First, check your allowed days in Schengen border against your 170 day itinerary. You might have to rearrange some of your itin. so you’re not over 90 days there.

Second, check lesser-known airlines from Calgary to Europe in summer, such as Martinair to Amsterdam, Condor to Frankfurt, Thomas Cook to the UK (Canadian-Affair.ca), and Air Transat.

For example, I see $1070 CAD r/t total with taxes to Gatwick Jul 9, and back from Gatwick Oct 7, nonstop flights on Thomas Cook.

Finally, add consolidators to your search, such as Flight Network and Travelcuts. A few others: Economytravel, Tiss, Airdeals, Justfares.com. Several others are included with a thorough search using BookingBuddy.com.

You will need to wait until around February to find the best fares from your airport. However as a heads up, flights are usually the cheapest cross atlantic into London, Dublin, Frankfurt, and sometimes Amsterdam. Otherwise Don’s advice is very good, although I am sure you will be able to find a better fare than 1070 r/t if you wait a while.

thanks for the quick replies..
does anyone know how to go about getting an extended stay for more than 90 days, without going to school or working there?

Just leave the EU/Schengen area and the enter again and you will recieve a new 90-day tourist visa. This works great when your not working or studying.

If you don’t get caught, SwedishHelper’s advice would work. However, I’m pretty sure i read somewhere that they don’t allow such maneuvers.

Technically, it’s 90 days in / 90 days out for tourist entries to Schengen border. You can not leave for 1 day and then return with a fresh 90 days to play tourist. You might find a country in Schengen not so strict on this, but it would be a risk (possible fine and ban from re-entry, which makes each subsequent border crossing on that passport receive additional scrutiny—border control agents don’t like to see big Xs showing you were denied entry anywhere.

Keep in mind that UK is not part of Schengen border, nor is Ukraine; I’m not sure about Bratislava off the top of my head — check the post at the top of this forum titled “Nifty visa checking tool…” and google “Schengen” if you’re not familiar with it. You might be able to craft your trip so you’d only have 90 days total in Schengen, and the rest out of it, and avoid having to arrange an extended-visit visa.

Hey koolaid, I’m doing a eurotrip from Sasaktoon! Yay fellow Saskatchewanian!

I’m doing a 220 day trip and I will end up travelling in the Schengen area (France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland) for 90 days. Then will hop over to the UK for 90 days, then return to the Schengen to do Italy and Austria. Thats pretty much the only way to do it for the time length you are talking about.

As for flights, I’m doing an open jaw and searching direct from Saskatoon and haven’t found much below $1200. But I really don’t want to deal with the idea of having to drive to/from Calgary when there is such a long flight to deal with. However the smaller airlines that Don mentioned don’t fly out of Regina, so I guess it depends whether you have more time or money. I am thinking tigrou is right though, it’s probably too early to get cheaper flights. I have heard air transit can get you some not bad deals.

nbetz, I would not hold out too much hope of getting a great fare from Saskatoon. Air Canada knows when it has a captive audience. What I might consider, particularly since you have such a long trip ahead, is starting the trip by visiting a US (probably) city that tends to have cheap airfares, and buying (ahead of time, of course) a cheap airfare to Europe from that US city. However, the fact that your trip is 220 days adds an extra complication, because the best fares are generally for <30-day trips.

It’s so complicated to fly from a small centre. Unless I can get a really really good deal from a larger centre, by the time I pay for a separate flight to get there, it’s pretty close to the same price anyways. However, I wouldn’t rule it out, which US (or Canadian) cities tend to have the best flight deals? And to add another wrench in the mix, I need to book my flight for 90 days return (so I can enter the Schengen area) then change the date while I’m over there.

???

I thought about it more after I posted it and realized that wasn’t quite right. I need to have a return ticket NO LONGER than 90 days later than when I fly in. Else I risk being turned away for potentially staying longer than the limit. However, that’s not to say that I could by a return ticket for 30 days after I arrive and just change it after I was in Europe. THen I could probably take advantage of cheap flights.

I did take a couple hours this afternoon and try to run a couple combinations to get a cheaper flight. For all the extra work and extra stopovers, I might be able to save a couple hundred dollars. Not sure if it’s really worth it.

The problem with buying your ticket and then trying to change the date is that you’ll likely face limited seat availability for your desired return flight and steep fees. Fees will be a big issue if you find a particularly good fare when you make your initial booking because they will likely charge the fee for changing the date and the difference between what you initially paid and whatever the seat happens to be selling for when you make the change. Book your ticket for your actual return and departure and then buy a cheap seat out of the Schengen zone on Ryanair or another budget airline to show as proof of onward travel.

Travel dates searching: Arrival March 23 Departure June 19 (will change)
Actual travel dates: Arrival March 23 Departure Nov 17 (or there abouts)

I’m thinking that if I change the date from flying during peak season to off season, the change in fare shouldn’t be too drastic, then plus the $200 or so to change it.

Augustin, I originally thought about doing it your way, but because my final departure is so far away, I’m not sure I could book that far in advance. You can’t through online sites like orbitz and such. Like I said, I’ve tried a combo of a cheap return flight from a major US city (_{$600), plus the cost of getting from Saskatoon to said major city (}$500) and I’m already pretty close to hitting the $1200 that I originally found. So it’s really not looking so bad a price in the end.

It’s true that it’s also pretty expensive to get from Saskatoon to most US cities, so you may not save money that way overall.
However, if you did want to visit Vancouver, Toronto, or New York , then you could see this as a way to get in a free visit to that other city. (I know I mentioned V & T, which are Canadian cities, but the combination cost might also work to the same in those cases too.)

Good luck getting things arranged the way you want. I think Ryanair & EasyJet and some others typically offer at least some routes 6 months in advance.

cheapest place so far for us from Oklahoma is Zurich. just try out orbitz.com

This will almost certainly change in the next few months, especially with sales popping up.

Hi,

In my opinion it also depends on how you gonna travel within Europe. If you are going to fly, your best option would to to fly from Canada to London or Paris (or Frankfurt if you could add it in your plan). Why? From those places there are most flights to other destinations you listed and they are usually the cheapest.

Also, if you are looking for cheap flight within Europe you can check Low Cost Airline Guide. you can check the flight between different cities and it might also give you a better idea on how to organize your trip.

Hope that helps,