So ask yourself what your priorities are—is it worth that extra £20 to get yourself to hotel check-in as swiftly as possible and make the most of your visit to London? Or do you have time on your side and would rather save those £££s on transportation, so you have more money to burn when you’re out and about in the city?

We’ve saved you the lengthy research by weighing up the best fast and cheapo options below!

Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Photo: Curt Smith

Heathrow Airport

If you’re arriving in London on a long haul flight, chances are you’ll wind up at Heathrow, which sees almost 200,000 passengers arriving and departing each day. There are five terminals, all fairly easily accessible. Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are walking distance apart, whereas for Terminals 4 and 5 you may find you need to jump on the Underground or the Heathrow Express train.

Fastest: If you’re on a short jaunt in London and want to maximize your time in the city then the Heathrow Express is the best option for you. Sleek and uber comfortable trains with tons of space for luggage depart every 15 minutes from the airport and take just 15 minutes from terminals 1, 2 and 3 to Paddington station in central London. Add on four or six more minutes to the journey time if departing from terminals 4 or 5.

It’s not the cheap option, with adult tickets costing £26 for a single and £39 for a return when purchased onboard, but you can knock £5 off the cost of each ticket when you buy online or at the ticket machines and ticket desks in the station, making a single £21 and a return £34. Get organized and you’ll get an even better price as well, with regular advanced booking deals available online, particularly for kids and group bookings.

Cheapest: If saving those pennies is the most important thing, then by far the best option is to take the London Underground into the city center, which takes around one hour depending on where your final destination is. The Piccadilly Line has a stop for Terminals 1, 2 and 3, another for Terminal 4 and another for Terminal 5, so no matter where you land you’ll be able to access the Tube.

The airport is located in zone 6 and a single ticket into zone 1 (central London) will set you back around £5.70. However, if you read our guide to public transport in London and get yourself an Oyster card, this will be reduced by a few pounds.

The Gatwick Express train gets you to Victoria Station in 30 minutes. Photo: Vera Blossom

Gatwick Airport

Officially located in Sussex, Gatwick Airport is London’s second biggest air hub and covers the largest number of destinations of any airport in the country. There are two terminals; North and South, which are walking distance apart.

Fastest: The quickest way into London is from the well-located train station at the airport. However, unlike from Heathrow, the official “Gatwick Express” service which runs every 15 minutes to London Victoria only shaves around five minutes off your total journey time when compared to the notably cheaper, Southern Trains service. The former will set you back around £18 for a single and £31 for a return, while you can bag a return on the trusty Southern Train for a mere £15. If London Bridge or St Pancras are more convenient for you, opt for the Thameslink train for a similar price.

Cheapo tip: If you’re arriving and departing from Gatwick then be sure to buy yourself a return ticket, it’s only a few pence more expensive that the single!

Cheapest: If time is on your side then take the bus to central London. National Express has regular departures from both terminals to London Victoria from as little as £8 each way online. On average the journey takes an hour and a half, but be patient—London traffic is always unpredictable. Alternatively, Stelios’ easyBus has services to Waterloo and Earl’s Court which take between 60-90 minutes. Buses run every 15-20 minutes and start from as little as £2 each way when booked in advance online.

Stansted Airport

London’s third busiest airport is Stansted. Serving shorter haul destinations, you may well find yourself here if you’re flying to other countries in Europe with a low-cost airline.

Fastest: The handily located station makes it very easy to hop on the train from the airport. The Stansted Express departs every 15 minutes and takes around 35 minutes to Tottenham Hale or 45 minutes to Liverpool Street station. Given the trains are often pretty packed, the £21 single and £32 return feels pretty steep, but you can cut this price massively if you book early, with fares from £8 when booked 30 days in advance and £12 when booked seven days in advance. There are also discounts for groups and two adults traveling together.

Cheapest: Again, if you really want to save those pennies then the bus will be your best option. From Stansted you can catch National Express or Terravision buses to Victoria or Liverpool Street, while the easyBus goes to Old Street and Baker Street. All buses depart regularly and take between one and two hours. Fares start from £2 each way and the best prices are found when booked in advance online.

London Luton

Again, you’re most likely to find yourself at Luton if you’re flying low-cost to a nearby destination, and most Londoners try and avoid this airport like the plague. Not because it’s unpleasant when you get there, but because the lack of an on-site train station makes it a whole lot more awkward to get to and from. If arriving very late at night, I would pay the extra flight price to land somewhere else, as the onward journey from Luton is not so straightforward.

Fastest: Rail is still (just) the quickest way to central London, but the difference isn’t as huge as when compared to Heathrow and in this instance I would probably just go for the cheaper bus route. All visitors must catch the shuttle from outside the airport to the rail station. The journey takes around 10 minutes and the buses leave fairly regularly. Your rail ticket can be bought at the bus stop and includes the surcharge for the shuttle. If you don’t pay it you will be charged £1.60 to take the shuttle bus. On arrival, Thameslink runs trains to Blackfriars, Farringdon, and St Pancras, which take between 40 and 60 minutes and cost around £15 single and £24 return.

Cheapest: Both easyBus and National Express serve Luton Airport and take around 90 minutes to Victoria coach station. EasyBus just launched its direct service to Liverpool Street last month as well, which it claims takes one hour and five minutes, but I would always recommend leaving a bit longer. Single tickets can be bought from as little as £2 if you get them in advance.

You can easily take the Docklands Light Rail to connect with the Tube from London City Airport. Photo: Tom Page

London City

Finally, if you’re touching down at London City Airport then you’re very lucky indeed! Designed for business travelers to have easy access to the city, you won’t be swamped with mind boggling options here—simply up your Oyster card and hop onto the DLR (Docklands Light Railway) and connect to London Underground’s Jubilee Line at Canning Town in just three stops.

How do you get in?

Have a tip for a fast or cheap way in from any of London’s airports? Share with us in the comments section below!

The post London Airport Transport: Our picks for the fastest and cheapest ways into town appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

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Norwegian offers $240 flights from US to London

Questions over Gatwick services

With respect to its proposed Gatwick venture, Norwegian is facing a barrage of criticism from US-based legacy carriers and pilots’ unions who fear that the company’s low-cost model may threaten the cushioned comforts which they have enjoyed for decades. The coming weeks will reveal whether Norwegian really does get to launch its proposed routes from LA, Fort Lauderdale and JFK into Gatwick in July.

Even if it does go ahead, the Norwegian operation is merely a blip in the pond. We are talking about one Gatwick-based plane flying the company’s three US routes in and out of the airport—providing in total just six flights each week from the USA to London. The market for transatlantic flights is reshaping to reflect new patterns of consumer demand. Many punters nowadays want to fly direct to Europe from regional airports around North America.

Shortest transatlantic crossing: 4 hours

This summer sees a number of interesting new routes that tap regional markets. So British Airways this month launched a new non-stop route from Austin to London Heathrow, and Westjet will start the shortest transatlantic flights of the season on June 15 with its new route from St John’s (Newfoundland) to Dublin.

The ever-reliable OAG flight database shows a block time of 4 hrs 15 mins for the sector, so the 2000-mile route will require less than four hours in the air, barely enough time to enjoy supper and have a quick snooze before the plane is descending to touch down in Ireland. One-way fares start at $275 (Canadian dollars)—and that includes all taxes, fuel surcharges and checked baggage.

New daytime flights to Europe

Europe Airpost may sound more like the mailman than an airline. But this French cargo airline also carries humans. It’s an unusual choice for transatlantic travel, but this summer the airline offers the only daytime flights from Canada to Europe. Avoid the pain of an overnighter with Europe Airpost’s direct daytime flights from Halifax (Nova Scotia) to Glasgow and Paris. The service will operate in July and August only, using Boeing 737s with space for 128 passengers

From lesser airports direct to Europe

Many of the big airfare search engines may overlook useful carriers that could be just what you need for your routing. Casting around and checking individual airlines’ websites may reap handsome rewards. How many travelers from the Twin Cities or the Pacific Northwest would think of checking the Condor website for direct flights to Germany? But in fact the carrier has summer-season direct flights to Frankfurt from both Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Seattle—and, for that matter, even flies non-stop this summer from Fairbanks (Alaska) and Whitehorse (Yukon) to Frankfurt.

Basel or Riga? Why not fly direct?

Another carrier that features less prominently in the imagination is Air Transat, which from June thru September this year offers scheduled non-stop flights from Montreal to Basel.

Choosing a less-obvious airline may allow you to route directly to your chosen destination in Europe. If you are heading out of the Big Apple bound for the Baltic States, you might assume that there are no direct flights and opt to travel via London, Amsterdam or Copenhagen. But there is one airline which has reliably served the New York to Riga route for years—and that is Uzbekistan Airways. The flight time is just under nine hours on the airline’s Boeing 767.

Check out less obvious carriers

Opting for an obscure airline may bring advantages. The fastest schedules on the New York to Brussels route are not achieved by any US or European airline but by the Indian carrier Jet Airways which offers a daily flight from Newark to Brussels. If you are heading to Italy and, like us, you think that Middle Eastern style is hard to beat, then consider using Emirates’ new non-stop service from New York to Milan. Five different carriers compete daily on the route, four of them flying out of JFK and one from Newark. We think that Emirates is the best of the JFK options.

Singapore Airlines from the USA to Europe

On the busy route from New York City to Frankfurt, four different IATA carriers are in head-to-head competition, between them offering six non-stop departures every evening from New York. Our top choice is the least obvious one, namely Singapore Airlines which flies the flagship Airbus A380-800 on the route. It’s not the airline’s only transatlantic service. Another very useful link is the Houston to Moscow route, where Singapore Airlines jealously guards its enviable position as sole operator of a route that appeals to more than merely oil executives.

The post Flying across the Atlantic: Creative and cheap ways to get to Europe appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

“When I was a lad, there must have been more than a dozen folk on Stóra Dímun,” explains a Faroese man who, like us, is watching from the deck of the boat. “But they’ve gone. Just as they are leaving Mykines. And Fugloy too.” And then the man was silent, and the last Dímun was swallowed up in the mist.

The harbour of Nólsoy, a village located half an hour by boat from Tórshavn. Photo © hidden europe

Life beyond Tórshavn

If you want to get to the heart of what it means to be Faroese, you have to get out of Tórshavn. The capital is a pretty enough place, to be sure. Indeed, there is probably no other European capital that comes close to matching Tórshavn for its homespun village-like charm. Unpretentious and sleepy Tórshavn with its lovely jumble of black-tarred cottages on rocky Tinganes, the promontory that juts out into the harbour, is a wonderful introduction to the Faroes.

But the soul of these islands lies elsewhere. Ask the men working on the dockside in Tórshavn where they come from, and they will tell you they are from Funningur or Kirkja, from Saksun or Sumba, all wee slips of places where grass grows on the roofs of long-abandoned barns, where the church is more often locked than open, and where each winter the snow drifts deep.

“I’ve not been back to Kirkja for over twenty years,” admitted one man from the remote northern island of Fugloy, evidently oblivious to the fact that the remote bygd where he was born and lived the first fifteen years of his life is only half an hour from Tórshavn by helicopter.

Faroese connections

Go to the Faroes. They are so easy to reach and it’s well worth it. At this time of year Smyril Line sails on Saturdays and Tuesdays from Hirtshals (Denmark) to Tórshavn. The crossing takes about 32 hours. Winter sailings are just once weekly and take up to 40 hours.

The Faroese airline Atlantic Airways flies year round from Copenhagen to Vágar (usually twice daily). This summer the airline is also offering twice-weekly flights from Bergen and London Gatwick to Vágar. The seasonal link from Norway operates until the end of August. The service from Britain runs till mid-September.

Once in the Faroes, make time to visit the smaller islands in the archipelago. The islands have well-integrated bus and ferry services that make it very easy to get around. For those in a rush, there is also the inter-island helicopter service run by Atlantic Airways.

The post Faroe Islands: Exploring beyond Torshavn appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.