Duration: 3 nights
Cost of flight: €12
Cost of accommodation: FREE (staying with friend)
Cost of food/drink: €60
Cost of transport: €6
Total Shoestring Cost: €78
If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
That’s my rule of thumb, anyway, so when I saw the Irish airline RyanAir offering European flights for £5 one way, I was extremely skeptical. The airline taxes would be much more than that; what’s the catch? Nevertheless, I went through the motions of booking a flight to Eindhoven to see a old Dutch friend of mine, who had just moved there. And I did indeed manage to find an outbound flight and a return for £10 total.
I soon realised the catch comes with the “optional extras”, like, er, checking a suitcase into the hold. RyanAir charge you £20 for that luxury. Luckily, I travel light, and so could get by with cabin baggage. Additionally, if you fail to check in online, print your boarding pass and bring it to the airport with you, they sting you with a £40 fee. Each way. And the final attempt at hiking the ticket price is charging you £10 for the “luxury” of paying a credit card. Luckily there is a way round this as well: you can pay with a prepaid VISA card for free. So by avoiding all of these sneaky loopholes, I did indeed manage to grab a return flight to Eindhoven for £10, all in.
Transport around town was cheap: a hop-on, hop-off bus ticket for Eindhoven and the whole surrounding area was a mere €3. As I was staying with my friend, accommodation was free; I thanked her by treating her to a meal one evening in the best buffet restaurant I had ever visited, a joint called “Wok Paradise”. Tucked away near the church at the end of a rank of shops, an unassuming doorway that looks to lead to a small takeaway shop actually houses an expansive Asian fusion restaurant upstairs. For €18 apiece, we could eat as much food as we could stomach. It was decent stuff, too: fresh lambchops, huge fresh shrimps, chicken, beef and more, all brazed on a Japanese teppanyaki grill in front of your eyes.
That was just the starter.
Sushi was next; not a great selection, but reasonable, and fairly tasty too. Then a plate of noodles with freshly steamed veg, chicken and grilled salmon, again from the patient Asian chef who we kept busy with our orders. Then sweet and sour, noodles, a bit more sushi, and ice cream to polish it off: all for eighteen euros. For a mere €26 you can have all you can eat and drink as well, although we didn’t go for it as we were concerned that the gaseous beer would stop us from eating as much of the delicious food as we would like.
I will be coming back to Eindhoven to see my friend… and we’ll definitely be starving outselves one of the days and heading down to Wok Paradise.