles is so close to Paris that I'm not sure you can count it as a day trip; trains from Montparnasse station in the capital take just 12 minutes to reach this pretty town and its formidable chateau. So I shall instead recommend locations that are distinctively outside Paris yet easily accessible by rail. Compiegne, 50 miles northeast and an hour by train from Gare du Nord, is a joy: a compact, elegant city. It has a palace to rival Versailles, except in terms of crowds. The grounds are spectacular. A few miles to the east of Compiegne is the forest location central to the 20th-century conflict. You can visit the 'Armistice Carriage' – a replica of the wagon in which the German surrender in 1918 and the French surrender in 1940 were both taken. It is part of a sombre and informative memorial to the events and their consequences. Back in town, you can find plenty of agreeable places to lunch at prices much lower than in the capital (or Versailles). Fontainebleau, 40 miles southeast of Paris, is served by fast (40 minutes), frequent and low-cost trains. The highlight is the Chateau de Fontainebleau, which Francis I transformed from a 12th-century medieval castle into an Italianate palace. As a royal residence, it pre-dates Versailles. After the French Revolution, the chateau became the Imperial Palace, much enjoyed by Napoleon Bonaparte; it houses the only Napoleonic throne room still in existence. The surrounding forest used to be prime hunting territory for French royalty, but is now the preserve of cyclists, hikers and rock climbers. For lunch (or an early dinner before heading back to Paris), I recommend the convivial, tasty and good-value La Petite Ardoise bistrot. I have also heard good things about Provins, a fortified medieval town southeast of Paris. It is on the Unesco world heritage list, and on my must-visit list. Q I have been watching all your reports about the changing rules of cabin baggage. For the last 12 months or so, on a number of flights with British Airways, ground staff have instructed that cabin luggage of certain boarding groups should be placed in the hold. How could a change of legislation impact that behaviour, if passed? Paul B A The background: pressure is mounting in Europe to increase the free cabin baggage allowance for every airline passenger. Consumer groups across the EU are demanding that every passenger should be allowed to carry a wheeled suitcase, as well as a 'personal item' such as a handbag or laptop bag, free of charge. MEPs at the European parliament have voted in favour of the concept. They say allowing two cabin bags on board 'would enhance transparency and consumer protection for all air travellers'. The budget airlines say making two free bags mandatory would do exactly the opposite. It would remove the option that every passenger has to take only one, fairly small bag on board without paying extra. They add that their charges are entirely transparent; the basic fare is available to anyone, but for more than minimal baggage, you will pay extra. While I sympathise with their view, the low-cost carriers have brought extra attention to their policies by upping the cost of baggage to an absurd degree. On 1 October, for example, I can buy a Ryanair flight from Manchester to Cork for £16.99. But taking a larger piece of cabin baggage will cost an extra £17 – more than doubling the cost. The basic fare is too low, and the charge for taking a trolley bag on board is way too high. If the European Union presses ahead with a new law, by default, it will be imposed in the UK, I believe. The consequences will be messy. As you describe, British Airways – which has a generous two-bag limit – often has to consign the wheeled cases of lower-spending passengers to the hold. All the airlines would end up doing something similar, slowing down the boarding process and adding to costs. But I predict the EU will see sense and leave things as they are. Q I travelled to South America fairly frequently in the 2010s, usually changing planes in Madrid or using the Avianca nonstop from London Heathrow to Bogota. For my first post-Covid visit I'm interested in something a bit different: travelling via Africa or the Atlantic islands. What are the options? Daniel C A Hundreds of daily flights link Europe, the US and Canada across the North Atlantic. But precious few cross the South Atlantic between Africa and Latin America. I can muster only four – all of them heading from Africa to the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo, which is the main aviation hub in South America. The most accessible from a UK perspective is the Royal Air Maroc link from Casablanca, which operates three times a week. Further south, Taag Angola connects the capital, Luanda, with Sao Paulo – once again three times weekly. And South African Airways flies on alternate days from Johannesburg and Cape Town to the Brazilian hub. Fares are high, reflecting the limited supply of seats. If you are tempted to avail of one of them, I suggest you use a good travel agent. They may be able to leverage the alliances to which Royal Air Maroc and South African Airways belong: Oneworld and Star respectively. You also mention the Atlantic islands. Unfortunately, I can see nothing from the Canary Islands, the Azores or the Cape Verde archipelago to South America, despite the strong heritage links. Tenerife was once connected with Caracas in Venezuela – the country known as the 'eighth isle' of the Canaries because so many islanders settled there. But the implosion of the Venezuelan economy brought an end to the link. I can see a slightly greater chance of one of the Cape Verde islands being connected to Brazil. Both are former Portuguese possessions; Sal to Recife is under 1,900 miles, representing a four-hour flight to a key Brazilian city. But with a worldwide shortage of planes, I do not predict that route will be announced anytime soon. And neither will either of the former Air France Concorde routes be resurrected: Santa Maria in the Azores to Caracas, and Dakar to Rio.
Telegraph
02-07-2025
- Telegraph
The 10 best day trips from Bath
Close to Bristol and the southern Cotswolds, with the many attractions of Somerset and western Wiltshire on its doorstep, Bath is brilliantly placed for a wide variety of day trips. Within easy reach are unimprovably photogenic villages, enjoyable countryside walks, historic cities with spectacular cathedrals, two of the country's top prehistoric sites and memorable National Trust properties. Some of the suggestions below, such as Lacock and Castle Combe, Wells and Glastonbury, and Salisbury and Stonehenge, are not far from each other so combine neatly for a busy full day's outing. Having a car helps being able to explore, but several destinations are easily reachable from Bath by train. All our day trip recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert. Find out more below or for more Bath inspiration, see our guides to the city's best hotels, restaurants, bars and nightlife, pubs, things to do and places for afternoon tea. Find a day trip by type: Best for history Stonehenge Britain's most iconic prehistoric monument is infinitely more rewarding if you understand where the stones came from, the alignment with the solstices and how the monument sits in a landscape littered with prehistoric sites. Information at the stones is very limited, so download the audio guide. To avoid the crowds go early or late in the day. Better still, book a 'Stone Circle Experience' visit outside regular opening hours, very early in the morning or in the evening: you go inside the stone circle in a small group with a guide.
CNN
23-06-2025
- CNN
London to Sweden for the day: These travelers are embracing extreme day trips
After scoring a rock-bottom fare on Ryanair from London to Gothenburg, Graham Earl, his wife and their two daughters flew to Sweden for the day this past May to visit a popular theme park. The family caught an early morning flight from London Stansted Airport, grabbed a ride share to the park after landing in Gothenburg and arrived just as Liseberg's gates opened at 11 a.m. They spent the entire day tackling the rides and shows with their daughters, ages 11 and 13, and enjoyed a meal at an Italian restaurant before leaving for the airport at 9 p.m. to catch their flight home. The Earls' flights cost £24.99 (around $34) each, roundtrip. Add to that four theme park tickets and other expenditures for the day and the total came out to roughly the same as what the family would have spent for entry tickets alone to an amusement park near their home on England's South Coast, Earl says. For the foursome, the Swedish jaunt was one of five day trips around Europe they've taken so far this year. They've traveled there and back for the day from England to places like Dublin, Venice and Palma de Mallorca in Spain – all while keeping airfare costs under £25 per person and arriving home in time to sleep in their own beds. While the United Kingdom — with its low-cost air carriers offering frequent connections throughout Europe — is a hub for 'extreme day trips' like the ones the Earls embarked on this year, people have also tried it in the US and beyond. The practice is not without its environmental drawbacks, but fans of the one-day trip say it's a fun and satisfying way to get a taste of a new place, especially when budgets and vacation time are limited. Earl's daughters liked their Sweden day trip best of all, he said, but spending a day in Venice, where they clocked more than 17,000 steps exploring the city, was tops for him. With school holidays making it hard and expensive to travel for much of the year, the travel hack feels rewarding, he says. 'Doing these day trips on a weekend outside of school and work hours, it kind of works from a budget point of view. It's allowing us to do lots of little mini adventures throughout the year,' Earl says. The sometimes exorbitant price of train fares across the UK compared to those in many other European countries paired with the ample options for cheap flights on budget airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair from cities like London, Edinburgh and Manchester has sparked this day-trip trend among British travelers. A Facebook group, Extreme Day Trips, currently has nearly 324,000 members who share tips on everything from the full breakdown of how every hour of their day trip played out to restaurant suggestions in places like Prague and Milan and just-scored airfare deals. All-in and itemized pricing info is sometimes shared; one member's recent extreme day trip from Sheffield to Pisa cost her £121 (about $163) including flights, ground transport and food and drinks. Michael Cracknell, a UPS driver and wedding photographer from near Brighton on England's South Coast, says he created the group in 2022 'purely as a way of showing people who are based in the UK that there are alternatives to our overpriced public transport system and overpriced days out within this country.' In 2019, when looking for a day out somewhere, he passed on city trips at home in England and turned his sights farther afield, catching flights for day trips to places like Switzerland, Germany and Spain. In 2022, Cracknell realized he'd been to 22 different countries just for the day, and the idea to start the Facebook group was born. Today, Cracknell and several other unpaid group administrators serve as facilitators and guides for extreme day trips. Demand far exceeds the space available, he says. Group trip dates are released months in advance on the Facebook page and thousands of people apply via a form, but the trips are limited to 20 or 30 people, Cracknell says. He tells the travelers who secure a slot (the selection process is random) the exact flights to book, what train tickets to reserve and information about any other attraction tickets and logistics they'll need to book themselves before meeting with the group at the airport for an early morning flight. Cracknell said he has led more than 500 people on extreme day trips in recent years to locations in Switzerland, one of his favorite countries for spending an unforgettable day. He is guiding two group trips to Athens from London later this year as well as 10 more day trips to Switzerland. Cracknell tries to keep total costs from London Gatwick for such trips to around £170 (about $228) per person or less. 'The Swiss Alps offer an easy day out for these people that's something completely unique that 95% of them have never done before. And they go back to work on Monday morning, still buzzing from it. They say to their work colleagues, 'Guess what I did at the weekend? We went to Switzerland,'' he says. The logistics of finding the cheapest airfares for out and back day trips can be time-consuming as it often involves booking flights on two different airlines, says Rick Blyth, who runs the website (The website is not related to the Facebook page, which came before it, but Cracknell and Blyth collaborate on some projects). The site's free flight tool lets users search for low-cost, low-demand flights from their home airports across the UK to destinations across Europe. It also has day itineraries for packing a weekend's worth of fun into a single day in cities and regions including Lisbon, Lake Como in Italy and Finnish Lapland. A paid premium version of the website, with an annual fee for members (currently £35 per year or about $47), just launched and allows users to further customize their extreme day trip flight searches. And when it comes to where to go for the day and what you can see and do there, those options are the stuff of travel dreams, Blyth says. 'You've got this choice of getting an expensive train to somewhere you already know or sitting on the motorways stuck in traffic — or getting on a cheap flight and going exploring Lapland, or the desert in Morocco, or going to a spa day in Bucharest, visiting Barcelona, going on a hike on Caminito del Rey in Malaga. There's just so much you could do,' he says. The environmental toll of taking short-haul flights — just because they're inexpensive and you can — is impossible to ignore. In 2023, France banned short-haul domestic flights where train journeys of 2.5 hours were available instead to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Blyth says he doesn't pretend extreme day trips are guilt-free travel, but it's worth considering that people traveling this way usually travel light and opt for low-demand early morning and late-night flights. He says they're often filling seats on empty planes and therefore lowering the overall carbon imprint per passenger. will plant six trees for every premium member that signs up for the new service and 12 trees for every premium plus member, he adds. He also contends that skipping hotel stays cuts down on hidden energy costs related to things like laundry and air conditioning. There are other impacts to consider, too. Extreme day trip might leave you feeling more exhausted than refreshed by the time you make it home, says Georgia Fowkes, a travel advisor for Altezza Travel. Fowkes says she has noticed growing interest in one-day trips, likely driven by the rise of affordable and frequent flights. But she says that after one or two of them, travelers might realize that such a packed trip took too much energy for the rewards reaped. 'The typical one-day itinerary tends to be overly ambitious when accounting for the time spent at airports, waiting in lines and commuting. A great brunch and a cappuccino won't save the day,' she says. Earlier this year, Fowkes took advantage of a flash sale on US low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines to travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago for the day to visit friends. Her flight left before sunrise from Pittsburgh and returned after midnight, at which point she was utterly exhausted from the long hours of sightseeing and time in transit. 'I was wrung out. And in reality, my one-day trip cost me two more days to fully get back into my routine. This is the part of one-day trips that people rarely talk about,' she says. Related video He missed his flight while making a TikTok video. Millions are happy he did American influencer Kevin Droniak , who is based in New York City, chronicles his solo day-trip adventures in the US and beyond on Instagram and TikTok (New York City to the Grand Canyon or Montreal for the day, for example). But the UK's abundant cheap airfares on budget airlines with relatively short flights to countries all over Europe, as well as access to destinations in North Africa and the Middle East, make it ground zero for the trend. For Earl, extreme day tripping has been a way of doing economical mini-adventures and a great opportunity to get a taste of different countries at his family's doorstep. 'If you go there and actually quite like what you're seeing, it's like, 'We'll come back here for longer next time and make a long weekend of it, or a week or two-week holiday,'' he says. And while Earl says he plans all his family's trips on his own, traveling unguided and using Skyscanner to search for flights that meet their £25-or-less parameter, he loves the Extreme Day Trips Facebook group for inspiration on where to go next. 'We very much would like to go and do the Alpine coaster in (Churwalden) Switzerland later in the year, if flights and cost allow. We're also looking at Norway, Portugal, Luxembourg and Germany, specifically Berlin,' he says. The family is hoping to visit a total of 12 countries together in 2025 on single-day hops from England. Terry Ward is a Florida-based travel writer and freelance journalist in Tampa who has traveled the world for three decades but has yet to try an extreme day trip.
CNN
23-06-2025
- CNN
London to Sweden for the day: These travelers are embracing extreme day trips
After scoring a rock-bottom fare on Ryanair from London to Gothenburg, Graham Earl, his wife and their two daughters flew to Sweden for the day this past May to visit a popular theme park. The family caught an early morning flight from London Stansted Airport, grabbed a ride share to the park after landing in Gothenburg and arrived just as Liseberg's gates opened at 11 a.m. They spent the entire day tackling the rides and shows with their daughters, ages 11 and 13, and enjoyed a meal at an Italian restaurant before leaving for the airport at 9 p.m. to catch their flight home. The Earls' flights cost £24.99 (around $34) each, roundtrip. Add to that four theme park tickets and other expenditures for the day and the total came out to roughly the same as what the family would have spent for entry tickets alone to an amusement park near their home on England's South Coast, Earl says. For the foursome, the Swedish jaunt was one of five day trips around Europe they've taken so far this year. They've traveled there and back for the day from England to places like Dublin, Venice and Palma de Mallorca in Spain – all while keeping airfare costs under £25 per person and arriving home in time to sleep in their own beds. While the United Kingdom — with its low-cost air carriers offering frequent connections throughout Europe — is a hub for 'extreme day trips' like the ones the Earls embarked on this year, people have also tried it in the US and beyond. The practice is not without its environmental drawbacks, but fans of the one-day trip say it's a fun and satisfying way to get a taste of a new place, especially when budgets and vacation time are limited. Earl's daughters liked their Sweden day trip best of all, he said, but spending a day in Venice, where they clocked more than 17,000 steps exploring the city, was tops for him. With school holidays making it hard and expensive to travel for much of the year, the travel hack feels rewarding, he says. 'Doing these day trips on a weekend outside of school and work hours, it kind of works from a budget point of view. It's allowing us to do lots of little mini adventures throughout the year,' Earl says. The sometimes exorbitant price of train fares across the UK compared to those in many other European countries paired with the ample options for cheap flights on budget airlines like EasyJet and Ryanair from cities like London, Edinburgh and Manchester has sparked this day-trip trend among British travelers. A Facebook group, Extreme Day Trips, currently has nearly 324,000 members who share tips on everything from the full breakdown of how every hour of their day trip played out to restaurant suggestions in places like Prague and Milan and just-scored airfare deals. All-in and itemized pricing info is sometimes shared; one member's recent extreme day trip from Sheffield to Pisa cost her £121 (about $163) including flights, ground transport and food and drinks. Michael Cracknell, a UPS driver and wedding photographer from near Brighton on England's South Coast, says he created the group in 2022 'purely as a way of showing people who are based in the UK that there are alternatives to our overpriced public transport system and overpriced days out within this country.' In 2019, when looking for a day out somewhere, he passed on city trips at home in England and turned his sights farther afield, catching flights for day trips to places like Switzerland, Germany and Spain. In 2022, Cracknell realized he'd been to 22 different countries just for the day, and the idea to start the Facebook group was born. Today, Cracknell and several other unpaid group administrators serve as facilitators and guides for extreme day trips. Demand far exceeds the space available, he says. Group trip dates are released months in advance on the Facebook page and thousands of people apply via a form, but the trips are limited to 20 or 30 people, Cracknell says. He tells the travelers who secure a slot (the selection process is random) the exact flights to book, what train tickets to reserve and information about any other attraction tickets and logistics they'll need to book themselves before meeting with the group at the airport for an early morning flight. Cracknell said he has led more than 500 people on extreme day trips in recent years to locations in Switzerland, one of his favorite countries for spending an unforgettable day. He is guiding two group trips to Athens from London later this year as well as 10 more day trips to Switzerland. Cracknell tries to keep total costs from London Gatwick for such trips to around £170 (about $228) per person or less. 'The Swiss Alps offer an easy day out for these people that's something completely unique that 95% of them have never done before. And they go back to work on Monday morning, still buzzing from it. They say to their work colleagues, 'Guess what I did at the weekend? We went to Switzerland,'' he says. The logistics of finding the cheapest airfares for out and back day trips can be time-consuming as it often involves booking flights on two different airlines, says Rick Blyth, who runs the website (The website is not related to the Facebook page, which came before it, but Cracknell and Blyth collaborate on some projects). The site's free flight tool lets users search for low-cost, low-demand flights from their home airports across the UK to destinations across Europe. It also has day itineraries for packing a weekend's worth of fun into a single day in cities and regions including Lisbon, Lake Como in Italy and Finnish Lapland. A paid premium version of the website, with an annual fee for members (currently £35 per year or about $47), just launched and allows users to further customize their extreme day trip flight searches. And when it comes to where to go for the day and what you can see and do there, those options are the stuff of travel dreams, Blyth says. 'You've got this choice of getting an expensive train to somewhere you already know or sitting on the motorways stuck in traffic — or getting on a cheap flight and going exploring Lapland, or the desert in Morocco, or going to a spa day in Bucharest, visiting Barcelona, going on a hike on Caminito del Rey in Malaga. There's just so much you could do,' he says. The environmental toll of taking short-haul flights — just because they're inexpensive and you can — is impossible to ignore. In 2023, France banned short-haul domestic flights where train journeys of 2.5 hours were available instead to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Blyth says he doesn't pretend extreme day trips are guilt-free travel, but it's worth considering that people traveling this way usually travel light and opt for low-demand early morning and late-night flights. He says they're often filling seats on empty planes and therefore lowering the overall carbon imprint per passenger. will plant six trees for every premium member that signs up for the new service and 12 trees for every premium plus member, he adds. He also contends that skipping hotel stays cuts down on hidden energy costs related to things like laundry and air conditioning. There are other impacts to consider, too. Extreme day trip might leave you feeling more exhausted than refreshed by the time you make it home, says Georgia Fowkes, a travel advisor for Altezza Travel. Fowkes says she has noticed growing interest in one-day trips, likely driven by the rise of affordable and frequent flights. But she says that after one or two of them, travelers might realize that such a packed trip took too much energy for the rewards reaped. 'The typical one-day itinerary tends to be overly ambitious when accounting for the time spent at airports, waiting in lines and commuting. A great brunch and a cappuccino won't save the day,' she says. Earlier this year, Fowkes took advantage of a flash sale on US low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines to travel from Pittsburgh to Chicago for the day to visit friends. Her flight left before sunrise from Pittsburgh and returned after midnight, at which point she was utterly exhausted from the long hours of sightseeing and time in transit. 'I was wrung out. And in reality, my one-day trip cost me two more days to fully get back into my routine. This is the part of one-day trips that people rarely talk about,' she says. Related video He missed his flight while making a TikTok video. Millions are happy he did American influencer Kevin Droniak , who is based in New York City, chronicles his solo day-trip adventures in the US and beyond on Instagram and TikTok (New York City to the Grand Canyon or Montreal for the day, for example). But the UK's abundant cheap airfares on budget airlines with relatively short flights to countries all over Europe, as well as access to destinations in North Africa and the Middle East, make it ground zero for the trend. For Earl, extreme day tripping has been a way of doing economical mini-adventures and a great opportunity to get a taste of different countries at his family's doorstep. 'If you go there and actually quite like what you're seeing, it's like, 'We'll come back here for longer next time and make a long weekend of it, or a week or two-week holiday,'' he says. And while Earl says he plans all his family's trips on his own, traveling unguided and using Skyscanner to search for flights that meet their £25-or-less parameter, he loves the Extreme Day Trips Facebook group for inspiration on where to go next. 'We very much would like to go and do the Alpine coaster in (Churwalden) Switzerland later in the year, if flights and cost allow. We're also looking at Norway, Portugal, Luxembourg and Germany, specifically Berlin,' he says. The family is hoping to visit a total of 12 countries together in 2025 on single-day hops from England. Terry Ward is a Florida-based travel writer and freelance journalist in Tampa who has traveled the world for three decades but has yet to try an extreme day trip.
Telegraph
04-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The 10 best day trips from Barcelona
You could spend months in Barcelona without running out of new things to experience, but if you're in need of a change of pace there are plenty of alternatives – most within easy reach, thanks to the excellent local railway system. Lesser-visited medieval towns, glorious hikes and curious museums are often less than an hour away. All our recommendations below have been hand selected and tested by our resident destination expert to help you discover the best day trips near Barcelona. For further inspiration, see our in-depth guides to the city's best hotels, restaurants, bars and nightlife, shopping, attractions, things to do for free and beaches. Find a day trip by type: Best for history Montserrat Monastery Come for the monastery and to listen to the celestial voices of the boys' choir, and stay for the hiking – paths scented with thyme meander over the jagged peaks revealing spectacular views. The museum has an unexpected collection of great art, including paintings by Caravaggio, Picasso, El Greco, Dalí, Miró and a host of others. Website: Area: Montserrat How to get there: take the train from Plaça Espanya to Monistrol de Montserrat (one hour), then rack railway. Tarragona In Roman times 'Tarraco' was the capital of half of Spain, and many vestiges of that period can still be seen. These include the city walls; the praetorian; the amphitheatre and the Roman circus, where chariot races were once held. The cathedral and its beautifully preserved 12th-century cloister shouldn't be missed, but leave time for a wander through its old town.
