Tips for travelling as an Erasmus Student

Top Tips

One of the things I was looking forward to most about my Year Abroad was all the travelling I'd be doing: I even wrote a (slightly optimistic) list of everywhere I wanted to visit. Having not been to much of mainland Spain (or Italy) before, this is definitely the perfect opportunity to visit new cities, take in the culture and be a tourist, all whilst practising my language skills, of course... However, everyone knows that travel can be tricky and very expensive if you're not careful, so I have compiled a few hints and tips from what I have learnt so far.

 1) Be a tourist in your own city. It's great to want to travel all around the country, or even  continent, that you're staying in, but it's so important to experience the beautiful city you're living in too! You obviously chose it for a reason: be it the food, history, or even nightlife, so explore it. This is even more important if your friends and family are coming to visit you because you want to show off where you've been living, so take the chance to be a tourist: go see that church, museum or amazing-smelling bakery that you've "been meaning to try for ages".

 2) Use the Alsa bus service. This is only applicable to Spain, however I'm sure that whatever country you travel to, there will be a similar bus company who will take you to the major cities (and even smaller towns). We have been to so many places on this service and will use it more over the next few months. It's especially handy to get to the airport for 3 euros!!

 3) Domestic flights. Here, domestic flights are much cheaper than trains for journeys that are over 3 hours long. For example, it would cost us the same price to fly to Madrid from Granada as taking the bus, but the bus journey is 4 hours longer. No thanks. 

4) Join Erasmus student associations such as Best Life Experience or Erasmus Student Network. Most cities that accept Erasmus students will have an association that provides trips, club nights and other perks, if you join. I didn't find out about it until having lived here for 2 weeks, but I saw on the Facebook page that they did loads of events at the start of the year for everyone to meet each other. As I mentioned, these associations provide trips away almost every weekend and are a great opportunity to meet fellow Erasmus students while exploring a new place for an incredibly cheap price! They usually provide transport, a snack and a dedicated photographer, and are well worth the money.

5) Stay with your friends. This is such a good idea to visit a new city on a budget, and have a ready-made tour guide. Even better if they have a spare room/space in their bed! They can take you to all the best (cheap) places so you don't have to fall into the tourist traps. Plus it gives you a chance to catch up!

6) Look for student/NIE discount. Wasn't half the reason we all became students for the student discount? And now you've got your NIE, you may as well put it to good use! When we went to Seville we found loads of attractions had a substantial student or residents discount, and if a saving means another tinto de verano, I'm all for it.

 We've got a couple of quiet weeks travelling-wise, but at the end of November we're visiting Madrid and Barcelona so we will update the blog then!
Rebeka

Comments

  1. Helena27 October 2018 at 11:49

    Tinto de verano- is a must , you keep telling us- can’t wait to try it !!!! Such good advice Rebeka. Loving the updates!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Angela Fisher28 October 2018 at 10:54

    Informative and interesting. Cant wait to hear about Madrid and Barcelona.

    ReplyDelete

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