On a side note... Hope you like the new blog design!
I will be leaving on June 16th and coming back on July 18th. The total cost was a whopping $1786.20!!!!!!!!
Yeah, I cried a little...
I probably could have gotten a better deal if I had searched more, but I honestly spent so much time trying to find a good deal that it really stressed me out. I kept hearing "student discounts," and "cheap airfare," but $1,800 did not seem very cheap to me! Especially when my study abroad program estimated that it would only be $1,000. What bugs me even more is that had I been traveling in March or April, the cost would have been half! Traveling in the summer is expensive no matter where you look. Anyway, here are the websites and travel agencies I tried:
Student Universe <
https://www.studentuniverse.com/>
- They were pretty much like any other flight finding website such as Orbits or Expedia. No discounts for students that I could find. One nice thing is that they let you cross reference your search on several other websites such as: Priceline, Expedia, Webjet.com and Travel-Ticker.
STA Travel <
http://www.statravel.com/>
- They claimed to have student discounted airfare for ISIC holders, which I have, but honestly their prices ended up being VERY similar to any other website I looked at. The plus side: I found a scholarship through them and won $1000 for my trip. They have some other good services and resources for students traveling abroad though. They aren't all bad! And the ISIC (International Student Identification Card) does get you other discounts... 10% off any purchase at Target!
And the winner goes to...
Expedia <
http://www.expedia.com/>
- Not only were they the cheapest, they offer a nice reward package. They also allowed me to save itineraries so that I could come back and easily find a flight I had previously looked at.
So there you have it.
Also, something else I wanted to mention about trying to get cheaper airfare. I posted on some travel forums and a lot of people suggested that I buy separate tickets or fly out of larger airports to get a better deal... In theory this works. For example, I could have got about $200 off of my airfare if I had flown out of Seattle or LA instead of Portland, Oregon... BUT, it would have cost $150 or more for me to travel to these cities and the hassle wouldn't have been worth the effort to save a few dollars here and there. I tried many combinations of this idea - buying a ticket to London and then a separate ticket to Greece - they all were slightly cheaper but a lot more schedule juggling and hassle involved.... and in some cases, it was more expensive to buy two separate tickets. Not saying this wouldn't work for everyone, I'm just saying it didn't work for me. Perhaps Athens is just an expensive city to travel to?
