Travel Itinerary

Here is the itinerary of our Grand Tour of Europe on the cheap.

Salt Lake City to New York City 11:00 pm flight
JFK airport to Central Park via the Sky Train, and the A train.
Most of the day spent in:

-Central park (cool authentic Egyptian obelisk, kids playing baseball, hundreds of dogs, street performers, gardens and trees, a huge castle)

-The Metropolitan Museum of Art (you can pay as little as 25 cents for admission and they have truly amazing collections of about every kind of art)

-Church in the building which also holds the Manhattan Temple right across the street from the Lincoln Center and the Julliard School.

Subway back to the airport for the red eye flight to London with a stopover in Iceland.

We arrived in Iceland in the middle of the night and were surprised by how tight the security was. We had to go through security right off the plane and get our passport stamped twice.

Arrived in London, exchanged money (the airport rates were terrible) bought an invaluable Oyster Card, and rode on the easy to navigate Tube to downtown London.
Right next to the very boisterous and fun Piccadilly Circus (think Times Square) we picked up our Britrail passes and our Great British Heritage passes, saving a bundle on shipping.

We started with the fabulous National Gallary which is a free and spectacular art museum right next to Piccadilly Circus. We saw the Arnolfini Marriage by Van Eyck and a lot of other very famous works.

We raced down towards Westminster Abbey before realizing that our watches were set an hour off (Big Ben rang and we trusted it over our own timepieces). We slowed down a bit and took a picture in one of those characteristic red London telephone boothes, and saw the Horse Gaurd House, Scotland Yard, and #10 Downing Street.

We arrived just a little bit too late to get into Westminster Abbey for a tour, and it was really expensive anyway, so we were a little bit depressed and planned on coming back to for Evensong.

We walked down the street (past some pro-PKK protesters by the houses of parliament) and arrived at the Tate Britain gallary. I think that it was free too, and it was really awesome. The painings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were my favorite.

We left our bags in the cloakroom and ran back to the Abbey for Evensong, which was really great except we had to send our brother Paul back to the Tate to get our bags because we would not have enough time to worship and return in time. The service was very reverent and inspirational, with some of the greatest music ever from the young choir boys and organ. We took a quick peek at Shakespeare's Poet's Corner and went out to meet Paul.

We strolled around and took the Tube (which was very posh: clean, colorful, quiet, and comfortable with plushly padded seats) to our hostel, the Torquay house.

We went out that evening for some good food and wound up paying a fortune for some very good Indian food a couple of blocks away from our hostel.

In the morning we ate a bunch of delicious toast and cereal as part of our free breakfast while watching some interesting British TV about some "republicans" who wanted to do away with the monarchy and have an elected executive branch.

We flew with bmi (British midland international) which was very comfortable and offered really good in-flight food to us as we tried hard to sleep in the middle of the night.

We arrived in Tel Aviv at 4 am local time after very little sleep and we all felt terrible. We rented a car there from Eldan and drove to the BYU Jerusalem Center as the sun rose to the west behind us. The security gaurds asked us if we were LDS and told us that we could not go in until right before church started. We had planned to go and see the Dome of the Rock, but we were so tired, that we just slept in the car for a couple of hours.

We had a great time at church which was on Saturday of course, and felt just like a little BYU ward except with a much better view. It was fast and testimony meeting.

Cheap Travel Tips

Here are some of the top tips for Cheap travel:

Stay in a hostel and not in a hotel. Book in advance with no booking fee through hostels.com or hostelworld.com or similar cites.

Get standing tickets. The Globe Theater in London and the Theater in Stratford-Upon-Avon both offer 5 pound standing tickets for Shakespeare plays, and the State Opera House in Vienna sells 3 Euro tickets for concerts and operas. They were both amazing deals.

Bring a student ID card and ask for a student discount everywhere. Some will try to tell you that most places only accept the official student discount card, but they always take an official student ID with an expiration date.

Visit local grocery stores instead of eating out. Food money could be your #1 expense, or you could save a bundle and eat fresh, authentic, local cuisine for pennies on the restaurant dollar.

Be your own tour guide instead of paying for organized tours that don't go at your own pace and cram you onto a bus. Researching the places that you will visit is half the fun, and free at the library or on the Internet.

Do the math on transportation. Everyone scouts around for cheap airplane tickets, but you should look at train, bus, ferry, and taxi options just as closely. We saved a lot with the Eurail Youth Pass in Europe that included a free ferry ride from Greece to Italy, and the Britrail pass that paid for itself several times over in England.

Finally, look into attractions passes. The Great British Heritage Pass will get you into many of the best sights in Britain for a lot less, and the Paris Museum Pass lets you skip lines and see more for less.